How free is America in 2026? By the standard international measures, still free, but less so than it was: Freedom House scores the United States at 81 out of 100, down from 93 in 2005; V-Dem has reclassified the country from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy; and the Economist Intelligence Unit no longer rates it a “full democracy.” The constitutional guarantees in the Bill of Rights remain in place, and courts still enforce them, but press freedom, protest law, executive power, and the reach of the First and Second Amendments are all being actively contested.
What the Major Rankings Show
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026 report puts the United States at 81 out of 100, down from 84 the prior year and part of a 12-point slide since 2005. Among countries rated “Free,” only Nauru and Bulgaria have fallen further over that period. The report attributes the decline to partisan gridlock, executive overreach, weakened anticorruption safeguards, and a chilling effect on personal expression. Scores for the functioning of government fell after a prolonged government shutdown and what Freedom House called an unprecedented assertion of unilateral executive authority. Anticorruption scores dropped on the strength of weakened ethics protocols, conflicts of interest, and the use of clemency to benefit political allies.
The Varieties of Democracy Institute’s Liberal Democracy Index tells a sharper story. The U.S. score fell to 0.57 in 2025, its lowest since 1965, down from 0.80 or higher through 2017. V-Dem downgraded the country from “liberal democracy” to “electoral democracy,” pointing to a collapse in checks and balances and constraints on executive power at their lowest in more than a century. The U.S. now trails every other G7 nation on this measure.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index recorded the U.S. at 7.65 in 2025, its lowest since the index launched in 2006, and below the 8.0 threshold for “full democracy” that the country first fell under in 2016. The Cato Institute and Fraser Institute’s Human Freedom Index 2025, drawing on 87 indicators across 165 jurisdictions, ranks the United States 15th globally, with a personal freedom score of 9.15 and an economic freedom score of 8.10.
The Constitutional Baseline
The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, sets the floor. The First Amendment protects religion, speech, press, peaceful assembly, and petition. The Fourth Amendment restricts unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth and Sixth secure due process and fair criminal proceedings. The Eighth bars cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth and Tenth reserve unenumerated rights and undelegated powers. Later amendments extended those protections: the Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth guaranteed due process and equal protection against the states, the Fifteenth extended voting rights to formerly enslaved people, and the Nineteenth guaranteed women’s suffrage. Since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, courts have had the authority to strike down laws that violate those guarantees. That structure is intact. What varies is how much room governments take within it, and how vigorously courts push back.
Press Freedom
The steepest recent drop is in press freedom. In the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders moved the United States down seven places to 64th and said attacks on the press had become “systematic policy.” The country’s classification shifted from “satisfactory” to “problematic” in 2025.
The Mario Guevara case captured the pattern. Guevara, an Emmy-winning Spanish-language journalist, was arrested in June 2025 while covering a protest near Atlanta. Prosecutors dropped all charges after confirming he was complying with law enforcement, but he was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, with officials arguing his livestreaming of law enforcement activity made him a “threat.” An immigration judge granted him bond; the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered his deportation. The ACLU filed an emergency habeas petition calling his detention unconstitutional retaliation for protected journalistic activity. A federal appeals court denied a stay of removal, and Guevara was deported to El Salvador on October 3, 2025.
Structural pressures compound the picture. Workforce reductions at the U.S. Agency for Global Media led to the closure or downsizing of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. Since 2022, more than 8,000 journalists have been laid off in the United States, and roughly a third of the newspapers operating in 2005 have closed. The PRESS Act, a proposed federal shield law for journalists, failed to pass Congress for a second consecutive time in 2024.
Litigation over access has escalated. The New York Times sued the Department of Defense in December 2025 to challenge a policy requiring journalists to report only on pre-approved information and prohibiting the solicitation or publication of unauthorized, non-classified material. The ACLU argued the policy threatens core First Amendment freedoms. A separate dispute over the exclusion of news organizations from White House press briefings is expected to reach the Supreme Court.
Speech at the Supreme Court
The Court’s docket runs across the First Amendment. In Moody v. NetChoice (July 2024), the justices declared there is “no social media exception to the First Amendment” and found that government regulation of how platforms curate content generally violates the First Amendment. In Murthy v. Missouri (June 2024), a 6-3 majority ruled that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue over the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies about content moderation, finding no concrete link between government conduct and the platforms’ independent decisions. In TikTok v. Garland (January 2025), the Court upheld the law compelling TikTok’s sale or cessation of U.S. operations.
In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (June 2025), the Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for sexually explicit websites, effectively reversing a 2004 precedent. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a 6-3 majority held that a Maryland school board must allow parents to opt their children out of curriculum featuring LGBTQ-inclusive books based on religious beliefs. The current term’s arguments include conversion therapy as protected speech, campaign finance limits on political parties, demands for nonprofit donor lists, prisoner religious rights, and restrictions on demonstrations near public venues.
One suit stands out for its posture. Trump v. British Broadcasting Corporation, filed December 15, 2025, in Miami federal court, is a $10 billion defamation action brought by a sitting president against a foreign news outlet over a documentary about January 6, 2021. The BBC moved to dismiss, arguing Trump suffered no injury since he won the 2024 election and that the documentary never aired in the United States. As of June 2026, a federal judge ordered Trump’s attorneys to explain a missed filing deadline and show cause why the case should not be dismissed. Similar defamation suits filed by Trump against The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were previously dismissed.
The Second Amendment
The Court has continued to expand Second Amendment protections under the “text, history, and tradition” test from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022). On June 25, 2026, in Wolford v. Lopez, a 6-3 majority struck down a Hawaii law that barred concealed-carry permit holders from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public without the owner’s express consent. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, called the restriction “presumptively unconstitutional.” The ruling affects similar laws in California, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland.
Dozens of pending petitions challenge the federal lifetime ban on firearm possession by convicted felons, particularly as applied to nonviolent offenses. Other cases involve the federal machine gun ban, prohibitions on 18-to-20-year-olds purchasing handguns, bans on semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines in Illinois, Connecticut, and Washington, and a challenge to disarming individuals who use controlled substances. On February 7, 2025, President Trump issued an order titled “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” after which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives replaced its “zero tolerance” enforcement policy with a framework giving more latitude to licensed firearms dealers.
Religious Liberty
Religion has been a heavy focus of executive action. On May 1, 2025, President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission by executive order, naming Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick chairman and Dr. Ben Carson vice chair. The commission advises the White House on religious liberty policy, identifies emerging threats, and recommends executive or legislative action. Its mandate covers First Amendment rights of religious institutions, conscience protections in health care and vaccine mandates, parental rights in education, and what the order called the “debanking of religious entities.” The commission is scheduled to terminate on July 4, 2026, unless extended.
A February 2025 order titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” established a Department of Justice task force. In July 2025, the IRS announced it would stop enforcing the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 provision that prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates while retaining tax-exempt status. A separate Office of Personnel Management memo from July 2025 permits federal workers to proselytize in the workplace.
In Congress, Senator Ted Budd introduced the Banning Perpetrators of Religious Persecution Act of 2026, which would deny U.S. visas to foreign nationals involved in violations of religious freedom and require the Secretary of State to publish a list of individuals barred under the act. The Do No Harm Act, reintroduced in March 2025 by Democrats, would amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to prevent it from overriding federal protections in areas like employment discrimination and health care access.
Executive Orders and Civil Liberties
January 2025 brought a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” ordered the termination of DEI programs across the federal government and required federal contractors to certify they do not operate programs that violate anti-discrimination laws. It revoked Executive Order 11246, which had governed equal employment opportunity for federal contractors since 1965.
A follow-up order on March 26, 2026, requires agencies to include anti-DEI certification clauses in all new contracts of $15,000 or more and directs the Attorney General to pursue False Claims Act enforcement against contractors who make false certifications. The terms apply to new contracts beginning April 27, 2026, and to existing contracts by July 24, 2026.
These orders are being challenged in National Urban League v. Trump, filed February 19, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal, argue the orders violate the First Amendment by chilling speech related to diversity and equity and the Fifth Amendment on vagueness and equal protection grounds. On May 2, 2025, Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied their motion for a preliminary injunction, finding they lacked standing on several provisions and stating that “the government need not subsidize the exercise of constitutional rights to avoid infringing them.” The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in June 2025, the government moved to dismiss in August 2025, and the case remains pending.
The Right to Protest
Legislative efforts to restrict peaceful assembly have accelerated. According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, 45 states have considered 384 bills restricting protest rights, with 60 enacted and 35 pending as of mid-2026. Many target protests near energy infrastructure by reclassifying trespass or disruption as felonies with steep penalties.
Louisiana enacted a law in 2026 expanding the definition of “critical infrastructure” to include all oil and natural gas facilities and associated roads. Under the law, unlawful entry with intent to “intimidate” a population or “influence the policy of a unit of government” can be prosecuted as a terrorism offense carrying 5 to 20 years in prison with hard labor. A pending federal bill would create a new felony for disrupting gas pipeline construction, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 for individuals. Similar bills in Illinois, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania propose new felonies or expanded civil liability for protest-related activity near pipelines, utilities, and other designated infrastructure.
The legal doctrine protecting assembly itself has quietly eroded. The Supreme Court has not issued a decision based explicitly on “free assembly” grounds in more than 40 years. Courts now analyze assembly claims under the broader umbrella of free speech, and governments retain broad authority to impose “time, place, and manner” restrictions on protests in public spaces.
The constitutional framework is not the variable in any of this. What changes is how the branches of government use the room the Constitution gives them, and how consistently courts and citizens hold that room open. The rankings are one way of measuring the result. The cases, statutes, and orders above are the substance behind the number.