Is this the last post for press freedom in the US?

Another blow for democracy under Trump as Jeff Bezos cuts more than 300 newsroom jobs at the Washington Post

- Ed Pilkington and Jeremy Barr

The email landed in Lizzie Johnson's in-tray in Ukraine just before 4pm local time. It came at a tough time for the reporter: Russia had been repeatedly striking the country's power grid, and just days before she had been forced to work out of her car without heat, power or running water.

"Difficult news" was the subject line. The body text said: "Your position is eliminated as part of today's organisational changes," explaining that it was necessary to get rid of her to meet the "evolving needs of our business".

"I was just laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a warzone," Johnson wrote on X. "I have no words." The Washington Post's Ukraine correspondent may have been rendered speechless over last week's move by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire and Post owner, to cut more than 300 newsroom jobs. The bloodletting, which has renewed fears about the resilience of America's democracy to withstand Donald Trump's attacks, swept away the paper's entire sports department, much of its culture and local staff and all of its journalists in Ukraine and the Middle East.

"It's a bad day," said Don Graham, son of the Post's legendary Watergateera owner, Katharine Graham, breaking the silence he has maintained since selling the paper to Bezos for $250m in 2013.

"This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organisations," said Marty Baron, the Post's lionised former executive editor. Baron castigated Bezos for his "sickening efforts to curry favour with President Trump", adding that it left an especially "ugly stain" on the paper's standing.

Several hundred people rallied in front of the Post's offices last Thursday, in support of their laid-off colleagues.

Robert McCartney, a 39-year veteran of the Post until he retired five years ago, said it was a "tragedy and an outrage".