2026 finds the United States marked by division and fragmentation, diminished trust in traditional institutions and sources of information, and strong, though unpredictable, leadership – all a recipe for risk, uncertainty and potential crisis for any organisation.
At their core, crises are defined by the total impact they could have on an organisation’s reputation, credibility, value, future ability to operate and financial performance, and by whether they necessitate a rapid, but effective, response.
While not every crisis can be avoided, the good news is that nearly all can be anticipated and prepared for with a comprehensive and sober look at the business, its footprint, and the landscape, expectations and risk framework within which the organisation operates.
This article outlines some of the leading US trends that will impact crisis management in the current dynamic, sceptical and unpredictable environment. The focus here is on stakeholder engagement and reputation defence, as opposed to organisational management or business continuity, and on how best to prepare for and manage an uncertain future.
Leading US crisis management trends and developments
Several key trends are influencing what companies must consider as they operate a business, engage with key audiences, and manage issues and crises in 2026.
Fragmentation of information sources and declining trust in legacy media and institutions
A divided information landscape makes it harder than ever for organisations to break through the noise and reach all key stakeholders, many of whom may not get their news from where they have previously. From social media to podcasts to influencer-driven independent news platforms, the rise of alternative media – much of which increasingly comes through a partisan or ideological filter – means that companies and organisations can no longer rely only on traditional news organisations to distribute their messages.
According to a multinational FGS Global survey, 61% of people believe mainstream news media have their own agenda and cannot be trusted to report in a fair and balanced way, leaving only 53% trusting television news and 52% trusting newspapers as information sources (FGS Global Radar 2026 at 49–50). Furthermore, only 41% trust what they hear from big businesses, 38% from big tech companies, and 37% from government (ibid, at 50).
The bottom line is that influence has become “atomised”, with mainstream media and traditional institutions losing strength and trust amid an increasingly crowded informational marketplace. Attention spans and engagement are declining, and a significant portion of the population is tuning out entirely. All this leads to a splintered environment where debates and views are rooted less in commonly accepted facts than in the particular perspectives echoing through one’s information silo.
The diminishment of traditional media makes it harder for organisations to tell their side of the story. Companies must now be vigilant about ensuring (or, where necessary, creating) accurate sources of truth that reach all their key stakeholder audiences – either by actively monitoring for and correcting misinformation or incomplete information on widely viewed platforms, or by building and maintaining their own platforms and communications channels. This may also require engaging with outlets and influencers who must be managed differently and may not play by the familiar rules of mainstream journalism.
This proliferation of platforms and channels used by a broader group of more vocal stakeholders means that online narratives are escalating to produce real-world consequences and impact much more quickly. Therefore, it is imperative that even those who choose to avoid proactively taking part in the new media market have a plan for monitoring social media platforms, podcasts and other popular information funnels, including fringe platforms and the dark or deep web – not only to know how the organisation is being portrayed, but also so that emerging issues can be identified and responses can be considered more quickly.
These patterns are also invading the litigation arena, where jury consultants are advising that declining trust in institutions and scepticism about bias and influence mean that witnesses, including experts, should be selected less for their credentials and more for their ability to come across as a credible and impartial teacher.
The influence of AI in the dissemination of information
In the past year, the rapid acceleration and use of AI has begun to change how the general public receives information, yet again. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from July 2025 stated that 60% of Americans overall, and 74% of those under 30, use AI to find information at least some of the time. The replacement of search engines by AI-driven large language models as the default way people find information has profound implications for how opinions are formed and reputations are built (or damaged), requiring organisations to adjust their approaches for reaching their audiences.
The most significant changes include the different sources AI tools access to gather and summarise information. Previously, when trying to get to the top of a Google search, the most effective approach was to have an article published in a news outlet or on a long-standing company website. However, AI summaries are more likely to pick up content from open access sources like Reddit and Wikipedia, along with select traditional media sources like newswires, but may not draw from paywalled sites with which the AI programme may not have an agreement (eg, a Wall Street Journal article). Accordingly, it is now critical to have a deep understanding of all the unique ways that Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) – the new Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for AI search – works. Without that understanding, organisations will miss opportunities to shape content and place it where their most important stakeholders will see it – both of which are now essential for effective influence.
A still-unpredictable Administration
A constant from last year, the Trump Administration has provided few reliable clues regarding its priorities for executive action or public targeting in 2026, requiring vigilance and preparation from almost all organisations.
The past year put parts of the Administration’s playbook on display. Federal officials and agencies threatened or withheld federal money from universities or state agencies to pressure them for settlements. President Trump issued executive orders or threatened lawsuits or investigations against law firms that represented clients or causes adverse to his agenda, and against a range of companies for their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and initiatives. He and his allies also made public comments targeting specific products and companies – an oft-used tactic from his first administration. However, the unpredictable selection and timing of the Administration’s attention showed that any company, industry or organisation can be a target, and provided little assurance about who might face an Administration-driven crisis in 2026.
One early clue could be a new executive order aimed at the defence industry – using government contracts to pressure companies to invest in production capacity and stop what the Administration sees as excessive stock buybacks, dividends, other corporate distributions or executive compensation. Other industries could face similar pressures to comport their investments with Administration policies and priorities. An area of likely consistency is that the Administration has made it clear that tariffs are here to stay and that non-compliance, intentional or otherwise, will be subject to potentially significant criminal and civil liability.
A volatile regulatory and enforcement landscape
President Trump’s return to office brought broad changes in federal regulatory and enforcement priorities, with emphasis on deregulation in prominent sectors such as tech, energy and trade. Federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, are changing the focus of enforcement actions in line with Administration policies, including far greater latitude for cryptocurrencies and leniency for companies in governance, white-collar and privacy matters.
Particularly striking was the deceleration of antitrust cases litigated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to challenge M&A transactions. President Trump’s DOJ inherited three active merger litigations from the Biden Administration, yet within five months that number was zero, with the DOJ settling all cases and the Trump Administration not bringing any new cases challenging a merger. In this lower scrutiny landscape, 2025 saw 68 mega-deals valued at over USD10 billion – far exceeding 2024’s tally and the second highest total on record. However, the antitrust enforcement environment remains too unsettled and inconsistent for M&A lawyers or bankers (or their communications advisers) to celebrate. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which also enforces antitrust policy in tandem with DOJ, initiated four merger litigation challenges, and several other companies abandoned proposed combinations in the face of antitrust concerns from President Trump’s FTC.
The current landscape is also marked by reduced, but erratic, white-collar enforcement. In May 2025, the Trump Administration implemented a revised Corporate Enforcement Policy, which expanded incentives for voluntary self-disclosure and clarified pathways to Non-Prosecution Agreements (NPAs) and Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs). This signalled a dramatic rollback of corporate enforcement in favour of expanded corporate self-disclosure programmes, which the Administration called a means to creating a more business “friendly” environment.
However, these moves have not consistently played out as might be expected. As of January 2026, the Trump Administration had not yet entered a DPA or NPA with a single company, according to the Corporate Prosecution Registry maintained by the Duke University and University of Virginia law schools. At the same time, however, consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen’s corporate enforcement tracker reports that the Trump Administration has cancelled or frozen enforcement actions against more than 170 corporations.
In addition, President Trump, by executive order, narrowed the use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) against US businesses, and his DOJ abandoned a significant number of pending FCPA prosecutions, although use of the statute is not entirely dead. The Administration also gutted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in a resource reduction that seems likely to ensure that IRS-initiated tax enforcement will precipitously decline for the foreseeable future.
While the pace and extent of disruption in the legal and regulatory sector may slow in this second year of the Trump Administration, the environment remains highly volatile and unpredictable.
Ongoing cybersecurity risk
As the primacy of data only increases in today’s digital-first world, businesses and organisations across sectors will continue to face cyber threats that are increasing in number and sophistication, from ransomware to supply chain attacks and data theft. While the categories of threats have become familiar to many, the identities, tactics and motives of threat actors keep shifting and evolving.
In the current highly charged political environment, money may not always be the leading motivation behind cyber-attacks. For instance, over the past year in the United States, higher education became the most targeted sector for cyber-attacks, with alleged “hacktivists” not looking for ransom payments but rather aiming to damage university reputations or expose internal policies, especially those related to DEI or alleged affirmative action in admissions.
AI is being used to enhance the capabilities of hackers alongside its use in security tools, and will also continue to drive and sharpen threats that are cyber-adjacent, such as deepfakes, synthetic media, misinformation campaigns and phishing exploitations. These can be particularly damaging reputationally, and require agile and technically literate communications strategies and preparedness activities for effective mitigation.
Boards and C-suites increasingly recognise that cybersecurity events are not just technical crises, but also reputational, regulatory and business continuity risks. Mishandled communications can exacerbate regulatory penalties, litigation risk and long-term reputational damage. Organisational responses will be most effective when they fully account for and incorporate:
differentiation proficiency, including deep cyber expertise, cross-border capabilities and strong legal/technical/communications integration;
crisis readiness, meaning not just reactive capability but also ongoing preparedness through scenario planning, training and resilience-building;
data-driven insights, utilising threat intelligence and analytics to inform stakeholder mapping, message calibration and post-incident sentiment tracking; and
reputation management, comprising not just media and regulatory engagement, but also internal culture and trust rebuilding as critical to long-term recovery.
In short, multi-dimensional organisations will need cyber risk communications plans that not only are legally and technically sound, but also address each stakeholder group appropriately and prioritise reputation and relationships going forward.
Managing crises and reputational risk in today’s environment
As we have seen, reputational and operational risks are everywhere, emerging from disruptive and ever-shifting politics, public policy and economic conditions. These forces are playing out against a backdrop of a polarised society where trust in government, media and other social institutions that had previously been among the most respected and influential – even revered – has eroded. This is all in addition to the following element that have the potential to knock an organisation off course:
traditional operational incidents;
health, safety, environmental, customer relations or labour issues;
litigation;
government investigations;
regulatory actions; or
business conflicts.
Crises come in all shapes and sizes, can emerge very quickly, and can stem from any one or a combination of these factors.
Whether public or private, companies and other organisations are entrenched in the fabric of society. Each of their decisions and actions will affect the people who invest in, buy from, work for, are served by or essentially license their operations – in other words, nearly everyone. Companies are increasingly being called on to speak – or even lead – on issues and events that may or may not directly impact them or their operations but that could affect their stakeholders, whether they want to or not. To complicate matters, in this fractured, cynical environment, different stakeholder groups will experience different realities, shaped by different information, and will have different perceptions of risk and fairness. Even for longtime leading organisations, legitimacy can never be assumed; it is constantly contested, and must be continuously earned.
When an incident happens or an issue arises, all of these stakeholders look to the organisation for the “right” response. They want prompt reassurance that the organisation recognises the issue, is truthful, is competently managing it, and will solve the problem. They also want to know that the brand they patronise shares their values. The conclusions that stakeholders draw from an organisation’s response to a crisis will directly impact the organisation’s reputation, often even more so than the nature or details of the crisis itself.
This scrambled world has produced a rewired multiplicity of crisis response playbooks. The following used to be tried-and-true principles of crisis response:
respond with speed, empathy and accountability while being accurate;
be transparent and authentic to the brand; and
commit not just to saying something but to doing the right thing.
Traditional news organisations and legacy institutions were typically always important to factor into a response. Now, we see companies and organisations taking different paths. Some have become increasingly aggressive and cynical in their response, denying and rebutting allegations and attacking their critics through various communications channels. Others quietly respond, hoping to join a herd of other organisations being similarly targeted or wait for the matter to blow over.
The best stakeholder strategy in a crisis is likely the one that most closely aligns with each organisation’s culture and business interests, and is marked by connection to a stable, long-term strategy, agility, authenticity, and clear and compelling storytelling.
In this time of uncertainty and polarisation, the best defences remain preparation and co-ordination – and crisis readiness has increasingly become a core strategic function and risk management tool prioritised by boards and executive teams. Some types of crises are foreseeable, based on the nature of an organisation’s operations and where and how they operate, even if the likelihood may be low or the timing unclear. Others are a true surprise – or a “black swan” event. The key for organisations is not to try to predict the future with specificity, but to prepare by considering all relevant factors, variables and potential scenarios in a systematic way.
It is also important for companies and organisations to recognise when a matter appears to be a crisis but, in fact, is not a crisis. In this instance, it is important not to “pour gasoline on one’s own fire” and over-respond when a situation feels dire, inadvertently causing more harm than good.
Given the numerous evolving factors that must be considered when determining a crisis response strategy, it is important for organisations to prepare detailed communications plans for responding to crises, and then to test and update the plans as needed. A live crisis response should never start with a blank sheet of paper.
The importance of this kind of advance work is repeatedly stressed – developing the internal infrastructure and external relationships that may be needed in a crisis; creating the plans and protocols to deploy if one hits; running simulations at all levels of the organisation to practise and build that necessary muscle memory; and clearly communicating relevant values and policies before a crisis begins so they are well known to stakeholders in advance and are not being explained amid negative attention. Ultimately, this type of vigilance helps to establish crisis resiliency within the organisational culture – where risks are flagged before they become crises and where relationships are strong enough to weather challenges.
Whatever the nature of the crisis, effective management requires a careful balance between protecting the organisation from legal exposure and preserving the organisation’s reputation through transparency, co-operation, remediation and an authentic reiteration of core values. Because these objectives are sometimes conflicting, legal and communications advisers are often – and with good reason – at the centre of a crisis response and must act in close co-ordination. While senior leaders and subject matter experts are always indispensable, the partnership between legal and communications functions must remain the keystone of crisis management, supporting and connecting all other components of the effort and largely determining whether the response will be successful.
Therefore, the ideal for crisis preparation or response is a tightly aligned legal and communications strategy led by a team of experts from each area who know how to execute together. This is the key to advancing legal objectives and preserving reputation in tandem, while avoiding new risk.
Best practices for an effective crisis management partnership between the legal and communications functions include the following.
Getting the process right – the rapid response protocol and core crisis management team should be designed to involve legal and communications experts, among other relevant functions, who are empowered to respond quickly and robustly to developments. Close co-ordination with the legal team can also help to extend attorney-client privilege to communications work product.
Staying on the same page – legal and communications representatives must share information and their strategies before engagement so that each side understands the other’s objectives and all relevant perspectives can be considered.
Resolving differences clearly and quickly – to avoid paralysis or unco-ordinated action, there must be clear methods for making decisions to resolve competing legal and communications priorities or recommendations, along with a mechanism for revisiting those priorities as the situation changes or new issues arise.
Confirming the facts – gathering and verifying the facts, and being disciplined in when and how they are shared, is critical to maintaining credibility and optimising legal, reputational and business considerations.
Nailing the narrative – legal counsel and communications advisers must collaborate closely, along with subject matter experts, to develop a strong narrative that tells the organisation’s story effectively and simplifies complex issues, adapting the messages to specific stakeholder audiences and new developments.
Aligning the message – the organisation must present consistent messages, in one voice, to all audiences, including media, courts and regulators, litigation counterparties, customers, business partners, employees and investors. Executives, lawyers and any other public spokespeople should be trained on how to deliver the messages and handle tough questions in a credible, harmonious and effective manner with the media and all potential audiences.
Maintaining constant communication – the crisis management team should stay in close contact throughout the crisis so that new developments can be factored into the response approach and messaging in a co-ordinated way.
There is no silver bullet to stop a crisis quickly or with no damage, and crises often arise from surprising sources or unfold in unexpected ways. But with careful, thorough preparation and a disciplined, integrated partnership between the legal and communications functions, an organisation can cut down on the angles of uncertainty and mitigate the impact an issue or incident will have on reputation, stakeholder relationships and continuing operations, all while protecting the organisation’s legal position.
Originally published in Chambers and Partners' Crisis Management Guide 2026
