U.S. democracy flagged as backsliding
Major watchdog studies this week say U.S. democracy is sliding “at unprecedented speed,” arguing President Trump’s actions have accelerated a shift toward autocratic control — the reports were published March 19–20. — The DOJ has also subpoenaed former FBI director James Comey over the 2017 Russia intelligence assessment, signalling renewed scrutiny of the intelligence and decisions that shaped post‑2016 policy. (npr.org) (wfin.com)
V‑Dem’s Democracy Report 2026, published March 17, finds the U.S. Liberal Democracy Index score fell 24% in one year and that the country’s world rank slid from 20th to 51st out of 179 nations, based on a dataset of more than 32 million data points and contributions from over 4,200 experts. (v‑dem.net) The V‑Dem report highlights a dedicated chapter titled “Autocratization in the USA,” calling the pace of executive aggrandizement in the first year of the second Trump term “the most rapid” in modern U.S. history and explicitly compares the speed of decline to episodes in Hungary, Turkey and other cases. (V‑Dem Democracy Report 2026 PDF; npr.org) Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026, released March 19, reports global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year and records a 3‑point drop for the United States to a score of 81 on its 0–100 scale — the lowest U.S. score since Freedom House began using that scale in 2002. (freedomhouse.org) Bright Line Watch’s expert surveys — the project surveys more than 500 U.S. political scientists — show respondents placing the U.S. system “nearly midway” between a liberal democracy and a dictatorship in their latest assessment, reflecting mounting expert concern about institutional checks and norms. (npr.org; brightlinewatch.org) Separately, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida issued a grand‑jury subpoena for former FBI director James Comey last week seeking documents and testimony about his role in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference, part of a wider DOJ probe that has produced more than 130 subpoenas and previously targeted officials including former CIA director John Brennan. (bloomberg.com; reuters.com)
