What the World Is Saying About Us
Sometimes it helps to hear what our friends are saying about us to get a better perspective on our faults, as painful as that may be.
So I want use today’s Morning Memo to highlight key excerpts from a devastatingly frank new report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
The tl;dr from the The Global State of Democracy 2026 is that the quality of democracy in the United States is at or near record lows (based on a dataset that covers 1975-2025) — and that decline is having seriously destabilizing effects on democracy around the world.
Here’s a fuller summation of the report, which is most focused on the spillover effects of the U.S. decline but includes a special case study on the United States under Trump II:
In 2025, the global challenges to democracy and the difficulty in stemming its erosion were both exemplified and compounded by political developments in the United States. There, President Donald Trump quickly amassed power in the executive branch and wielded it to further a narrow set of personal goals and pursue retaliation against perceived enemies. In that environment, which is marked by constricted space for both public expression and institutional checks on power, resistance is increasingly unsafe. The results have been far-reaching, undermining the rule of law domestically and internationally and testing long-standing alliances and multilateral cooperation.
The International IDEA is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1995 and headquartered in Stockholm that focuses on developing and supporting democracy globally. Ironically, the United States withdrew as an observer member of the organization shortly after Trump took office last year, when the administration ended U.S. participation in more than 60 international organizations.
While the topics in the new report will be familiar to you, they are presented with the distance and tone of like-minded non-Americans, which makes for a bracing assessment of how far and fast civic life in America has declined.
Trump II Has Turbocharged the U.S. Decline
A significant proportion of the current instability can be traced to US President Donald Trump, whose administration has reshaped political culture in the USA, where power is now personalized and used to further narrow individual goals and pursue vendettas against those critical of the president or his policies. Comparing 2025 to 2020, the change in the quality of US democracy was entirely negative: the country experienced seven statistically significant declines across multiple measures of representative governance, civil liberties, and the rule of law. There were no corresponding advances.
Key Measures In the U.S. Are at or Near Record Lows
The USA experienced four factor-level declines, including in Free Political Parties, Effective Parliament, Access to Justice, and Judicial Independence. It also saw declines in the subfactors of Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press, and Economic Equality. Except for Free Political Parties, US scores on these measures are at their lowest levels since 1975.
The USA saw seven statistically significant declines from 2020 to 2025—in Access to Justice, Economic Equality, Effective Parliament, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press, Free Political Parties, and Judicial Independence—and it saw no corresponding advances beyond Basic Welfare, which is not included because the improvements were due solely to recovery from the pandemic. With the exception of Free Political Parties, these factors are now at their lowest-ever levels in the history of the GSoD dataset
The Trump II Decline Has Historical Roots
The USA is experiencing a period of marked democratic decline. While this has manifested most spectacularly during the second Trump administration, the roots of these declines reach far deeper and stem from unresolved conflicts over questions of equality, social hierarchies, and economic distribution.
While many of the USA’s problems long predate the Trump administration, this approach to government has both caused new crises and brought new life to challenges many thought to have been consigned to the ash heap of history.
The GOP Congress Drags Down the U.S. Democracy Score
The failure of Congress, controlled by a Republican Party subservient to the president to a historically anomalous degree, to assert its power and constitutional authority in the face of White House actions has led to the USA’s lowest Effective Parliament score in the history of the GSoD Indices
The U.S. Decline Is Destabilizing Democracy Globally
[T]he USA’s unique geopolitical and economic place in the world means that its ongoing crisis has had, and will continue to have, severe consequences far beyond the country’s borders.
[T]he United States has become the most prominent example and accelerator of the disturbing trend toward a belittled and diminished Rule of Law. Indeed, the negative trajectory of democracy in the United States across the board stands out as a serious concern in the global story covered in our report.
The Trump administration’s actions have not stopped at the borders of the USA. Since 2025, the US Government’s threats and actions against other countries have undermined national sovereignty as well as international law and risked provoking more widespread violent conflict … The ramifications of these actions for the future legitimacy of the democratic model are multifold, far-reaching, and difficult to overstate.
Just as the rule of law is eroding domestically in the USA, its actions abroad undermine the principle of the peaceful settlement of disputes and the multilateral institutions that uphold the international rule of law. This weakens democratic governance globally by diminishing people’s ability to exercise meaningful control over their political futures: national outcomes risk being shaped less by popular will than by external coercive pressure.
The new report reflects the growing sense of alarm in Canada, Europe, and among erstwhile U.S. allies everywhere. In the span of 22 month since the 2024 election, it’s gone from “Are you gonna be okay?” to “Are you okay?” to “You’re not okay.”
SCOTUS Nixes Trump’s Insane USPS Plan
In a crucial decision, the Supreme Court on an emergency basis blocked President Trump’s plan to use the Postal Service to throttle mail-in ballots and unleash chaos in the midterms. Most importantly, a majority of the Roberts Court signaled its view that the administration will likely eventually lose on the merits, meaning that even if it continues to litigate the changes to USPS rules after the midterms, it’s unlikely to prevail.
Ooops …
A whistleblower claims that DHS agent may have broken state laws in their election year hunt for elusive voter fraud by noncitizens.
TPM Exclusive
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: FBI Builds Out National NSPM-7 Center to Track Dissent, FOIA’ed Documents Show
Mass Deportation Watch
AP: Detainees at the now-closed “Alligator Alcatraz” were held for up to two hours in small metal cages described as “calming areas,” a practice that “does not meet standards for humane treatment,” according to a new report by the DHS inspector general.
NYT: “Immigrants seeking documents from the government to prove that they are in the country legally are being rebuffed or provided paperwork that is heavily redacted.”
Quote of the Day
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, on the mother-of-all retributive “investigate the investigator” cases being pursued at President Trump’s behest, in south Florida:
“Grand Conspiracy” is not a concept in federal law. There is no statute, no charge, nothing in the United States Code by that name. It is not a legal theory at all. It is a MAGA wet dream, a holy grail cherished by the most fevered corner of Trumpworld, with no possible purchase in an actual courtroom.
Public Service Journalism …
404 Media: Hundreds of human contractors are reading a massive stream of ChatGPT prompts from actual users — which includes their sensitive, personal information — to improve OpenAI’s models, according to leaked internal documents and real prompts seen by 404 Media.
The New Frontier in Warfare
The United States for the first time confirmed that it has deployed military weaponry in space. The news came in an Air Force press release quoting Secretary Troy Meink: “[T]he United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”
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As a retired medical school faculty member (internal medicine), I view our country through the eyes of a clinician. Here goes: I think our very fragile Democratic Republic is in the ICU and has a "positive 9-tube sign." That is the speak-around we used in front of family members in the room when we thought that the likelihood of survival was very low.
At the same time, I want to point out that WE THE PEOPLE vastly outnumber the oligarchs who are seeking to enslave us. Further, let me point out that the French proletariat had the right idea in the late 1700s.
God (of your choice) help us.
Local: The Republicans have let’s made it clear enough for decades that they were let’s say soft on democracy. Putting business first has been a huge tell. Which is to say that whatever Trump’s doing is more of a continuation than something he started. Speaking of…
Global: IMO, another huge thing hurting democracy globally is all the putative democracies prioritizing serving business and special interests instead of serving the people.
That ranted…
Yes, I know a case can be made of the importance of serving business interests. But we have five decades of that prioritizing (starting with Thatcher and Reagan) and now have more than enough proof that if it’s done carefully (*koff koff*) it’s not good for society.
Nearly nothing hurts democracy more than failing the people.
That said, I confess that I don’t expect a report from any sort of establishment outlet to match my cynicism. But, again, reality says I’m correct.