As a new year and new presidential administration arrive, I’m reminded of a recent church service where the pastor talked about Jesus healing 10 lepers and noticing only one had thanked him. The sermon’s point was that most people probably identify with the grateful person – “Sure, you’d come back, right?” it was asked from the pulpit.

Would we?

This opinion piece isn’t about gratitude but that question: What would you have done?

Few of us see ourselves as perpetrators, collaborators or cowards. But confronting opportunities to stand up for something, would we? Think of Gethsemane or the Inquisition; lynchings in the South or repression in 1930s Germany; Joe McCarthy’s 1950s witch hunt or Abu Ghraib; or the U.S. government’s “Muslim ban” eight years ago this month.

Few of us are heroes or villains, victims or martyrs, but 2025 may be a year when we are challenged, faced by situations requiring something of us.

The best, or at least most familiar, thought is the verse by German Lutheran minister Martin Niemoller, who reflected on staying silent as fascism began in Germany and would metastasize throughout the world.

“First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out,” he wrote, “because I was not a socialist.” After a few other confessions, he sadly recalls, “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Enemies of the people

Trump for years has attacked journalists, and expectations are that his regime is likely to wage war against the press. Journalists’ mission to hold the powerful accountable and give voice to the voiceless isn’t new, but it’s getting urgent. One of the most telling moves is Trump nominating as FBI Director rabid FBI critic Kash Patel, previously an adviser to the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council. In his first term, Trump wanted Patel as deputy FBI director but his own Attorney General called him unqualified.

Last year, Patel told fellow MAGA acolyte Steve Bannon that if Trump won, they’d “go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media, … people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.

“We’re going to come after you,” he warned journalists. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

Patel lists special targets in the appendix of his book “Govern-ment Gangsters.” It not only has Biden, Harris and Hillary Clinton but Republicans Bill Barr and John Bolton and NBC commentators John Brennan (former CIA Director) and Lisa Page (ex-legal counsel for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — also on the list).

Former Boston Globe and Washington Post editor Marty Baron commented that Trump is “salivating for the opportunity to prosecute and imprison journalists for leaks of what they would call national security information.”

The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan wrote, “As many have pointed out, when would-be authoritarians take power, one of the first things they want to do is stamp out independent journalism. The editorial independence of Voice of America (the federally funded news service providing independent news reporting world-wide) would be sharply curtailed. Former officials who talk to reporters would be punished. Funding for NPR, PBS and public broadcasting would dry up.”

Bubble wrapped

Indeed, in December Trump nominated as Voice of America director ex-news anchor Kari Lake, who became an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Arizona governor and senator and fierce election denier.

On Fox News Digital in November, Trump claimed he supports a free press, but the President-elect added that “If not treated fairly, however, that will end.”

On Dec. 10, Senate Republicans voting on the PRESS Act (Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying) codifying shields against government interference, dutifully obeyed Trump’s Nov. 20 social-media order to “KILL THIS BILL!” despite its unanimous, bipartisan support in the House. Blocking the bill will make it easier to seize journalists’ phones or records and arrest whistleblowers or other sources for sharing verifiable facts.

And on Dec. 12, Trump accepted Time’s “Person of the Year” award and told the magazine, “The media’s tamed down a little bit; they’re liking us much better now, I think,” adding with a smile: “If they don’t, we’ll have to just take them on again.”

Under attack

He’s already called for broadcast licenses to be revoked, took $15 million from ABC in a libel settlement, and is suing CBS for unfavorable coverage.

Brenda Carr, Trump’s pick for chair of the Federal Com-munications Commission, wrote the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” chapter on the FCC and is seen as someone who’d go after Big Tech “censorship” and outlets that have too-few conservative points of view.

Many journalists hope to do journalism as long as we can, feeling the job is a calling, or that we can’t help it, as journalist/novelist Anna Quindlen said: “Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.”

But the coming chill isn’t just about journalism or Washington, D.C. It’s hard to imagine City/County Public Health Administrator Monica Hendrickson, doctors, Peoria Public Schools Superintendent Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat or teachers explaining why vaccines are vital and reminding MAGA parents about polio before 1955.