(Washington, DC) – US President Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by widespread human rights violations and sustained attacks on core pillars of accountable, democratic governance in the country, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. The country has quickly fallen into a dangerous slide toward authoritarianism that impunity for serious abuses will only hasten.
In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.
“The Trump administration’s second term has been marked by a relentless and pervasive assault on rights and freedoms,” said Tanya Greene, US program director at Human Rights Watch. “The Trump administration is not only rolling back hard-fought protections of recent decades; it is actively dismantling foundational pillars of US democracy.”
The following were among key human rights challenges in the United States during 2025:
- The Trump administration initiated a brutal and wide-ranging campaign of immigration raids and mass arrests, including large federal deployments that have terrorized immigrant communities across the country. It summarily removed people, including asylum seekers, to third countries in deliberately punitive efforts, including the enforced disappearance of Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison where they were arbitrarily detained and tortured.
- The Trump administration undertook wide-ranging efforts to undermine government accountability, dismantled civil rights and other anti-discrimination protections, and threatened civil society groups with specious criminal investigations and politically motivated removal of charitable tax status.
- The Trump administration undermined the right to health with steep funding cuts to health care subsidies that millions of people in the United States depend on for access to health insurance. Stripping millions of people of health insurance will help pay for tax cuts for wealthy households and large corporations.
- Restrictions on access to abortion care have spread in states. The Trump administration attacked Planned Parenthood, undermining healthcare access for more than a million people, and cut funding to reproductive health programs, staff, and research.
On the global stage, US foreign policy has also been marked by a brazen disregard for US human rights obligations, and a sharp turn away from efforts to make promoting human rights a meaningful focus of US diplomacy.
In particular, the Trump administration:
- Abruptly terminated nearly all US foreign aid, including funding that supported human rights defenders, local civil society groups, and life-saving humanitarian assistance.
- Withdrew from multilateral forums central to global human rights protection, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the Paris Climate Agreement.
- Gutted the US State Department’s institutional capacity on human rights and published a grossly distorted version of the department’s annual report on human rights around the world.
- Escalated hostility toward independent accountability and global justice efforts, including imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court officials, a UN expert, and three leading Palestinian human rights organizations.
- Carried out multiple unlawful lethal military strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and nearby parts of the Pacific Ocean, killing dozens of people.
“This administration’s foreign policy mirrors its domestic assault on rights,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director addressing foreign policy at Human Rights Watch. “The same contempt for the rule of law fueling attacks on rights at home is driving extrajudicial killings at sea that are in brazen defiance of international law.”
