'New and startling': Trump's return drives global decline in civic freedoms

Sparked by a crackdown on pro-Palestine activism across Europe and the United States, and fueled by President Donald Trump's return to the White House, a leading human rights monitoring group said Tuesday that civil liberties are on the decline in many parts of the world, with most people now living in countries where fundamental freedoms are under attack.

"Globally, it's not looking well," Ine Van Severen, a researcher at the monitoring group CIVICUS, said in an interview with The Redoubt.

Over the last year, researchers with CIVICUS — which describes itself as a "global alliance of civil society organizations and activists" — identified more than 3,100 "civic freedom" violations, some of the most common being arrests of nonviolent protesters and journalists.

Using a five-point scale, ranging from "open" to "closed" civic spaces, the group found that just 39 out of 198 countries and territories fully respect the rights to free expression, association and peaceful assembly. By comparison, 83 countries and territories are considered to be "repressed" or to have a "closed" civic space, representing 73 percent of the global population, according to the report.

What's notable is how many of the countries backsliding on CIVICUS' scale are in regions once considered — or at least, self-represented as — bastions of liberty.

The United States is one of 15 countries where conditions have "deteriorated" since Nov. 1, 2024, slipping from "narrowed" protections of fundamental freedoms to "obstructed." Other countries similarly downgraded include Liberia, Madagascar and Argentina.

But Western Europe also makes the list: France, Germany and Italy also fell to "obstructed," indicating "serious civic space constraints."

The report cites, among other things, "Germany's intense state crackdown on solidarity with Palestine," noting that in Berlin alone there have been nearly 9,000 criminal charges linked to anti-Israel activism since October 2023. Police have also used excessive force in shutting down these protests, with one woman at a silent vigil for Palestine in January 2025 "dragged away for carrying a heart-shaped hand warmer misidentified as a Hamas symbol."

In France, authorities have in particular targeted climate change activists, depicting them "as violent 'ecoterrorists,'" the report notes. In July 2025, it was reported that law enforcement had infiltrated one group — opposed to new highway construction —"and incited violence, setting the stage for a militarized police response," per CIVICUS.

And in Italy, a journalist who reported on "pro-fascist elements" in the youth wing of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party, and a pair of pro-refugee activists, "were targeted by Graphite, a military-grade spyware sold exclusively to governments." The software, which allows states to discretely hack a target's devices, is made by an Israeli tech company, Paragon Solutions, and is currently being deployed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"All the countries that like to portray themselves as democratic are actually slipping down," Van Severen said.

From bad to worse

The restriction of civil life in the U.S. did not begin with the Trump administration. Following the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his Department of Justice designated the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a terrorist organization. Prosecutors then accused it of providing "material support" for Palestinian militants, a nebulous charge that meant that funding for social programs could be portrayed as helping groups like Hamas win "hearts and minds."

According to Human Rights Watch, "The U.S. government's case was based in part on evidence obtained through FISA wiretaps as well as evidence obtained via questionable foreign intelligence from Israel, faulty translations, and accusations by anonymous Israeli military witnesses."

But just because civil liberties deteriorated before does not mean they cannot further erode, Deborah Makari, project officer for civil society rights and resiliency at the Charity & Security Network, noted in an interview. Makari helped lead research on the U.S. for the CIVICUS report and said she found an assault on fundamental freedoms that is much broader than before.

"We're seeing something that does feel new and startling," Makari told The Redoubt.

In September, Trump issued an executive order that purported to designate "Antifa" a "domestic terror organization." Weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security claimed, without evidence, that anti-fascist activists had "provided logistical support" to drug cartels, and that indeed foreign criminals were "in coordination with domestic extremist groups" in an effort to assassinate immigration agents.

Federal prosecutors have responded to the White House designation by filing the first known terrorism charges against two people allegedly associated with Antifa, which is not an actual organization but a label typically adopted by left-wing anti-fascists who embrace radical protest tactics, including property destruction. FBI Director Kash Patel described the accused as "Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremists," claiming they were involved in a July 4 attack on a Texas ICE facility in which a police officer was shot in the neck.

But the designation threatens to have far broader implications. On Dec. 4, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to compile a list of "extremist groups" that use "the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas," including "extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; [and] adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity." Bondi specified that such groups may have engaged in "tax crimes," suggesting that the IRS could strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status.

"There's been an effort to kind of frame any sort of progressive organization or advocacy work as part of this network of violence and terrorism," Makari noted. That's already had a chilling effect, she said, noting that the Charity & Security Network — established to help guide nonprofits on legal compliance in potentially hostile terrains — has fielded questions from center-left groups concerned about "exposing themselves or partners to criminal or civil liability," particularly when their work involves immigration or Palestine.

The 'mass shock' of killing USAID

The Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the ensuing loss of humanitarian aid in the developing world, could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under the age of 5, according to a study published in The Lancet.

The loss of U.S. support, coupled with the conspiracy theories spread by the Trump administration, also threatens democracy.

"The USAID funding freezing and cuts have had, across the world, a huge, huge impact on civil society," Van Severen, who led CIVICUS' research on the impact to civil spaces, told The Redoubt. "I think it was a mass shock across the world."

While perhaps best known for supporting efforts to combat hunger and the spread of disease, USAID also provided a lifeline to journalists and human rights groups around the globe. The sudden loss of funding and the lack of immediate alternatives resulted in much of their work coming to an end. But the harm didn't stop there.

"Once these funding cuts were announced, authorities smeared or publicly vilified organizations, and started investigations of organizations, that received USAID funding," Van Severen noted.

That smear campaign was fueled by the Trump administration, with billionaire Elon Musk, who claimed credit for destroying the agency, describing USAID as a "criminal organization" and "a viper's nest of radical-left marxists who hate America." Trump himself falsely claimed that "BILLIONS" from USAID had gone to "THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF'" for promoting his political opposition.

That line of attack was picked up around the world. As noted in the CIVICUS report, criminal investigations were subsequently opened in countries such as Georgia, Hungary and Slovakia. In Serbia, police raided five civil society groups "over allegations of 'misusing American taxpayer funds.'" In Kazakhstan, a member of the governing party, citing the Trump administration, called for adopting a "foreign agents law" that would allow USAID recipients and others to be targeted for undermining national security.

The trend toward increased repression predates the 2024 U.S. election, to be sure. But a superpower embracing the rhetoric and policies of authoritarian regimes has no doubt been a blessing for the world's repressors. For better or worse, the United States remains a model to much of the world, and what happens there can serve, elsewhere, as a license to do the same.

You can hear the impact in the way leaders talk.

"Things that used to not be openly said," Van Severen observed, "are now being said by politicians." Liberal, democratic values are no longer shared, even ostensibly; they are openly under assault. And while these attacks didn't all begin in January 2025, and cannot all be attributed to one man, there is no question that, "under Trump, they just escalated."

Contact the author at cdavis@theredoubt.net and follow him on Bluesky.