Arya News - Civic freedoms in the U.S. have declined following President Trump`s return to office, the report from CIVICUS found.
President Donald Trump announces changes to the country"s fuel economy standards in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on December 3, 2025. Credit - Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images
The U.S. is showing signs of undergoing a “rapid authoritarian shift” as civic freedoms in the country decline following President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a group that tracks the status of such liberties and the threats they face around the world is warning.
CIVICUS, an international network of civil society groups that advocates for stronger civil liberties, downgraded its assessment of U.S. civic freedoms from “narrowed” to “obstructed” in a new report on Tuesday, months after it added the country to a global human rights watchlist earlier this year.
“Long-established democracies are showing signs of rapid authoritarian shift, marked by weakened rule of law and growing constraints on independent civil society. Argentina and the USA exemplified this trend,” the report said.
CIVICUS, in collaboration with 20 other civil society partners, assesses countries’ current state of freedom with five categories : closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed, and open.
The “narrowed” label, which the U.S. was previously classified under, is applied to countries where the groups find that people are generally able to exercise their rights of expression, free speech, and assembly, but there are some attempts to violate these rights by the government.
The “obstructed” category, meanwhile, contains countries where the organizations have determined that “the full enjoyment” of civil rights is constrained through legal and practical means.
“Although civil society organisations exist, state authorities undermine them, including through the use of illegal surveillance, bureaucratic harassment and demeaning public statements,” CIVICUS writes in its description of the label. “Citizens can organise and assemble peacefully but they are vulnerable to frequent use of excessive force by law enforcement agencies, including rubber bullets, tear gas and baton charges.”
Read More : U.S. Added to Global Human Rights Watchlist Over Declining Civil Liberties
Describing its reasoning for downgrading the U.S., the group wrote that “Trump has issued unprecedented executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, global cooperation and international justice.”
The report also pointed to what the group described as a “militarised response” to protests against Trump’s aggressive immigration moves.
Trump has sent troops to multiple cities across the country, including the deployment of thousands of National Guard members and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles over the summer after protests broke out in the city over immigration raids. A federal judge ruled in September that Trump violated longstanding federal law when sending the troops to the city, finding the Administration "systematically used armed soldiers" for law enforcement purposes. The President has also deployed federal troops to several other Democratic strongholds in what the White House has characterized as an effort to combat crime.
The group also cited Trump Administration actions targeting pro-Palestinian activists, including its moves to rescind student visas using what CIVICUS described as “archaic and obscure clauses of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.” The Administration said this summer it had revoked hundreds of visas over “support for terrorism” under the law, which prohibits foreign-born people from admission to the country for engaging in—or being deemed likely to engage in—“terrorist activities.”
Other instances highlighted by the group included the arrest of nearly 100 protestors at a sit-in at Trump Tower who were advocating for the release of Palestinian activist and Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, as well as the continued attempts to deport Khalil himself. It additionally noted the Administration’s use of AI to screen the social media accounts of student visa-holders for “pro-Hamas” activity under a reported “Catch and Revoke” program as an instance of government surveillance targeting protesters.
The report also pointed to Trump’s attacks on the press. Trump has continued to escalate his long-running public criticism of media outlets and journalists over unfavorable coverage, and has raised alarm among free speech experts in recent months as he has filed lawsuits against multiple news organizations and his Administration has made moves to restrict media access to the White House and Pentagon .
“Press freedom is under pressure, with censorship, judicial harassment and political interference manifesting in the cancellation or suspension of major talk shows, funding cuts affecting independent media and tighter restrictions on White House press access,” CIVICUS wrote in the report.
The Administration came under fire in September when ABC News temporarily cancelled Jimmy Kimmel Live! hours after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair threatened to take regulatory action against the network because of comments Kimmel made regarding the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk . Months earlier, CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , whose eponymous host is a consistent and prominent Trump critic, as its parent company Paramount awaited FCC approval for a multi-billion dollar merger.
Trump also signed into law a package rolling back billions in funding over the summer that rescinded $1.1 billion in funding for The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, prompting the nonprofit—which for decades helped support NPR, PBS, and hundreds of local public media stations—to begin shutting down its operations.
The U.S. was last classified in the “obstructed” category in 2020, during Trump’s first term, and 2021, the first year that then-President Joe Biden was in office. CIVICUS upgraded the country’s civic freedom status later in Biden’s presidency.
The current decline in the U.S.’s civic freedoms identified by the group appears to be part of a wider global trend. Just 39 of the 198 nations and territories CIVICUS assessed have an “open civic space rating,” which means that nearly three in four people around the world live in a country with “restricted conditions,” according to the report.
While CIVICUS found civic liberties in countries such as Senegal, Gabon, and Mauritania have improved, it noted declines in other major world powers, including France, Germany, and Italy, all three of which—like the U.S.—were downgraded from the “narrowed” to “obstructed” category. Other countries such as Argentina, Israel, and Switzerland, also saw their assessments drop.
Contact us at letters@time.com .