A Big Announcement Is Coming This Week. Americans Should Be Nervous.

Something is happening this Thursday that, during normal times, Americans wouldn’t need to pay a lick of attention to. Freedom House, the esteemed Washington, D.C.-based research institute that has existed since 1941, is scheduled to release its annual report on the state of freedom in the world. You may have seen one of these at some point or another. There’s the written report—last year’s ran to 30 pages—that describes broad trends. And then there’s the ever-popular clickable map, which gives every country in the world a global freedom score based on a number of assessments pertaining to political rights and civil liberties. The nations of the world are divided into three categories: free (a score between 70 and 100); partly free (a score between 40 and 69), and not free (0 to 39).

Freedom House has been issuing this report since 1972, and the United States of America has, of course, always been rated free. In the report released in 2025, which actually covered the calendar year 2024, America scored an 84. Not up there with Sweden (99) or Canada (97) or the U.K. (92), but not bad. We finished fifty-fourth. (It’s worth noting that a lot of the countries that had better scores are very tiny—Palau, Tuvalu, San Marino.) The U.S. score has been declining in recent years; in 2006, the first year Freedom House used the current 100-point scale, we got a 93.

Well. I think you know where I’m headed. This week’s report covers events from the year 2025. You may have noticed that a few things changed in this country from 2024 to 2025. A masked federal police force started rounding up law-abiding people and shipping them off to hellish prisons in countries to which they had no connection. The Justice Department became a transparent arm of the chief executive. Said chief executive has enriched himself on a scale the tinpot dictators of the 1950s and 1960s could never have imagined, making him arguably among the most corrupt chiefs of state in modern world history. And much, much more.

Will the great and mighty United States of America, the oldest democracy in the world, celebrating its 250th birthday this July, be demoted to “partly free”? I don’t know. But the mere fact that we even have to ask this question is chilling.

For a hint as to where the U.S. might land in the 2026 report, let’s take a selective little tour of the 2025 report. Here’s Freedom House’s capsule overview of our country from last year’s report:

The United States is a federal republic whose people benefit from a vibrant political system, a strong rule-of-law tradition, robust freedoms of expression and religious belief, and a wide array of other civil liberties. However, in recent years its democratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in rising political polarization and extremism, partisan pressure on the electoral process, mistreatment and dysfunction in the criminal justice and immigration systems, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.

It’s pretty obvious that the vibrant political system, the strong rule-of-law tradition, and most of those robust freedoms suffered pretty serious injuries in 2025. But the more interesting reading in last year’s report is found in the overviews of some of the countries that just missed the “free” cutoff—that scored in the mid- to high-60s and were designated “partly free.”

Here, for example, is the description of the Dominican Republic (68): “The Dominican Republic holds regular elections that are relatively free. Pervasive corruption undermines state institutions and the use of excessive force by police is a problem. Discrimination against Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian migrants, as well as against LGBT+ people, remain serious problems.” Relatively free; pervasive corruption; discrimination against minorities. Sound familiar?

Bolivia (65): “Child labor and violence against women are persistent problems, independent and investigative journalists face harassment, and the judiciary is highly politicized and hampered by corruption.” OK, child labor not so much (although Project 2025 called for relaxing rules to allow teens to work in hazardous jobs), but the other factors sure seem to apply.

Hungary (65): “Since taking power in the 2010 elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) party pushed through constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over the country’s independent institutions.” Trump and the Republicans haven’t managed to change the Constitution, which is very hard to do in this country, but as for independent institutions, well, just ask the universities he’s come after.

Serbia (a bit further down the scale at 56): “Serbia is a parliamentary democracy with competitive multiparty elections, but in recent years the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, putting pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations.”

I could go on, but you get the point. And I’m not cherry-picking. Go read for yourself the overviews of the “partly free” countries scoring in the 50s and 60s, and you’ll see that almost all of them describe conditions that often now apply to the United States under Donald Trump.

I have no idea what Freedom House’s report will reveal on Thursday. I could see us holding onto a “free” rating with a score dipping into the 70s (it’s next to impossible to imagine the score not dropping). For example, here are the first two questions listed under methodology: “Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections?” “Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections?”

The answer to both is yes, as far as we know.

Certain other questions, however, wouldn’t seem to bode well. “Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective?” “Does the government operate with openness and transparency?” “Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies?” “Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population?”

One other such ranking was already released this year. The Century Foundation’s “Democracy Meter” gave the U.S. a 79 out of 100 for the year 2024. The report on 2025, released in January, dropped the score down to 57. In a year.

We’ll see. But whether the score is 77 or 71 or 63, we know what our eyes have been seeing these last 15 months. Our democracy is being suffocated. And Trump and his people and the oligarchs who helped put him in office are just getting started. Fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers used to say, with hope in their hearts, wait till next year. Fans of American democracy now use the phrase with dread.