Secretary of State Monae Johnson needs to do more than sign one amicus curiae brief to reverse the decline of democracy. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s latest Global State of Democracy report finds that the United States is now leading this century’s distressing global retreat from government of the people, by the people, and for the people:
For several years, Dr. Seema Shah, who heads the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s democracy assessment team, said their researchers have observed a global pattern of democratic decline: “Severe drops in scores that measure freedom of expression, freedom of the press, credible elections, effective parliament,” she said.
…And Shah says one country stood out for how far its democracy has declined. “The clearest example, unfortunately, is the United States,” she says.
The report says that in 2025, “President Donald Trump quickly amassed power in the executive branch and wielded it to further a narrow set of personal goals and pursue retaliation against perceived enemies. … The results have been far-reaching, undermining the rule of law domestically and internationally and testing long-standing alliances and multilateral cooperation.”
Shah says the U.S. has historically served as a bastion of democratic governance, with strong performance in the rule of law and judicial independence and a prominent role in promoting democracy around the world. “But that’s no longer the case,” says Shah.
“Inside the U.S. and outside the U.S., we’re seeing in the U.S. administration policies harming domestic democracy…but also really weakening global norms and actually providing fodder for other non-democratic leaders.”
Democracy, she notes, is no longer the central focus of U.S. foreign policy. Democratic values are also no longer the basis for new alliances globally, Shah says, noting that the democratic aid the U.S. used to provide to developing countries has been dismantled [Rob Schmitz, “State of U.S. Democracy Reaches New Low, Report Finds,” NPR: All Things Considered, 2026.09.15].
Contributing to our democratic decline is the failure Congress to stand up to a radically unitary (I-IDEA uses the term Caesarist) executive branch:
The failure of Congress, controlled by a Republican Party subservient to the president to a historically anomalous degree, to assert its power and constitutional authority in the face of White House actions has led to the USA’s lowest Effective Parliament score in the history of the GSoD Indices (International IDEA 2026c). In moves that legal scholars argue have little or no basis in law or precedent, leading White House officials have usurped Congress’s constitutional authority to appropriate public funding, primarily through novel applications of the president’s power to “impound” or “rescind” already budgeted government funds (Bouie 2025; Joyce 2025; O’Connor et al. 2025; Sandy 2025; Kramer 2026). The manner and speed with which the White House has assumed congressional powers during the second Trump administration are novel, but they are part of a decades-old trend in which Congress has increasingly deferred to the president on matters encompassed by ever more broader definitions of national security (Wills 2011). In April 2026, the Department of Justice went so far as to invoke “national security” grounds in a legal filing seeking permission to build a new White House ballroom [last link added from footnote; International IDEA, The Global State of Democracy 2026, retrieved 2026.09.16].
Voting Republicans out of Congress and retaking the Legislative Branch won’t completely reverse the decline of democracy, but it’s the most immediate action American voters can take to put this nation back on track.