US downgraded in democracy index as press freedom concerns grow

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — “The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history,” one of the world’s top democracy researchers says in a new report.

The Varieties of Democracies Institute, or V-Dem, a research group based in Sweden, cites the “suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices” as a key reason for the “derailment of democracy” in the United States.

The researchers say that freedom of expression in the US “is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.”

The findings are featured in the 2026 edition of V-Dem’s annual Democracy Report, which finds that the US and 43 other countries are “autocratizing” while only 12 are becoming more democratic.

The researchers compile detailed datasets and produce “liberal democracy index” scores for 202 countries and territories altogether.

This year’s report describes what the researchers call a “bleak reality” for citizens: The ‘center of gravity’ for human experience and global governance has shifted heavily toward authoritarianism.”

V-Dem is housed at the University of Gothenburg and is funded by several Swedish institutions, the European Commission, the World Bank, the National Science Foundation in the US and other organizations.

Right-wing critics of V-Dem sometimes deride it as “Soros-funded” because the Open Society Foundation, founded by George Soros, is one of its many funders.

‘The first domino to fall’

By V-Dem’s assessment, four of the five most populous countries in the world are autocracies (India, China, Indonesia, and Pakistan). And the fifth, the US, is now an “electoral democracy,” having lost its status as a liberal democracy due to changes during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office.

The researchers say Trump’s first term was “laying a foundation,” but his second term has been much more significant, with a “rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.”

They cite federal government rollbacks of civil rights protections; attempts to suppress left-leaning groups; and a steep drop in legislative constraints on Trump, owing to a Republican-controlled Congress.

Many aspects relate to freedom of expression. V-Dem calls government censorship of the media the “preferred weapon of choice” for dictators and aspiring autocrats around the world.

Furthermore, this year’s report says, free speech rights are “often the first ‘domino’ to fall when countries autocratize.”

V-Dem points to media self-censorship — “a preemptive measure to avoid direct censorship or persecution” when countries are becoming less democratic — as a growing issue in nearly 40 countries, including the US.

Trump frequently claims that news organizations and other institutions are biased against him, a view that has motivated many of his actions criticized in the report.

And, to be sure, the group’s rankings for freedom of expression in the US remain far higher than in most countries.

But Trump-era “attacks on the press, academia, civil liberties, and dissenting voices” are all having an impact, the report asserts in a special section of this year’s report focusing on the US.

The researchers say they have studied numerous examples of countries “making U-turns” away from autocracy, and that “elections were often pivotal windows of opportunity, and the first electoral cycle was often decisive.”

They also say that “the judicial system — and in the end, the Supreme Court — is likely to be vital in stopping Trump administration’s autocratic advances.”

The-CNN-Wire
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