(Washington, DC) - US President Donald Trump's second term has been marked by widespread human rights violations and sustained attacks on core pillars of accountable, democratic governance in the country, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. The country has quickly fallen into a dangerous slide toward authoritarianism that impunity for serious abuses will only hasten.

In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices inmore than100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.

"The Trump administration's second term has been marked by a relentless and pervasive assault on rights and freedoms," said Tanya Greene, US program director at Human Rights Watch. "The Trump administration is not only rolling back hard-fought protections of recent decades; it is actively dismantling foundational pillars of US democracy."

The following were among key human rights challenges in the United States during 2025: 

On the global stage, US foreign policy has also been marked by a brazen disregard for US human rights obligations, and a sharp turn away from efforts to make promoting human rights a meaningful focus of US diplomacy.

In particular, the Trump administration:

"This administration's foreign policy mirrors its domestic assault on rights," said Sarah Yager, Washington director addressing foreign policy at Human Rights Watch. "The same contempt for the rule of law fueling attacks on rights at home is driving extrajudicial killings at sea that are in brazen defiance of international law."

Source: Human Rights Watch