The Freedom Index

The Freedom Index of the non-profit Freedom House rates countries as more or less free on a scale of 0-100, with a maximum of 40 points for political freedom (with up to 3 negative points for especially distinguished activities like intentional genocidal conduct) and 60 for civil liberties.

The U.S. rates and underwhelming 83, with a 33 out of 40 rating for political freedom and a 50 out of 60 rating for civil liberties, comparable to South Korea, Panama, and Romania.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Donald Trump personally, and Republicans, more generally, are responsible for much of the low U.S. rating on political freedom.

What did the U.S. get dinged for?

On the 40 point political index, where the U.S. scores 33:

1. Free and fair Presidential elections 3/4

Evidence later emerged regarding last-ditch efforts to overturn the results, including machinations by Trump and allied officials or lawyers to involve the Justice Department and other government agencies in supporting the president’s fraud claims, to enlist then vice president Mike Pence in blocking certification of Biden’s victory, and to work with Republican activists to put forward illegitimate pro-Trump slates of electors in states that Biden won.

Trump administration officials and allies also encouraged resistance to Biden’s victory from voters and citizen groups, culminating on January 6, 2021

2. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3/4

The electoral framework is generally fair, though it is subject to some partisan manipulation. The borders of House districts, which must remain roughly equal in population, are redrawn regularly—typically after each decennial census. In the practice known as partisan gerrymandering, House districts, and those for state legislatures, are crafted to maximize the advantage of the party in power in a given state. The redistricting system varies by state, but in most cases it is overseen by elected officials, and observers have expressed alarm at the growing strategic and technical sophistication of partisan efforts to control redistricting processes and redraw electoral maps. Historically, gerrymandering has also been used as a tool of racial disenfranchisement, specifically targeting Black voters, as well as Hispanic and Native American populations. . . . In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that the federal judiciary has no authority to prevent state politicians from drawing districts to preserve or expand their party’s power. . . Some states have adopted strict voter-identification laws. These documentation requirements can disproportionately limit participation by poor, elderly, or racial minority voters; people with disabilities; and younger voters, especially college students. . . . Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of his 2020 defeat and his promotion of false fraud claims spurred a new wave of state electoral legislation: between the beginning of 2021 and October 2022, 21 states—nearly all with Republican-controlled legislatures—had passed 42 new laws that made voting more difficult. . . . An emerging concern since the 2020 election has been efforts by Trump-supporting election deniers to take control of election management authority in states that are closely contested in presidential elections; their opponents argue that such actors could facilitate the partisan subversion of legitimate presidential election outcomes in the future. . . . Critics have argued that some components of the US constitution are undemocratic because they violate the principle that each citizen’s vote should carry equal weight. . . . The six-member Federal Election Commission (FEC), whose membership is split between Democrats and Republicans, is tasked with enforcing federal campaign finance laws. Most enforcement actions require four votes, allowing partisan obstruction, and the body has been regarded as largely ineffective in recent years.

3. Are the people’s political choices free from domination by forces that are external to the political sphere, or by political forces that employ extrapolitical means? 3/4

Various interest groups have come to play a potent role in the nominating process for president and members of Congress, partly because the expense and length of political campaigns place a premium on candidates’ ability to raise large amounts of funds from major donors. . . . The January 2021 attack on Congress underscored a broader rise in violence and intimidation as a tool of political influence in the United States. . . . Meanwhile, reports of threats against elected officials and local election administrators have proliferated in recent years, with members of Congress subjected to a dramatic rise in intimidation. . . . The score improved from 2 to 3 because there was no repetition of political or election-related violence on the scale of the January 2021 Capitol attack, and numerous participants in that attack and related malfeasance were successfully prosecuted amid ongoing state and federal investigations.

4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, racial, religious, gender, LGBT+, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3/4.

Racial and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately affected by laws and policies that create obstacles to voting and winning elected office. . . . Various other state election-management policies have been criticized for having a disparate impact on racial and ethnic minority communities, including voter-roll purges, arbitrary bureaucratic hurdles to registration, and efforts to punish voter fraud—a very rare phenomenon in US elections. . . . State laws that deny voting rights to citizens with felony convictions continue to disproportionately disenfranchise Black Americans, who are incarcerated at significantly higher rates than other populations.

5. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? 3/4.

partisan polarization and obstruction in Congress has repeatedly delayed appropriations bills across multiple administrations, resulting in a series of partial shutdowns of federal government operations, most recently in 2018–19. . . . Congress’s ability to serve as a check on potential abuses by the executive was thrown into doubt during the Trump administration.

6. Are safeguards against official corruption strong and effective? 3/4.

Regulations pertaining to the influence of money in US politics have long been criticized as an inadequate barrier against corruption.

The practices of the Trump administration exposed additional weaknesses in existing norms of government ethics and probity, particularly with respect to conflicts of interest between officials’ public roles and private business activity, and the protection of government whistleblowers from arbitrary dismissal or other reprisals. . . . the stock-trading practices of scores of federal lawmakers have come under scrutiny for alleged conflicts of interest, prompting unsuccessful efforts in 2022 to advance legislation that would restrict members’ ability to trade stocks.

7. Does the government operate with openness and transparency? 3/4.

government performance on FOIA requests declined during Trump’s presidency, and in 2020 the coronavirus-induced transition to remote work by government employees produced a sharp drop in responsiveness to information requests at the federal, state, and local levels. Complaints about serious backlogs and calls for further FOIA reform persisted through 2022.

The executive branch includes a substantial number of auditing and investigative agencies that are designed to be independent of political influence; such bodies are often spurred to action by the investigative work of journalists. In 2020, however, Trump arbitrarily fired or replaced a series of agency inspectors general who had documented or investigated malfeasance by administration officials.

On the 60 point civil liberties index, where the U.S. scores 50:

1. Are there free and independent media? 3/4

News coverage has also grown more polarized, with certain outlets and their star commentators providing a consistently right- or left-leaning perspective. Although the mainstream media have continued to provide strong and independent coverage of national politics despite increased hostility from political figures in recent years, some outlets’ editorial policies effectively shifted to the left as they were drawn into adversarial relationships with the Trump presidency. The highly influential cable network Fox News has been unique, however, in its close alignment with the Republican Party; several prominent on-air personalities and executives migrated to government jobs under the Trump administration, and key hosts have openly endorsed Republican candidates or participated in campaign rallies. In 2022, some Fox News hosts continued to promote far-right and conspiracist views. . . . 

A growing number of Americans look to social media and other online sources for political news, increasing their exposure to disinformation and propagandistic content of both foreign and domestic origin. The larger platforms have struggled to control false or hateful material without harming freedom of expression or their own business interests, though they have engaged in mass removals of far-right and foreign accounts that are used to spread disinformation. Following the January 2021 attack on Congress, the perceived risk of further incitement of violence by Trump prompted Twitter to ban his account, and Facebook and YouTube imposed indefinite suspensions. Late in 2022, after Twitter was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, the platform reinstated Trump and thousands of other suspended users as part of a new emphasis on free speech, while temporarily banning several journalists for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Many advertisers responded to the turmoil by pausing their spending on Twitter. . . .

In 2021, the Republican-led states of Florida and Texas adopted laws that aimed to restrict social media platforms’ ability to moderate content and suspend certain accounts, though enforcement of both measures was blocked pending judicial review. . . .

investigative journalist Jeff German was murdered in Las Vegas in September 2022. A local official who had been the subject of German’s reporting was arrested and charged with the crime.

Media watchdog groups registered widespread press freedom violations—including police violence and arbitrary arrests targeting journalists—in the context of the nationwide protests sparked in 2020 by the police killing of George Floyd, a Black civilian, in Minnesota that May. According to the US Press Freedom Tracker, a joint project of multiple nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the number of violations has since declined sharply, falling to 15 arrests or detentions of journalists and 38 assaults on journalists in 2022, from 123 arrests and 334 assaults recorded during 2020. The latest incidents largely occurred during political protests. In June 2022, press freedom groups objected to a Supreme Court ruling that made it more difficult for journalists and others to seek monetary damages from federal officials who use excessive force or unlawful searches.

2. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free from extensive political indoctrination? 3/4

While it remains quite robust by global standards, this liberty has come under pressure from both ends of the political spectrum. University faculty have reported instances of professional repercussions or harassment—including on social media—related to curriculum content, textbooks, or statements that some students strongly disagreed with. As a consequence, some professors have engaged in self-censorship. Students on a number of campuses have obstructed guest speakers whose views they find objectionable. In the most highly publicized cases, students and nonstudent activists have physically prevented presentations by controversial speakers, especially those known for their views on race, gender, immigration, Middle East politics, and other sensitive issues.

On a number of university campuses, such pressures were associated largely with the progressive left, but social and political forces on the right have increasingly applied pressure of their own in recent years. The Trump administration in 2020 ordered recipients of federal funds, including universities, to avoid diversity training that includes “divisive concepts” related to racism and sexism, prompting expressions of concern regarding impingements on academic freedom from numerous university administrators. A federal judge blocked implementation of the order, but in 2021 state-level officials initiated a wave of similar legislation pertaining to both universities and public schools—a trend that continued in 2022. These efforts were especially focused on restricting the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT), an academic framework for examining a variety of issues including structural racism, and on constraining classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity. According to PEN America, lawmakers in at least seven states had adopted increasingly punitive “educational gag orders” restricting the forms and substance of classroom discussions on race and sexuality by August 2022, in addition to the dozen states that had passed such bills in 2021. Moreover, educators and administrators who were concerned about accreditation, legal liability, and parental anger reportedly acted preemptively to eliminate or alter courses and remove previously well-regarded texts from school libraries. Some library organizations sought to counter the trend by promoting online access to banned books across state lines.

These debates took place against the backdrop of a sharp rise in threats and intimidation aimed at school officials, and as increasingly well-funded and organized conservative or right-wing parents’ groups engaged in extensive efforts to control school curriculums and the materials offered in school and public libraries.

3. Is there freedom for trade unions and similar professional or labor organizations? 3/4

Over the years, the strength of organized labor has declined, and just 6 percent of the private-sector workforce belonged to unions in 2022. While public-sector unions had a higher rate of membership, with 33.1 percent, they have come under pressure as well. The overall unionization rate in 2022 was 10.1 percent, down slightly from 10.3 percent in 2021. The country’s labor code and decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during Republican presidencies have been regarded as impediments to organizing efforts, but Democratic administrations, which are generally more supportive of union interests, have failed to reverse the deterioration. Union organizing is also hampered by resistance from private employers. Among other tactics, many employers categorize workers as contractors or use rules pertaining to franchisees to prevent organizing.

A 2018 Supreme Court ruling that government employees cannot be required to contribute to unions representing them in collective bargaining has led to losses in union membership, and 27 states have “right-to-work” legislation in place, allowing private-sector workers who benefit from union bargaining to similarly opt out of paying union dues or fees. In 2021 the House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen organizing and bargaining capacity by overriding right-to-work laws and giving more categories of workers the right to unionize, among other changes, but the bill was blocked by Senate Republicans.

4. Is there an independent judiciary? 3/4

The pattern of judicial appointments in recent years has added to existing concerns about partisan distortion of the appointment and confirmation process. Norm-breaking procedural maneuvering allowed Republicans to hold open an unusually large number of judicial vacancies under President Obama and then fill them under President Trump, including a Supreme Court vacancy that began during Obama’s final year in office. Trump filled two additional vacancies on the Supreme Court in 2018 and 2020 after deeply contentious Senate hearings and nearly party-line votes. These appointments cemented a conservative Supreme Court majority.

Biden sought to return to a more traditional use of presidential clemency powers in 2022, focusing largely on commuting the sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. President Trump had repeatedly used his pardon authority in an arbitrary or politicized fashion, bypassing Justice Department processes and awarding pardons to many of his own personal associates or individuals whose cases were championed by his political allies.

In many states, judges are chosen through either partisan or nonpartisan elections, and a rise in campaign fundraising and party involvement in such elections over the last two decades has increased the threat of bias and favoritism in state courts. In addition, executive and legislative officials in a growing number of states have attempted to exert greater control over state courts in recent years.

5. Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters? 3/4

the criminal justice system suffers from a number of chronic weaknesses, many of which are tied to racial discrimination and contribute to disparities in outcomes that disadvantage people of color, particularly Black Americans. Media reports and analyses in recent years have drawn new attention to the extensive use of plea bargaining in criminal cases, with prosecutors employing the threat of harsh sentences to avoid trial and effectively reducing the role of the judiciary and juries; deficiencies in the parole system; long-standing funding shortages for public defenders, who represent low-income defendants in criminal cases; racial bias in risk-assessment tools for decisions on pretrial detention; and the practice of imposing court fees or fines for minor offenses as a means of raising local budget revenues, which can lead to jail terms for those who are unable to pay.

These problems and evolving enforcement and sentencing policies have contributed to major increases in incarceration over time. The population of sentenced state and federal prisoners soared from about 200,000 in 1970 to more than 1.6 million in 2009, then gradually decreased to roughly 1.2 million as of the end of 2021, according to the most recent data available. The incarceration rate based on such counts rose from around 100 per 100,000 US residents in 1970 to a peak of more than 500 in the late 2000s, then fell to about 350 as of the end of 2021. There are also hundreds of thousands of pretrial detainees and short-term jail inmates behind bars. Despite gradual declines in the number of Black prisoners, Black and Hispanic inmates continue to account for a majority of the prison population, whereas Black and Hispanic people account for roughly a third of the general US population. Lawmakers, elected state attorneys, researchers, activists, and criminal justice professionals have reached a broad consensus that the current level of incarceration is not needed to preserve public safety.

In recent years, Congress and the executive branch have enacted modest reforms to address mass incarceration and racial disparities in sentencing, such as a 2018 law that eased federal mandatory-minimum sentencing rules and a 2022 Justice Department policy that would reduce sentencing gaps between similar drug offenses. A majority of states have also passed laws in recent years to reduce sentences for certain crimes, decriminalize minor drug offenses, and combat recidivism. However, such gradual steps slowed amid fears of rising crime in 2022. Some states have restricted the use of cash bail, which can unfairly penalize defendants with fewer resources and enlarge pretrial jail populations.

6. Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies? 3/4

Both the US homicide rate—at 6.9 per 100,000 inhabitants as of 2021, according to FBI data—and overall crime rates have declined substantially since the 1990s. However, the figures are high when compared with other wealthy democracies, and the homicide rate rose by 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, with even higher spikes in a number of large cities. The number of murders continued to rise nationally at a slower pace in 2021, then appeared to decline slightly in 2022.

The increased policy focus on reforming the criminal justice system in recent years has coincided with a series of widely publicized incidents in which police actions led to civilian deaths. Most of these prominent cases involved Black civilians, while Native Americans are reportedly killed by police at a higher rate per capita than any other group. Only a small fraction of police killings lead to criminal charges; when officers have been brought to trial, the cases have often ended in acquittals or sentences on reduced charges. In many instances, long-standing and rigid labor protections prevent municipal governments and police departments from imposing significant administrative sanctions on allegedly abusive officers. Nevertheless, some officers have received substantial prison sentences in recent years, including for the 2020 murder of George Floyd. That year’s protests against police violence and racial injustice succeeded in drawing media and advocacy attention to many police departments’ deep resistance to any reform or accountability mechanisms. A push by some reform advocates to cut police departments’ funding and direct it to other public services faced criticism amid rising crime rates, however, and many such efforts were subsequently diluted or reversed.

Conditions in prisons, jails, and pretrial detention centers are often poor at the state and local levels, and death rates in jails appear to have risen in recent years, driven not only by the COVID-19 pandemic but also by increased suicides and drug overdoses, with negligence or understaffing among corrections officers a contributing factor in some deaths.

Use of the death penalty has declined over time. There were 18 executions carried out by six states in 2022—up from 11 executions in 2021, but significantly down from a peak of 98 in 1999. The death penalty has been formally abolished by 23 states; in another 16 states where it remains on the books, executions have not been carried out for the past five years or more. In 2020 the federal government resumed executions for the first time since 2003, and 13 federal executions were carried out before the Biden administration imposed a moratorium in 2021. Factors encouraging the decline of the death penalty include clear racial disparities in its application; a pattern of exonerations of death-row inmates, often based on new DNA testing; states’ inability to obtain chemicals used in lethal injections due to objections from producers; multiple cases of botched executions; and the high costs to state and federal authorities associated with death penalty cases. 

7. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? 2/4

women and some minority groups continue to suffer from disparities on various indicators, and a number of recent government policies have infringed on the fundamental rights of asylum seekers and immigrants.

Although women constitute almost half of the US workforce and have increased their representation in many professions, the average compensation for female workers is roughly 83 percent of that for male workers, a gap that has remained relatively constant over the past several decades. Meanwhile, the wage gap between White and Black workers has grown in recent decades, meaning Black women, who are affected by both the gender and racial components of wage inequality, made about 69 cents for every dollar earned by White male workers as of 2020, according to the most recent data available. Women are also most often affected by sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. A popular and ongoing social media campaign that began in late 2017, the #MeToo movement, has encouraged victims to speak out about their experiences, leading to accountability for some perpetrators and underscoring the scale of the problem in American society.

In addition to structural inequalities and discrimination in wages and employment, racial and ethnic minority groups face long-running and interrelated disparities in education and housing. De facto school segregation is a persistent problem, and the housing patterns that contribute to it are influenced by factors such as mortgage discrimination, which particularly affects Black and Hispanic homeowners. Black homeownership has fallen steadily from a peak in 2004, despite gains for other groups in recent years. This in turn influences overall gaps in wealth and social mobility. For example, the median wealth of White families is 12 times the median wealth of Black families. Black people also face discrimination in health care and experience worse outcomes than their White counterparts; during the COVID-19 pandemic, people of color experienced strikingly higher mortality from the virus.

Violence motivated by racism or other forms of group animosity is a regular occurrence in the United States. Asian Americans were the victims of a surge in discrimination and hate crimes in 2020 and 2021, attributed in part to President Trump’s attempts to focus blame for the pandemic on China, where the initial outbreak occurred. A White gunman’s racist killing of 10 Black people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May 2022 illustrated the continuing threat from violent White supremacism, while the November murder of five people in a Colorado nightclub that was popular with LGBT+ people reflected the persistence of hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity. . . .

In March 2022, Florida lawmakers adopted a bill that banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in most primary-school classrooms, prompting multiple lawsuits attempting to block enforcement; similar bills were introduced in at least a dozen additional states during the year. A number of other new state laws have restricted the rights of transgender people in particular.

Throughout 2022, the Biden administration continued to use a COVID-19-related public health authority known as Title 42 to rapidly expel or deport hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers. However, a growing proportion of migrants and asylum seekers came from countries that were exempt from Title 42. Some Republican state governors took unilateral steps to draw attention to the administration’s alleged failure to protect the border. Starting in April, Texas officials conducted trade-disrupting inspections of vehicles crossing from Mexico and arranged for the busing of thousands of newly arrived migrants to New York, Washington, DC, and other cities governed by Democrats. In September, Florida governor Ron DeSantis oversaw the air transport of nearly 50 migrants from Texas to a wealthy island in the state of Massachusetts; the move triggered multiple investigations into whether the migrants in question had been illegally deceived or federal funds had been misused to finance the operation.

Since 2021, immigration authorities have moved away from maximizing arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants and back toward the Obama-era policy of focusing deportation efforts on those individuals who pose the greatest threat to public safety. Nevertheless, the backlog of cases in immigration courts continued to balloon; as of the end of 2022 there were over two million pending cases, with average wait times of more than two years for a case to be resolved—though the cases of those held in immigration detention tend to move more quickly. Human rights and immigrant advocacy groups criticized the government for taking inadequate measures to address poor conditions in immigration detention facilities. In August 2022, the Biden administration announced steps intended to strengthen the legal standing of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. However, in October a federal appeals court ruled that the program was illegal, leaving it in limbo as appeals continued at year’s end.

8. Do individuals enjoy personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, protection from domestic violence, and control over appearance? 3/4

Rape and domestic or intimate-partner violence remain serious problems. The applicable laws vary somewhat by state, though spousal rape is a crime nationwide. Numerous government and nongovernmental programs are designed to combat such violence and assist victims.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned a 1973 precedent and found that the federal constitution did not guarantee a right to abortion, thereby returning the issue to the states. By year’s end, near-total bans on abortion had taken effect in at least 12 states, with only narrow exceptions that would make access extremely difficult or dangerous in practice. Increased restrictions were in effect in an additional five states, and court injunctions temporarily blocked near-total or significant bans in six other states. The populations of states where abortion was effectively unavailable or severely restricted accounted for nearly a third of US women of reproductive age. Critics of the new or revived state restrictions noted that their vague language introduced considerable uncertainty about whether doctors would face prosecution even for providing potentially life-saving care. Scores of clinics—nearly 70 as of October—were forced to stop offering abortion services or close entirely, compelling women in the affected states to travel to jurisdictions with more liberal laws in order to seek treatment, a constraint that disproportionately burdened women with lower incomes. Although reproductive rights advocates mobilized to help pay for travel and facilitate access to abortion medication, access to abortion demonstrably declined, particularly in the 12 states with near-total bans in effect; even in states where abortion remained legal, providers sometimes lacked the capacity to serve both local patients and those traveling from other states. Voters in six states were presented with referendums on abortion rights in August and November, and in each case majorities supported the option that would preserve wider access to abortion.

The recent pattern of state laws restricting the rights of transgender people has also affected their access to medical treatments related to bodily autonomy and appearance. . . .

The score declined from 4 to 3 because the Supreme Court’s ruling that abortion is not a constitutional right cleared the way for severe state-level restrictions that left a significant share of the population without access by year’s end.

9. Do individuals enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom from economic exploitation? 3/4

In recent decades, however, studies have shown a widening inequality in wealth and a narrowing of access to upward mobility. A series of economic stimulus and relief packages introduced by the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic successfully reduced overall poverty rates, but the temporary nature of some highly effective programs, such as an expanded tax credit for families with children that expired at the end of 2021, meant that the societal gains were often ephemeral.

One key aspect of inequality in the United States is the growing income and wealth gap between Americans with university degrees and those with a high school degree or less; the number of well-compensated jobs for the less-educated has fallen over time as manufacturing and other positions are lost to automation and lower-cost foreign production. These jobs have generally been replaced by less remunerative or less stable employment in the service and retail sectors, where there is a weaker tradition of unionization. The pandemic-related economic shock amplified that dynamic, disrupting employment and income for lower-earning, less-educated workers in particular. In 2021, a lockdown-induced spike in household savings, combined with fiscal and monetary stimulus policies, produced strong demand, greater bargaining power, and higher wages for such workers. However, the same factors, along with persistent trade disruptions caused by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, also produced high levels of inflation that tempered the effect of wage increases through 2022.

The inflation-adjusted national minimum wage has fallen substantially since the 1960s, with the last nominal increase in 2009, though many states and localities have enacted increases since then. Other obstacles to gainful employment include inadequate public transportation and the high cost of living in economically dynamic cities and regions. The latter problem, which is exacerbated by exclusionary housing policies in many jurisdictions, has also contributed to an overall rise in homelessness in recent years.

Compared to other countries

I put some of the surprises in bold.

What are some of the countries that rank higher?

Sweden, Norway, and Finland come in at a full 100, followed closely by New Zealand at 99 and Canada at 98. Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Denmark at 97, Switzerland, Uruguay, Japan, Belgium, and Portugal at 96, Slovenia and Australia at 95, Germany, Estonia, Chile, Barbados, Taiwan and Iceland at 94, Austria and the United Kingdom at 93, the Czech Republic and Cyprus at 92, the Bahamas and Costa Rica at 91, and Spain, Slovakia, and Italy at 90. Lithuania and France come in at 89. Latvia 88. Belize 87. Greece 86. Argentina 85. Croatia and Mongolia 84.

What are some of the countries that still count as "free" but fall behind us?

Poland 81. Ghana and Jamaica 80. Bulgaria and South African 79. Namibia and Israel 77. Guyana 73. Botswana, Brazil, and East Timor 72. Columbia and Ecuador 70. 

Then there are the partially free countries:

Peru is also at 70 but ranked "partially free" due to its very low level of political freedom. Senegal and North Macedonia and Dominican Republic 68. Albania and Montenegro 67. Hungary, India, and Bolivia 66. Paraguay 65. Sierra Leone 63. Moldova 62. Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and Bhutan 61. Liberia, Mexico, Kosovo, and Serbia 60. Fiji 59. Georgia, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines 58. El Salvador and Tunisia 56. Sri Lanka, Armenia and Zambia 54. Malaysia 53. Bosnia and Kenya 52. Niger 51. Ukraine 50. Cote D'Ivoire and Guatemala 49. Honduras and Gambia 48. Singapore 47. Mozambique 45. Lebanon and Nigeria 43. Hong Kong 42. Bangladesh 40. Pakistan, Morocco, and Kuwait 37. Tanzania 36.

Ratings of 35 and below are "not free" and they include:

Uganda (35), Jordan (33), Algeria (32), Turkey (32), Haiti (31), Thailand (30), Iraq (29), Mali (29), Angola (28), Brunei (28), Zimbabwe (28), Qatar (25), Cambodia (24), Oman (24), Rwanda (23), Ethiopia (21), Nicaragua (19), Vietnam (19), Democratic Republic of Congo (19), UAE (18), Egypt (18), Republic of Congo (17), Russia (16), Venezuela (15), Chad (15), Cameroon (15), Laos (13), Iran (12), Cuba (12), Libya (10), Sudan (10), China (9), Yemen (9), Myanmar (9), Belarus (8), Somalia (8), Saudi Arabia (8), Afghanistan (8), Eritrea (3), North Korea (3), Syria (1), and South Sudan (1).