United States: Freedom in the World 2021 Country Report | Freedom House (original) (raw)

D Freedom of Expression and Belief

D1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The United States has a free and diverse press, operating under some of the strongest constitutional protections in the world. The media environment retains a high degree of pluralism, with newspapers, newsmagazines, traditional broadcasters, cable television networks, and news websites competing for readers and audiences. Internet access is widespread and unrestricted. While many larger outlets have prospered, however, independent local sources of news have struggled to keep up with technology-driven changes in news consumption and advertising, contributing to significant ownership consolidation in some sectors, and a number of communities with just one or no local news outlet. News coverage has also grown more polarized, with certain outlets and their star commentators providing a consistently right- or left-leaning perspective. The cable network Fox News in particular grew unusually close to the Trump administration; several prominent on-air personalities and executives migrated to government jobs beginning in 2017, and key hosts openly endorsed Republican candidates or participated in campaign rallies. Following the 2020 elections, however, Fox joined other networks in calling the presidential race for Biden, and Trump subsequently denigrated the outlet, directing his followers to smaller, more extreme channels that fully endorsed his attempts to overturn the election results.

Trump was harshly critical of the mainstream media throughout his presidency, routinely using inflammatory language to accuse them of bias and mendacity. He maintained a drumbeat of verbal attacks on individual journalists and established outlets, describing them as—among other things—“fake news” and the “enemy of the American people.” Trump allies have allegedly sought to collect and release embarrassing personal information about critical journalists, and certain reporters or outlets have been excluded from specific government or Trump campaign events. As of 2020 the president had not followed through on threats to strengthen libel laws or review certain outlets’ broadcast licenses, as he largely lacked the authority to do so, though he has been accused of interfering with the other business interests of critical outlets’ owners. Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation suits against a number of news outlets in early 2020, the administration filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block the publication of a critical book by a former national security adviser, and the president’s brother similarly filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block a critical book by his niece. In July, a judge found that federal probation officers had revoked the prison furlough of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in retaliation for his plans to publish his own book about the president.

In June 2020, Trump appointee Michael Pack was confirmed as the head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees government-funded news outlets serving audiences abroad. Pack quickly undertook major personnel and policy changes, undermining the news operations’ editorial independence and declining to renew the visas of foreign journalists at the agency, including those vulnerable to repression in their home countries. The steps drew fierce criticism from agency employees, media watchdogs, and members of Congress; in November, a federal judge granted an injunction preventing Pack from directing news coverage.

Despite increased hostility from political figures and their supporters on social media, the mainstream media—including national television networks and major newspapers—have devoted considerable resources to independent coverage of national politics. Outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN have conducted investigations into the business affairs of Trump and his associates, closely examined the facts at the heart of the impeachment inquiry and other scandals, and regularly assessed the accuracy of the administration’s claims.

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 announced multiple mass removals of accounts linked to Russia, Iran, and China that were being used to spread disinformation. False content from certain far-right sources has also been removed from major platforms. In 2020, both social media platforms and mainstream outlets, particularly some Fox News programs, served as conduits for questionable or false information about the nature and spread of the coronavirus.

While violence against journalists in the United States has been rare in recent decades, media watchdog groups registered widespread press freedom violations, including police violence and arbitrary arrests targeting journalists, in the context of the nationwide protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. The US Press Freedom Tracker, a joint project of multiple nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), documented a total of 123 arrests of journalists and 334 assaults on journalists for 2020, compared with just 9 arrests and 34 assaults in 2019.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 due to a dramatic increase in arrests of and physical assaults on journalists across the country during the year, with most cases linked to coverage of protests.

D2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The United States has a long tradition of religious freedom. The constitution protects the free exercise of religion while barring any official endorsement of a religious faith, and there are no direct government subsidies to houses of worship. The debate over the role of religion in public life is ongoing, however, and religious groups often mobilize to influence political discussions on the diverse issues in which they take an interest. The Supreme Court regularly adjudicates difficult cases involving the relationship between religion and the state.

In 2020, multiple state and local governments imposed restrictions on the size of religious gatherings to slow the spread of the coronavirus, prompting legal challenges. The Supreme Court issued somewhat conflicting rulings on the subject, though the restrictions in question differed in their details: in May and July the justices upheld attendance limits in California and Nevada, respectively, but in November the court—with a newly appointed justice reinforcing the conservative majority—struck down a New York order that strictly capped the number of congregants allowed to attend religious services in high-risk areas.

Hate crimes based on religion are generally prosecuted vigorously by law enforcement authorities. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics for 2019, released in November 2020, showed an increase of more than 6 percent in such crimes from 2018; incidents involving Jewish targets rose 14 percent and constituted over 60 percent of the year’s religion-based hate crimes. Anti-Muslim crimes were the next most common, and Christian churches with predominantly Black congregations have also experienced attacks in recent years.

D3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The academic sphere has long featured a high level of intellectual freedom. While it remains quite robust by global standards, this liberty has come under pressure in recent years. University faculty have reported instances of harassment—including on social media—related to curriculum content, textbooks, or statements that some students strongly disagreed with. As a consequence, some professors have allegedly 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. Separately, the American Association of University Professors has complained that the politicization of climate change and other scientific topics is contributing to a more hostile environment for those working in related fields, including instances of harassment by private individuals.

The Trump administration in September 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 in December.

D4 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Americans are generally free to engage in private discussion and air their personal views in public settings, including on the internet, though a number of threats to this freedom exist.

Civil libertarians, many lawmakers, and other observers have pointed to the real and potential effects of the collection of communications data and other forms of intelligence-related monitoring on the rights of US residents, despite the adoption of significant reforms since such activities surged following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Separately, surveillance programs run by federal and local law enforcement agencies have long raised concerns among civil liberties groups, due in part to allegations of a disproportionate focus on religious, racial, and ethnic minority communities. A growing number of law enforcement and other government agencies are monitoring public social media content, with targets including applicants for US visas and participants in peaceful protests. The frequent use of drone aircraft and camera networks, sometimes in conjunction with facial-recognition technology, to monitor protest activity in 2020 prompted complaints about privacy violations and led some protesters to adapt their tactics to make identification more difficult.

A public debate about law enforcement access to encrypted communication services continues, with some officials warning that their technical inability to break encryption even with a judicial warrant posed a threat to the rule of law, and opponents arguing that any weakening of encrypted services’ security would expose all users to criminal hacking and other ill effects.

Aside from concerns about government surveillance, internet users in the United States have faced problems such as aggressive disinformation efforts, intimidation, and frequently sexualized harassment on social media that may deter them from engaging in online discussion and expressing their views freely.

E Associational and Organizational Rights

E1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

In general, officials respect the constitutional right to public assembly. Demonstrations on political and other topics are common and typically proceed without incident. In response to acts of violence committed in the course of some past demonstrations, local authorities often place restrictions on the location or duration of large protests. Since 2017, legislative initiatives aiming to criminalize or stiffen penalties for certain forms of protest, or to shield perpetrators of violence against protesters from legal liability, have been proposed in most states. Numerous such bills were introduced in 2020, and at least seven were passed into law.

In recent years, large protests and aggressive law enforcement responses have been sparked by highly publicized police killings of Black civilians, many of which were recorded on video. In May 2020, outrage over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis inspired one of the largest waves of protests in US history. Under the banner of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, marches occurred in hundreds of cities and smaller communities. Estimated participation in May and June ranged from 15 to 26 million people, and daily protests occurred well into the summer in some cities. An overwhelming majority of the protests were peaceful, but in some settings they were accompanied by violence against police and significant damage to public and private property; local officials in certain cities complained of intimidating demonstrations outside their private homes. Human rights groups and academic experts found that aggressive police tactics were often the cause or prime escalating factor in violent episodes, and hundreds of instances of unprovoked or disproportionate police brutality were documented on video. At least 10,000 people had been arrested in connection with the protests by early June, though minor charges were frequently dropped.

Observers noted that police violence against protesters rarely resulted in accountability, and that police often exercised greater restraint toward anti-BLM counterprotesters and participants in separate demonstrations against COVID-19-related restrictions, many of whom were armed and displayed far-right or White supremacist symbols. Several people were killed in confrontations involving armed protesters, counterprotesters, or vigilantes during the year, including one prominent shooting by a left-wing gunman in Oregon who was later killed by police.

The Trump administration and its political allies frequently denounced the BLM movement and offered unqualified support to police, downplaying the extent of police violence. The president threatened to deploy active-duty military units in cities experiencing unrest, and in June a combination of federal law enforcement agents and National Guard members used chemical irritants and physical force to clear peaceful protesters from a plaza adjacent to the White House. In Portland, Oregon, where nightly protests repeatedly ended in clashes with law enforcement agents, city and state officials accused the administration of purposefully inflaming tensions by deploying federal agents to protect a federal courthouse; the agents’ uniforms at times lacked any identifying insignia, and some detainees were taken away in unmarked vehicles.

Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 due to excessive police and federal agency responses to racial justice protests during the year, including thousands of arrests and numerous documented instances of police brutality, as well as multiple cases of intimidation and lethal violence involving armed protesters, counterprotesters, or vigilantes.

E2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

US laws and practices give wide freedom to NGOs and activists to pursue their civic or policy agendas, including those that directly oppose government policies. Organizations committed to the protection of civil liberties, immigrants’ rights, equality for women and minority groups, and freedom of speech have become more active since 2016, mounting campaigns and filing lawsuits to block actions by the Trump administration that they considered harmful. A number of privately supported projects have also been established in recent years to address deficiencies in the electoral and criminal justice systems.

E3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Federal law generally guarantees trade unions the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining. The right to strike is also protected, though many public employees are prohibited from striking. Over the years, the strength of organized labor has declined, and just 6.3 percent of the private-sector workforce belonged to unions in 2020. While public-sector unions have a higher rate of membership, with 34.8 percent, they have come under pressure from officials concerned about the cost of compensation and pensions to states and municipalities. The overall unionization rate in the United States rose slightly to 10.8 percent in 2020, but this reflected the year’s pandemic-related job losses rather than an actual increase in the number of unionized workers. 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 even Democratic administrations have largely 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 decision that government employees cannot be required to contribute to unions that represent them in collective bargaining has led to further losses in union membership. Organized labor scored a modest victory the same year when referendum voters in Missouri overturned a 2017 law that would have similarly allowed private-sector workers who benefit from union bargaining to opt out of paying union dues or fees. That left 27 states with such “right-to-work” legislation in place.

Strike activity proceeded largely without incident in 2020. Many well-publicized strikes and labor protests involved accusations that employers were providing insufficient protective equipment and hazard pay to employees who were unable to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

F Rule of Law

F1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The American judiciary is largely independent. The courts regularly demonstrated their autonomy during the Trump presidency by blocking or limiting executive actions.

However, judicial appointments in recent years have added to existing concerns about partisan distortion of the appointment and confirmation process. Republican leaders in the Senate had stalled many federal judicial nominations in the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, resulting in an unusually large number of vacancies at the beginning of 2017. The most prominent was a seat on the Supreme Court that the Senate had held open during 2016 by refusing to allow hearings on Obama’s nominee. In 2017, the Senate confirmed Trump’s nominee for the position, appellate court judge Neil Gorsuch, but only after the Republican leadership changed Senate rules that had required a supermajority to end debate on Supreme Court nominations, meaning the confirmation could proceed with a simple-majority vote. Democrats had enacted a similar rule change for lower court nominations in 2013.

The president filled a new vacancy on the Supreme Court in 2018, when federal appellate court judge Brett Kavanaugh narrowly won confirmation after contentious Senate hearings involving accusations of sexual assault; Kavanaugh denied the allegations and angrily denounced the campaign against him as a “political hit” orchestrated by “left-wing opposition groups.” In 2020, Trump filled a third Supreme Court vacancy by nominating appellate court judge Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed in October, with one Republican senator joining all Democrats in opposition. Democrats stridently objected to the confirmation process, noting that Republicans had justified blocking Obama’s 2016 nominee by claiming that when vacancies arise in election years, appointments should not be made prior to the balloting. Coney Barrett’s appointment cemented a conservative Supreme Court majority; many Democrats suggested that the Republicans’ actions justified the introduction of legislation to expand the size of the court and add new justices under a Democratic president.

By the end of 2020, Trump had successfully appointed a record 234 federal judges in all, including 54 appellate court judges. In a break with precedent, a number of his nominees were confirmed by the Senate even after he lost the November election.

Trump repeatedly responded to adverse court rulings by verbally attacking the judges and courts responsible and accusing them of political bias, earning a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts in 2018. The president also used his pardon power in an arbitrary or politicized fashion, bypassing Justice Department processes, overturning the convictions of several individuals whose cases were championed by his political allies, and publicly discussing possible pardons for himself or other individuals in a position to provide evidence against him in various investigations. In the weeks following his defeat in the November 2020 election, he pardoned longtime associate Roger Stone, who had been convicted in 2019 of lying to Congress and witness tampering; his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017; former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted of tax fraud and other offenses and was considered a key link to Russian interference in the 2016 election; and 2016 campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who in 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. These were among a larger raft of pardons issued to individuals with personal or political connections to Trump, including three former Republican congressmen convicted of fraud or misusing funds and four former military contractors convicted for their roles in a notorious 2007 massacre of civilians in Iraq.

In many states, judges are chosen through either partisan or nonpartisan elections, and a rise in campaign fundraising for 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 few states have attempted to increase their control over state supreme courts, including through impeachments and constitutional changes.

F2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The United States has a deeply rooted rule-of-law tradition, and legal and constitutional protections for due process are widely observed. However, 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; 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 some 1.4 million as of 2019. 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 slipped to 419 as of 2019. 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. Civil liberties organizations and other groups have also argued that prison sentences are often excessive and that too many people are incarcerated for minor drug offenses.

In 2018, under pressure from a bipartisan coalition advocating for reforms to curb mass incarceration, Congress passed and the president signed a law that eased federal mandatory-minimum sentencing rules, among other modest changes. A majority of states have also passed laws in recent years to reduce sentences for certain crimes, decriminalize minor drug offenses, and combat recidivism; such gradual steps continued in 2020. Some states have restricted the use of cash bail, which can unfairly penalize defendants with fewer resources and enlarge pretrial jail populations. In November 2020, voters in Oregon approved a ballot measure to decriminalize possession of all drugs, the first state to take such a step; several others have decriminalized the recreational use of marijuana.

While accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and partiality are frequent at the state and local levels, the federal Justice Department has generally been regarded as more professional and independent. In 2020, however, Attorney General William Barr stirred controversy through statements and decisions on a variety of topics—including personnel changes, ongoing investigations, prosecutions of Trump associates, and civil suits against Trump—that appeared to serve the president’s personal or political interests. The perceived improprieties prompted multiple federal prosecutors to withdraw from specific cases or resign in protest during the year. They also drew public rebukes from former Justice Department officials and in some instances from federal judges.

F3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The US homicide rate, at 5.0 per 100,000 inhabitants as of 2019, remains low by regional and historical standards, and overall crime rates have declined since the 1990s. However, murder rates reportedly rose by more than 20 percent in the first nine months of 2020, with even higher spikes in a number of large cities.

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 typically 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. Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department pulled back from previous federal policies aimed at imposing reforms on troubled local police departments through court-approved agreements.

Several high-profile police killings in 2020 stirred particular outrage. The March death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, which occurred during a raid targeting a suspect who was not present in Taylor’s apartment, sparked months of protests in the city. An investigation yielded “wanton endangerment” charges against one officer but no charges related to Taylor’s death, prompting allegations that the Kentucky attorney general failed to adequately present the case to the grand jury. In May, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, who had allegedly used a fake bill at a corner store, by kneeling on his neck for nearly eight minutes as three other officers stood by. The officers were fired and charged with offenses including murder, with a trial expected to occur in 2021.

Opinion polling suggested that the year’s protests against police violence and racial injustice were successful in shifting White Americans’ attitudes and raising their awareness of the problems; attempts by some protest leaders to mobilize support for structural reforms that would strip police departments of funding fared less well. The protests also succeeded in drawing media and advocacy attention to many police departments’ deep resistance to any reform or accountability mechanisms, and putting a spotlight on the presence within law enforcement of some officers with direct links to racist and White supremacist groups.

Conditions in prisons, jails, and pretrial detention centers are often poor at the state and local levels, and in 2020 COVID-19 outbreaks occurred at facilities across the country, producing infections and deaths at much higher rates than in the general population. Many jurisdictions and the federal government took steps to ease crowding by releasing suspects and convicted inmates who were deemed less dangerous.

Use of the death penalty has declined significantly in recent years. There were seven executions across five states in 2020—down from 22 in 2019 and a peak of 98 in 1999. The death penalty has been formally abolished by 22 states, with Colorado joining the list in 2020; in another 17 states where it remains on the books, executions have not been carried out for the past five years or more. However, in July 2020 the federal government resumed executions for the first time since 2003, and 10 federal executions were carried out by the end of the year, provoking widespread criticism from religious leaders and criminal justice advocates. Factors encouraging the decline of the death penalty include clear racial disparities in its application, with death sentences far more likely in cases involving White murder victims than Black murder victims; 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, as well as legal challenges to the constitutionality of the prevailing methods of lethal injection; and the high costs to state and federal authorities associated with death penalty cases. The US Supreme Court has effectively ruled out the death penalty for crimes other than murder and in cases where the perpetrator is a juvenile or mentally disabled, among other restrictions.

F4 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

An array of policies and programs are designed to protect the rights of individuals against discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and other categories, including in the workplace. However, 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 refugees, 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 80 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 61 cents for every dollar earned by White male workers as of 2017. Women are also most often affected by sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. A popular social media campaign that began in late 2017, the #MeToo movement, encouraged victims to speak out about their experiences. The phenomenon has led to the sudden downfall of powerful men in the worlds of politics, business, news, and entertainment, while 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, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, people of color experienced strikingly higher mortality from the virus. Asian Americans were the victims of a surge in discrimination and harassment in 2020, attributed in part to President Trump’s attempts to focus blame for the pandemic on China, where the initial outbreak occurred.

The Supreme Court issued landmark decisions involving gender and the rights of minority groups in 2020. In June, the court reaffirmed the validity of an 1866 treaty and recognized that much of eastern Oklahoma remained under the sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, a Native American tribe. Also that month, the Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights legislation includes LGBT+ people as a class protected from workplace discrimination. The decision was a rebuke to the Trump administration, whose effort to roll back previous administrations’ moves to uphold the rights of LGBT+ people through executive actions and rulemaking for federal agencies and contractors continued in 2020. A ban on transgender people serving in the military, announced in 2017, took effect in 2019, even as court challenges continued; existing service members who had already received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and had begun gender-affirming medical processes would be allowed to openly identify as their gender, but others, including new recruits, had to adhere to their “biological sex.”

The Trump administration in 2020 intensified its efforts to reduce the number of legal immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants entering and residing in the country. Such moves since 2017 had in many cases been hasty, uncoordinated, and underfunded, leading to implementation problems as well as conflicts with existing laws, constitutional protections, and international human rights standards. While the administration typically cited exaggerated security concerns as justification for its policies, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a new rationale and helped the administration achieve larger declines in the number of newly arriving immigrants and asylum claimants than had previously been possible.

Beginning soon after his inauguration in 2017, the president issued a series of three executive orders barring travel from a group of Muslim-majority countries on security grounds, twice revising the original order in response to lawsuits claiming that the bans were blatantly discriminatory. In 2018 the Supreme Court upheld the third version, which banned most entries by citizens of Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and one non-Muslim country, North Korea. Less severe bans were imposed on six additional countries in early 2020. These orders, combined with other administration changes, helped to reduce the number of refugees admitted to the United States for resettlement to its lowest point since the program began in 1980. The refugee resettlement cap for the 2021 fiscal year was slashed to 15,000 people, down from 18,000 in fiscal 2020, and actual admissions remained far below the cap in 2020; prior to the Trump administration, the annual caps had generally surpassed 70,000.

A succession of other Trump administration policies have focused on curbing the arrival of asylum seekers at the southern border, most of whom have come from Central America in recent years. The policies consistently drew legal challenges on the grounds that they denied asylum seekers basic due process, violated statutory rules on asylum applications, and breached international prohibitions on returning asylum seekers to unsafe countries, among other objections. In 2019, the administration unveiled a new program allowing border authorities to force non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated in the United States; tens of thousands of people were returned to Mexico under the program, joining a large preexisting set of would-be applicants often living in difficult and dangerous conditions there. The administration also announced in 2019 that individuals generally could not seek asylum in the United States if they passed through a third country without seeking and being denied asylum in that country, effectively blocking claims from Central Americans who travel through Mexico. Over the course of 2019, the United States signed agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—all poor countries with high crime rates that have generated large numbers of migrants—allowing US authorities to deport asylum seekers there if they passed through without applying for asylum. The administration has also gradually adjusted rules to extend permissible detention periods and broaden the list of deportable offenses. In 2020, the administration cited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify a broad slate of restrictions. A March order closed the border to asylum claimants, and federal agents began immediately returning all irregular border-crossers to Mexico or their countries of origin, including unaccompanied children. Separately in February, the Supreme Court allowed implementation of a new rule permitting the denial of permanent residency to applicants deemed likely to make use of state social benefits; immigrants’ rights advocates claimed the rule deterred immigrants from accessing necessary public health services, among other objections.

The Trump administration attempted to ramp up arrests and deportations of both undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they had committed crimes, and legal immigrants or refugees who committed crimes in the United States, even if they had long since completed their sentences. The previous practice had been to focus deportation efforts on the most dangerous criminal immigrants with the weakest ties to American communities. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to scale back its arrests and return to the focus on dangerous criminals, but the administration continued efforts to punish cities that refused to assist ICE agents in identifying and detaining undocumented immigrants. The administration’s enforcement drive has added to an existing backlog of cases in immigration courts; as of December 2020 there were more than a million pending cases, roughly double the number pending when Trump took office. The pandemic exacerbated poor conditions in immigration detention facilities; as of mid-November, over 7,300 detainees had tested positive for the virus. Under pressure from immigrants’ rights advocates, the administration took steps to reduce the population of ICE detainees, which declined by more than 50 percent between February and November. A surge of criticism followed revelations in September that a doctor at an immigration detention center in Georgia had performed invasive and unnecessary medical procedures, including hysterectomies, on detained women. Separately in June, the Supreme Court ruled, on procedural grounds, against the administration’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children; legal wrangling over reimplementation of the program continued at year’s end.

G Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights

G1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

There are no significant undue restrictions on freedom of movement within the United States, and residents are generally free to travel abroad without improper obstacles. A patchwork of temporary movement restrictions were imposed across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with states acting independently based on local conditions and strategies, though the rules were loosely enforced and relied mainly on voluntary compliance.

G2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Property rights are widely respected in the United States. The legal and political environments are supportive of entrepreneurial activity and business ownership. President Trump’s shifting and exemption-filled tariff policies prompted concern throughout his administration that political favoritism was distorting markets involving tariff-sensitive businesses. Similarly, perceived support for the administration allegedly influenced the awarding of government aid and contracts, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coronavirus-related business restrictions at the state and local levels caused significant disruption and confusion, prompting civil disobedience and public protests by some private business owners.

G3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Men and women generally enjoy equal rights in divorce and custody proceedings, and there are no undue restrictions on choice of marriage partner, particularly after a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that all states must allow same-sex marriage. In recent years, a growing number of states have passed laws to eliminate exemptions that allowed marriages of people under age 18 in certain circumstances. 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 the past several years, a series of new state laws have reduced women’s access to abortion without overtly breaching prior Supreme Court decisions on the issue, and some have survived judicial scrutiny, adding to state-by-state variation in access. In June 2020, however, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that would have significantly reduced abortion access in that state.

G4 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The “American dream”—the notion of a fair society in which hard work will bring economic and social advancement, regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth—is a core part of the country’s identity, and voters tend to favor government policies that they believe will enhance equality of opportunity. In recent decades, however, studies have shown a widening inequality in wealth and a narrowing of access to upward mobility. Inequality concerns mounted in 2020 as the recession linked to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive spike in unemployment—especially for Black and Hispanic workers—leading to record demand for food banks and other community services. Economic stimulus legislation passed by Congress in April and December mitigated the damage, in part by expanding unemployment benefits, but widespread hardship persisted at year’s end.

One key aspect of inequality 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 foreign competition. 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 coronavirus-related economic shock amplified this dynamic, disrupting employment and income for lower-earning, less-educated workers far more than for college-educated professionals. Although the country has legal safeguards against unsafe working conditions, workers in essential industries such as meat processing faced a high risk of contracting COVID-19 in practice, with inadequate protective equipment and hazard pay. Poorer children who lacked the resources to adapt to remote learning were also most harmed by pandemic-linked school closures, which threatened to exacerbate educational inequality.

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.