The State Of The Union

The State of the Union is bad and the union is weak.

Another day has passed and the tyrants are still in power.

Trump is still issuing unconstitutional and illegal executive orders, which is absolutely infuriating. 

RFK, Jr. is busy trying to make sure that more Americans die by ending medical research and promoting dangerous junk science about vaccines and more. 

Texas is trying to cheat by redistricting for the 2026 election. 

The courts have slowed it down a little, but only so much. The 10th Circuit let Oklahoma ban medical care for transgender children. The Republican packed U.S. Supreme Court in encouraging Trump's illegal conduct. 

Congress has smoothed the edges mildly, but the razor thin and factious Republican majority is full of cowards who aren't brave enough to look out for our country even when they know that what they are voting for is wrong.

The U.S. was a global leader in science, medical research, and higher education. Trump 2.0 is doing it's best to kill that. He's also radically defunding K-12 education and undermining academic freedom and a commitment to truth at all levels.

Biden left Trump a U.S. economy that was in great shape. Trump has ravaged that in less than seven months with tariffs, with a resort to illegal immigration enforcement actions, with tax cuts that hurt the economy, and with a budget so fiscally irresponsible that the credit rating of the U.S. has suffered. His attacks on the independence of the Fed, and the integrity of economic statistics also undermine the U.S. economy.

Trump's budget deprives more than ten million people of access to health care, makes health care more expensive (especially for the working class and for self-employed people) and less available for almost everyone (especially in rural areas), deprives millions of food aid, and will kill tens of millions with cuts in foreign aid.

Wars are won by the side with the most and strongest allies, and Trump has alienated almost all of them. Previously allied countries are cancelling F-35 orders or like Spain, deciding not to make them, because of his actions.

So much harm has been done so fast. No one in all of history has ever done more damage to the United States than Donald Trump.

Is There Hope?

While all of this is grim, and irreparable damage has already been done, the cause is not hopeless. 

The U.S. economy, even for the Trump base, is nowhere near the tatters that Weimar Germany was, which suggests that far right radicalism will have less steam.

The U.S. is a federal system and blue states are actively resisting.

Trump and the GOP did not win a decisive victory in 2024. They secured the thinnest of majorities in the House, thin majorities in some key swing states in the Presidential election, and a thin majority in the Senate with several (but not enough) moderates parting ways with him on key votes in the Senate. A few percentage point shift in public opinion from their November 2024 high water mark could dramatically swing control to the Democrats. In Texas, only 53% of voters backed Republicans for Congress, although gerrymandering provided them a far larger share of the seats, and the proposed Texas gerrymander to remove five Democrats seats could backfire by making many of the Republican seats in the new map much more vulnerable.

Trump's approval rating is at record lows, even compared to his previous term. The Epstein scandal continues to eat away at Trump and is undermining support for him even in his base. His budget is wildly unpopular on a bipartisan basis.

SCOTUS has never had a lower approval rating, is at record or near record lows of support from Democrats and unaffiliated voters, and is more divisive on partisan lines than ever before (as is Congress), and this may mobilize action to pack it or reform it. SCOTUS may not be formally beholden to politics, but it isn't indifferent to its waning legitimacy either.

The markets have responded poorly to Trump's idiotic on again, off again tariff policies and his threats to Fed independence.

Trump has made enemies of the entire medical establishment, almost all of higher education, school teachers everywhere, and the Catholic Church. His open racism and xenophobia may cost Republicans some of the black and Hispanic support that Trump secured in 2024. And, even a fair number of Republican politicians and former members of his administration, when they are retiring or otherwise less vulnerable, have shown little loyalty to him. Trump rules by fear and transactional deals alone.

Swing states like Nevada are suffering badly as a result of his policies. Farmers are suffering. Small business people are getting hurt. Manufacturing is in bad shape despite the fact that boosting this industry was one of his main goals. Inflation, especially for groceries, is surging. The haughty indifference of his cabinet members cost many people their lives in the central Texas floods. Trump's refusal to provide disaster relief has mostly hurt his own voters. His budget did much more harm to red states than the blue states. The more Trump's policies are implemented, the more skeptical conservatives are being forced to admit that they are worse off because of them.

Democrats are decisively over-performing in almost every vacancy election, and elections around the world are swinging decisively to the left in reaction to Trump. If the 2026 midterm elections proceed without too much GOP mischief, they could be a Republican bloodbath with even many lean GOP seats falling to Democratic challengers.

People are in the streets countering ICE abuses and protesting Trump's many abuses.

Trump has somehow finally discovered that Putin is the bad guy in the Ukraine War and is supporting Ukraine again after seriously wavering. European support is also keeping Ukraine in the fight in an ongoing war of attrition where it is holding its own, despite casualties and slight continued losses of its territory. Putin is increasingly worried about Russia breaking apart, and Russia's economy is struggling. Russia's military, especially its ground forces, have seen immense losses with more than a million casualties, a very large share of all of its army's tanks and armored vehicles and artillery forces destroyed, and its navy and air forces bruised (although not absolutely ruined like the army). In another year, it will be worse. Ukrainian attacks deep in Russia are damaging its oil and gas infrastructure, its transportation infrastructure, and its military resources and has forced Russia to worry about attacks far from the front line. Many of Russia's best and brightest young men have emigrated. North Korea is strengthening its military ties with Russia, but its "elite soldiers" are at least as mediocre as the ill-trained Russian conscripts that they are fighting alongside, and the quality of the military supplies that they are providing is, on average, inferior.

Trump is 79 years old and is not in good health, mentally or physically, and he's only getting worse in the face of the stress of actually governing and his advancing age. There is a very real possibility that he could die of natural causes while in office. 

The list of folks who would like him dead is a geopolitical version of Murder on the Orient Express, and the list will only keep growing. He's made enemies of Canada, Denmark, Western Europe, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, India, China, and islands inhabited only by penguins. For immigrants, small business owners who are ruined by his attempts at mass deportations without due process, people denied disaster relief, people who will lose their hospitals, federal workers and grant recipients who have lost their jobs, transgender soldiers discharged without pensions despite doing nothing wrong, soldiers who have had spouses deported, people and law firms he has targeted for revenge, and women who have had their reproductive health compromised because of his court appointments and policies, it is personal and dire. 

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and Trump's hatchet man early in his current term, is seeing his companies from Tesla to SpaceX to his AI venture crumble, even though the stock markets haven't fully caught up to how bad the situation is for his businesses, not just now, but in their future prospects in which he is baggage that is dragging them down. Musk has no realistic chance of reversing the drag he is on his businesses, even though he beat back a host of federal government attacks on them in the short run by cozying up to Trump. But, Musk's threat to start a new political party, which would take voter support almost entirely from Republicans, could be devastating for the GOP in 2026 if implemented.

And, one shouldn't forget that the inevitable force of demographic change is against them. New younger voters who first vote in a federal election in 2026 are very decisively left leaning, much less Christian, and much less white. Elderly voters who are the most conservative and the most prone to be white Evangelical Christians will die before then. Two years doesn't make for that much of a difference, but it is one more little weight on the scale against the GOP.

Republicans have made a huge bet on a stupid, vengeful, psychopathic mad man, and if their bet doesn't pay off, they face an existential crisis. They could go the way of the Whigs. Their collapse could be worse than it was in the wake of Herbert Hoover and could last as long.

Midweek Rants And Observations

* It was 101º F today in Denver. Fortunately, we have a brand new swamp cooler, so this is survivable. I'm honestly a little surprised that our power stayed on. We've had two power outs for more than an hour each on hot afternoons in the last few weeks.

* My office suite is having a potluck next week. There was a sign up sheet for names and what you are bringing. A majority of people who signed up said they were bringing "TBD". Suck it up my office neighbors. Commit to something.

* Why does it take the City of Denver weeks for a deed that is recorded and digitally processed by the Clerk & Recorder's office weeks to be reflected in the Assessor's Office records?

* A recent new report stated:

Church stands by call to execute gay people: “I will not apologize for preaching the Word of God.”: A men's night sermon said gay people should "blow yourself in the back of the head."

Just what I would expect a Baptist church in Indiana to say. The most vile people in America are Christians.

"Not all Christians are this bad" you say? Then why aren't they picketing outside the steps of this church for heresy and blasphemy? It isn't my place to do that. Not my monkeys, not my circus. But it is hard to take any Christians seriously when this isn't the instant and vigorous response of Christians who say they're wrong.

* There is a tornado warning in Washington D.C. right now. WTF?

* There are too many crazy people in this country, and not just in the White House.

A group that calls itself an anti-government militia told News 9 it’s “absolutely” targeting Oklahoma weather radars, claiming they control the weather. The warning comes just days after a vandal knocked out News 9’s live radar.

* I don't doubt for a minute that the allegations of this complaint, which was later dismissed (not on the merits), were true:

* The people who leave anti-immigration comments on social media posts and news story (and there are lots of them) are among the most vile people you'll see on the Internet. These people would have been pro-Holocaust, pro-segregation, pro-slavery, and pro-witch burning.

It is a reminder that the evil that is Donald Trump runs deep. There are there millions, if not tens of millions of these monsters in the United States.

Stupid hurts people. But this level of vile goes far beyond that. They are as bad as the most culpable violent criminals in our prisons. Where do these people come from? What can we do about them?

* It just doesn't stop.

* Anti-aging, life extension drugs are a real possibility, if not in my lifetime, in the lives of my children.

A simple monthly injection allows mice to live 25% longer and free from diseases: The strategy — the injection of a simple antibody — has already begun to be tested in humans in an attempt to cure age-related illnesses.

* The Texas floods have are already the fourth most deadly floods in Texas history. There are still 161 people missing, so they could easily rise to #2, and floods in San Antonio are ongoing.

 

Most of these deaths were preventable. The part of Texas hit has consistently had the highest concentration of flood deaths in the United States since the 1930s. State and local officials rejected a proposal in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, to install flood detection devices and warning sirens but weren't willing to spend the money to do so. Trump's cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service impaired the warning that people at risk in the flood received. Trump gutted FEMA which only started to take action to help 72 hours after the floods when it was already too late (the U.S. Coast Guard, in fairness, stepped in anyway and saved about 165 lives at the insistence of a brave rookie over the indifference and waffling of his supervisors). The Texas Governor and its top emergency response official have urged Trump to cut or eliminate FEMA.

* Gun homicides are down, but gun suicides have reached a record high.

The CDC reports 27,300 gun suicides in 2023, constituting 58% of all gun deaths, a record high. Wyoming led the nation with about 19.9 gun suicide deaths per 100,000 residents — nearly 10 times the rate of Massachusetts, which had the lowest at about 2.1 per 100,000.

Gun homicides fell for the second year in a row, dropping from 20,958 in 2021 to 19,651 in 2022 and 17,927 in 2023. Despite the decline, the 2023 total ranks as the fifth highest on record for gun homicides.

Republicans Still Stupid

Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican in the U.S. House representing the 13th Congressional District in Florida (basically suburban Tampa), will be leading a new committee re-examining the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 (61 years and 3 months ago). 

She is a member of the Congressional Freedom Caucus (a far right Republican caucus) and the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Caucus." 

She served in the Air Force and then the Air National Guard for a combined five years as an "airfield management specialist", earned a bachelor's of science degree in biology at the University of West Florida after finishing her service (no honors are mentioned in her biography, she her grades probably weren't all the great), modeled in 2013 in Sport Illustrated's online site, and briefly worked as a cocktail waitress in a gentleman's club, later appeared as a swimsuit model in Maxim magazine in 2014, and then worked in various conservative political posts until she was elected to Congress in 2022, on her third attempt to be elected to this office. 

She married before being elected and gave birth to her son the summer after she first took office. She considers herself to be a Messianic Jewish Christian, like her father. She started to identify as Hispanic and took her grandmother's surname "Luna" in 2019, a year after joining a Hispanic outreach post for a conservative political group (in a 2015 filing she had identified herself as non-Hispanic white, even though both of her parents have at least partial Mexican origins). She wrote a book in 2018 about her special operations soldier husband, and another more general political manifesto in 2021. She grew up in Southern California. Her parents never married or lived together, her father was a drug addict, her mother, who an elementary school teacher and homemaker who married a man other than her father when she was nine, but her mom divorced four years later. She has a brother and a sister.

While this might have its place as an academic exercise for a panel of university historians, possibly updated with new information, the Warren Commission already produced a voluminous report on the matter in 1964, and this will do nothing to improve the lot of the people of our fine country. 

Anyone newly found to be culpable in the incident is dead by now, and an inquiry led by a 35 year old Republican Congresswoman who doesn't even realize how long ago this way, and whose parents are probably even too young to remember the assassination, if they were even born yet, is just utterly incapable of credibly expanding our understanding of this event.

The really embarrassing part, though, which shows just how utterly unqualified, ignorant, and over her head this 35 year old is with even this very junior assignment, is that she told members of the press in a press conference, that she wants to interview JFK's attending physicians and the members of the Warren Commission about the incident.

How is she going to manage that when all of those people are dead? 

How many people with any meaningful connection to this event who are living haven't succumbed to dementia and are otherwise healthy enough to share anything meaningful that hasn't already been covered in reports and interviews already?

Someone who was 25 years old in 1963, when it happened, is now 87 years old, and any attending physician who would have treated the President in Dallas, Texas in 1963, would have been at least 25 years old then to be even a medical resident at the relevant hospital at the time. And, let's not kid ourselves. You don't assign a first year resident to try to save the popular young President of the United States from a gunshot wound. You give that task to the most seasoned physician you have available, who would be considerably older right now, even if he were alive (very few women were doctors handling ER and trauma cases in 1963 in Texas). A first year resident would have no meaningful first hand knowledge of JFK's injuries.

All seven members of the Warren commission, its general counsel, ten of its fourteen junior lawyers, and ten of its twelve staff member are dead.

There only people connected to the Warren Commission who are still alive are four junior lawyers for the Commission, and two people who were on the Commission's staff at the time. The youngest of them, a junior staff member, turns 85 years old this year. The other junior staff member turns 88 years old this year. The oldest of those still living, a junior lawyer for the commission, turns 96 years old this year. All of the other junior lawyers will turn at least 91 years old this year.

Gary Hart, a former Democratic U.S. Senator from Colorado, Presidential candidate in 1988, and diplomat, who is currently 88 years old and was 26 years old at the time of the assassination, is the only one of the eleven people who served on the Church Committee in 1975-1976 who is still living, although probably a few more of the people who were on the staff of that committee are also still living. He too has already told us everything he had to say about this assassination.

In addition to more than one official commission/committee investigation, there have been dozens of film and fictional accounts of the event, and many non-fiction and documentary treatments of it. What more is there left to say?

If classified documents related to the assassination exist and are now being declassified, just release them and let the media or the Congressional Research Service do this job without diverting the precious time of members of Congress who have no relevant expertise to conduct this investigation anyway.

Also, how hard is it to assign one of your staffers (members of Congress have budgets to pay for quite a few of them in addition to unpaid interns) to look up some of the relevant facts on Wikipedia, and to do some math, before you tell the press what your approach to leading this committee will involve?

I don't expect every 35 year old woman on the street to know when JFK died, or how many years ago that was. 

But, if you a member of Congress, who has a college degree, who is going to be leading a renewed Congressional inquiry into the assassination, and are holding a press conference about how you plan to go about doing that, we have a right to expect that you have done your most basic homework and know more about the event than the average person.

Deplorable Trump Team Tactics

Trump has engaged in a "flood the zone" strategy of taking outrageous and unprecedented actions on so many front that his opponents are overwhelmed. As the secondary headline of one analysis explained: ""Trump starts presidency by mocking rule of law and stigmatizing trans Americans" 

This post highlights some of those actions.

* Trump ran for office on immediately lowering the price of eggs. The price of eggs has soared since he took office. He says he can't do anything about it and neither he nor his supporters seem to care.

* Produce prices are at risk of rising in the near future since migrant farm workers are failing to show up, en masse, in states like California, Texas, and Florida, and due to threatened broad 25% tariffs on imports to the U.S. from Mexico, Canada, and other countries (in violation of free trade treaties that Trump himself negotiated in his first term). 

* Gasoline prices are also up for now.

* Trump rescinded an Executive Order from President Biden that limited the price of certain prescription drugs resulting in immediate drug price inflation for large number of patients in the U.S.

* Trump pardoned the more than 1,000 people who committed crimes while storming the capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021, some of whom violently assaulted police officers (to the disgust of a police officer's union that supported him in the election).  One pardoned January 6 criminal was since killed in a traffic stop after pointing a gun at a traffic officer, and another has been sentenced to ten years in jail for a deadly DUI. He also made other dubious pardons. 

* Trump has threatened to conquer Greenland and the Panama Canal without any Congressional authorization or legal basis to do so, and to use economic pressure to force Canada to become the 51st U.S. state. In addition to blatantly violating international law, this is also contrary to U.S. law. These proposals are unpopular with the U.S. public (as well as the people of the affected countries) and would blow up the NATO alliance.

* Trump has lied about what he has done with regard to water supplies in California.

* Trump is using the FCC to try to punish National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, formally, over concerns about sponsorships, but really because he doesn't like the fact that their truthful news reporting and the decent values of PBS children's programming impeded his ability to lie unchecked and promote hate.

* Trump baselessly blamed Biden and affirmative action hiring for a crash (see also here) between a regional jet with 64 people on board and a U.S. military helicopter with 3 people on board that killed all 67 people near Reagan National Airport in the District of Columbia. Poor training for military helicopter crews (who were outside their designed flight zone), understaffing of air traffic controllers (only two were on duty when there should have been four), and the somewhat reduced experience of regional jet pilots compared to larger commercial aircraft pilots, were far more likely to be the real causes. Trump had already gutted federal air safety measures, left the FAA without a director, and disrupted federal employees after less than two weeks in office when this happened, although realistically none of these things actually caused this crash.

* "The Pentagon’s intelligence agency paused observances of Pride Month, Black History Month, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Holocaust Days of Remembrance, Juneteenth and other cultural events, as federal agencies scramble to try to conform to President Trump’s repudiation of diversity programs." From the New York Times.

* Trump repealed Executive Order 11246, 59 years, 3 months, 27 days after it was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson on September 24, 1965, which established requirements for non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment on the part of U.S. government contractors.

* Federal agencies have been forbidden from communicating scientific or public health information to the public. "The Trump administration, moving quickly to clamp down on health and science agencies, has canceled a string of scientific meetings and instructed federal health officials to refrain from all public communications, including upcoming reports focused on the escalating bird flu crisis in the U.S." As one doctor explained on social media:

Trump just directed the CDC, NIH and FDA to halt all external communications. That means to stop giving scientific reports, health advisories, website updates, etc. In simple terms, if there was a salmonella outbreak with massive food recall needed right now, they wouldn't be allowed to announce it. Scared yet? The order came in Tuesday AM and without a reason or a timeline.

* Trump has started the process to remove the U.S. from the World Health Organization, despite a high risk in the near future of a bird flu epidemic. 

* Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox news commentator, was confirmed with a 50-50 votes with all Democrats and three Republicans opposing him and Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie, after credible testimony at his confirmation hearings revealed that he was a seriously impaired alcoholic and a rapist, among other concerns. 

Mr. Hegseth’s selection by President Trump and the confirmation process were complicated by a claim of sexual assault and accusations of abusive behavior, public drunkenness and fiscal mismanagement of two nonprofit veterans groups.

In a sworn statement submitted to the Senate on Tuesday, a former sister-in-law of Mr. Hegseth’s described him as frequently intoxicated and “abusive” toward his second wife. Mr. Hegseth, 44, has denied the account, along with other allegations that have dogged his nomination.

And on Thursday, the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, shared written answers to questions she put to Mr. Hegseth, in which he disclosed that he paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.

He has said that encounter was consensual, and he was never charged with a crime.

A handful of Republicans had said privately that the new allegations in the affidavit from Danielle Diettrich Hegseth, the former wife of Mr. Hegseth’s brother, were concerning. But in the end, only Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski and Mr. McConnell voted with Democrats against his confirmation.

Ms. Hegseth said after the vote that she had submitted her affidavit only because she had been assured that it would sway key votes. “There are many reasons women are reluctant to come forward, by name, and tell the truth about a powerful man like him,” she said. “What happened today will make women who have experienced abuse and mistreatment even less forthcoming.”

His tattoos suggest neo-Nazi or white supremacist leanings.

* Confirmation hearings for failed third-party Presidential candidate RFK, Jr. as U.S. Health And Human Services Secretary show him to be profoundly unqualified and dangerous. His personal behavior is also deeply concerning due to credible sexual assault allegations against him and weird incidents with dead animals. He also has admitted that some of his brain was eaten away by a worm.

* Trump's Office of Personnel Management nominee is on record as publicly stating that he is a "raging msogynist". 

Andrew Kloster has a new job in the Trump administration, as reported by the Project On Government Oversight. Kloster has landed as the new general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management. The New York University Law graduate has made the rounds in conservative legal circles, previously working at OPM in the first Trump term, becoming a prominent 2020 election denier, and serving as general counsel for congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-01). . . . "It wasn’t even a long time ago, so it’s hard to even disingenuously chalk it up to youthful indiscretion. In 2023(!) he was tweeting that he identified as a “raging misogynist,” saying, “I’m 100% women respecter precisely because I’m a raging misogynist. I’m so kind you’ll want to kill yourself and die, which is the goal.” Around that time he also tweeted, “I need a woman who looks like she got punched.” Which was only a few months after being served a temporary restraining order. He referred to “literally all women” as annoying liberals. In 2012, he also commented on a Volokh Conspiracy article that, “Consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish.” But it isn’t only women that the new counsel for the federal government’s HR department has attacked online. He also wrote, “Slaves owe us reparations,” and “slavery was voluntary.” He called Chinese people uncivilized and compared them to raccoons. Oh, and he also seemed to encourage a civil war.

* Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI director, has starting suing people for defamation for opposing his nomination, something that is a patently frivolous strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). 

* Trump’s Press Secretary has been credibly accused of allegedly pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal campaign donations.

* Key Trump advisor Elon Musk is a big supporter of what is basically a neo-Nazi party in Germany. He's also a big backer of the modern fascist party in Italy. Musk has also been accused of making Nazi salutes at political functions in the U.S.

* Trump is persecuting former Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, without any semblance of due process or justification, removing his security clearance, ending a security detail established due to credible threats from Iranian assassinations, and removing pictures of him from the Pentagon halls, because Milley put obeying the law and doing is job properly ahead of loyalty to Trump. The New York Times notes that:

Donald J. Trump had previously said he deserved to be executed for treason after the general apologized for appearing with Trump in Lafayette Park near the White House after the removal of civilians protesting the murder of George Floyd.

A Pentagon statement said that Hegseth had directed the Defense Department’s inspector general to review whether General Milley should be demoted in retirement.

* Trump has threatened to bring criminal prosecutions as retribution against state and local officials who defy his immigration plans (something that is illegal).

* Trump's Executive Order purporting to freeze all U.S. government grants and loans created widespread chaos and gave rise to a quick injunction from a judge. Trump quickly rescinded the order in one of the first big wins for Democrats since he took office. More legal analysis here and here.

* Trump has attempted to suspend military aid to Ukraine that has already been authorized by Congress. It isn't clear to me if this is part of the order that has since been rescinded.

* Unilaterally and without any legal authority to do so, the "Trump administration offered roughly two million federal workers the option to resign but be paid through the end of September. It is unclear what authority the Trump administration has to offer a payout to effectively the entire federal civilian work force." Elon Musk had ridiculously claimed that cutting the federal work force by 5-10% could reduce the budget by $100 billion, which this vastly overestimates the cost saving that could be achieved.

* Fox News is making up out of whole cloth the false claim that the U.S. funding $50 million of condoms in Gaza.

* Trump's plan for the Gaza Strip is to "clean out the whole thing." 

* Trump's press release staff can't spell the name of Colombia, the country upon which he sought to impose tariffs for its resistance to the manner in which he deported its citizens, something his legal authority to do is dubious. See also here.

* Deportations are being conducted with U.S. Air Force planes, something arguably in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

* Trump's Executive Order purporting to end birthright citizenship is patently unconstitutional and a federal judge in Washington State has stayed it, expressing exasperation at the Justice Department lawyers trying to defend it.

* As part of Trump's mass deportation sweep, a grandmother, mother and baby grandson, who were all U.S. citizens, were detained in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for speaking Spanish in public by immigration officials, and weren't released until birth certificates and proof and citizenship were provided.

* ICE Agents have staked out an ambulance bay at UC-Health Anschutz (the main university hospital in metro Denver) now that Trump has directed them to ignore historical restrictions on immigration enforcement in sensitive areas like hospitals, courts, and churches.

* Leading Christians including the Pope, a Catholic Cardinal, and the Episcopal Bishop in the National Cathedral have decried his harsh immigration tactics:

* Trump's unilateral attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, is unsurprisingly, receiving strong pushback, although Google seems ready to accept it if it is officially sanctioned by a U.S. place naming board.

* Trump, illegally and without the legal authority to do so, "signed an executive order on Tuesday taking steps to end gender-affirming medical treatments for children and teenagers under 19, directing agencies to take a variety of steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other regimens. The order continued to chip away at social protections for transgender and intersex people, coming one day after Mr. Trump directed the Pentagon to re-evaluate whether anyone who received gender-related medical treatments should be permitted to serve in the military."

* Trump is illegally and unilaterally banning transgender people from U.S. military service.

* Trump is supporting a "U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will open an investigation into Denver Public Schools for “discriminating against its female students” by creating an all-gender bathroom at East High School[.]"" as a way to continue scapegoating of transgender students.

* "The Trump administration has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing HIV medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics." (NYT).

* A right wing summary of Trump's Executive Orders is available here.

* Trump is suggesting that he is not term-limited, blatantly contradicting the constitution, and showing grave disrespect for is duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution and for democracy.

* Incidentally, Trump is the least popular President in the history of polling, for a second time in a row, at the start of his Presidential term.

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).