Trump's Trials - The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

The Trump administration is substantially scaling back the State Department's annual reports on international human rights to remove longstanding critiques of abuses such as harsh prison conditions, government corruption and restrictions on participation in the political process, NPR has learned. Graham Smith has the story.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and you're listening to Trump's terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. It's going to be a very aggressive first hundred days of the new Congress. An unpredictable, transformative next four years. The United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. Each episode we bring you NPR's coverage of President Trump acting on his own terms. And that means sometimes doing things that no American president has tried before. NPR is covering it all in stories

like the one you are about to hear right after this. I mean, Martinez, every year the US State Department produces detailed reports on human rights in countries all over the world. Reports that are carefully read overseas by both authoritarians and activists. This year's reports are later than usual, and NPR has obtained a memo demanding significant changes to the content. Here's Graham Smith from our investigations team.

The U.S. Congress uses these country reports on human rights to determine how taxpayer money is spent overseas. U.S. security assistance, weapons, aid. When Marco Rubio was a Florida senator, he celebrated the reports for, quote, shedding light on foreign governments' failure to respect their citizens' fundamental rights, from the sexual exploitation of women and children to the denial of political rights to minorities. He took to the floor for human rights. Every day people are unjustly detained, they're tortured, publicly shamed and murdered.

And here's what their crimes are, simply disagreeing with the government. As Secretary of State, Rubio is now responsible for these reports, which the law says must be full and complete, documenting internationally recognized human rights. But a recent State Department memo reviewed by NPR instructs editors to remove references to more than 20 human rights violations to bring the reports into line with recent executive orders. Gone are violations against the right to peacefully assemble, the right to a fair public trial, to privacy. The Directive eliminates everything that's not separately listed in the language of the law.

For example, NPR reviewed a draft of the coming report on El Salvador, where the U.S. is sending immigrants and where this week President Trump said he'd like to jail U.S. nationals. The country has long been cited for its terrible prison conditions, but that section has been deleted. Across all countries, sections on government corruption and abuse of human rights defenders are deleted. I started running through the memo with Paul O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. He was shocked. What you've just read me out is a list of civil and political rights that are essential. So what this is, is a signal that the United States is no longer going to uphold those

rights that guarantee civic and political freedoms, the ability to speak, to express yourself, to gather, to protest, to organize. Remember how important it was to Senator Rubio that the reports document the sexual exploitation of children and women, the denial of political rights to minorities? Under Secretary Rubio, the guidance is to remove all that, along with material on violence

and discrimination against LGBTQ people. So let me continue just so I can share it with you. But extensive gender-based violence, crimes involving violence or threats of violence LGBTQ people. So let me continue just to share it with you. Extensive gender-based violence, crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of groups such as national, racial, religious or ethnic groups, indigenous peoples or internally displaced peoples. Not something that needs to be documented. You know, it is true that every administration will come in and take a look at whether the

formatting and content of these reports is as useful as they should be for upholding U.S. values, principles, and foreign policy interests. But what you've just read out and what we're seeing here is another order of magnitude. Any constraints or pretensions around protecting vulnerable populations writ large seems to be going away. NPR reached out to the State Department to ask what these erasures say about the U.S. commitment to human rights, but they declined to comment. Christopher Lamont served at State under President Biden. He said he'd heard about changes coming, and he knew the Trump administration took a different view of human rights,

but this memo was a surprise. To say that peaceful assembly is not an internationally recognized human right would be laughable if it weren't so serious. He says these reports are scrutinized by foreign governments line by line. You can't overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial. You also can't overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration's edits are seen to diminish not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites.

NPR obtained another document, one offered as a model of exactly how to make the changes to a country report, what to strike out section by section. And the country they chose? If you tell me this is about Hungary. I'm going to tell you it's about Hungary. Oh my God. Andras Liderer is the head of advocacy for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary's oldest and largest human rights organization. So the first section that's shown as being struck out is a section on prison and detention

center conditions. And so it's got- That's struck out? Yeah. That's gone? Yeah. The whole section is supposed to be deleted. And then it goes to a section, abusive physical conditions.

And it says, and this again is all struck out, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee received frequent complaints of temperature extremes in prisons, as well as pest infestations in prisons. So your group, specifically the things that you had brought to the attention, yeah, gone. Okay. Lovely. Over the past 10 years, President Viktor Orban's authoritarian government has turned away from civil liberties, and President Trump has turned toward Orban, calling him a great man and a great leader in Europe. These changes cut criticism of Hungary's government to the bone. Still, Lider says his work goes on. Just because certain human rights do not seem to

be important for your current government, that doesn't mean that they don't exist or they should not be important for you as a citizen. And there are so many ways you can ensure that these rights are respected by the authorities. And maybe it is time again that people in the US start looking into how to do that. Again, it's not just Hungary or El Salvador. Every country report is losing the sections on freedom of assembly, on fair elections, privacy. Paul O'Brien from Amnesty International, he worries that the deletions from the coming reports may signal more than just a shift in how the US regards other countries,

that it could signal how the administration views rights here at home. This roadmap, allowing other countries to engage in these issues, attacks on human rights defenders, denial of rights to these populations is potentially a roadmap for saying, we're not going to hold you accountable for that and we expect you to return the favor. Sources at State tell NPR this year's reports won't come out until May. In 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was criticized for releasing the reports without a press conference. One high-profile tweet read,

For the first time in a long time, the State Department human rights reports will not be presented by Secretary of State. I hope they reconsider. The author of that tweet? Senator Marco Rubio. I'm Graham Smith, NPR News. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the incoming Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down

the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsored messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detro. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.