When I first moved to Thailand in the 1990s to work with a small human rights organization, we waited for the annual U.S. State Department’s human rights report with bated breath. It was not because we anticipated information we did not already know, but because it provided critical external validation that gave us support and protection.

The State Department’s reports have served as an anchor worldwide, holding everyone to a universal standard, calling balls and strikes based on clear indicators and grounded in international law. The report has been used to protect the vulnerable, as governments find it harder to swat away than reports by domestic monitors, and report findings have even been used in courts of law to back asylum claims.

The latest human rights report for 2024, put out last week by the Trump administration, is an extreme departure from decades of painstaking tracking of global human rights. It eliminates multiple critical human rights indicators, redefining in many ways who qualifies as human (or at a minimum prioritizes which humans are most important). It therefore fails to paint a useful picture of the actual situation in most countries as key developments are not even mentioned.

The report does, however, provide an accurate description — by what it does and does not include — of what the U.S. has become, our values and priorities.

This human rights report differs from previous ones through omission more than addition. All the rights and freedoms associated with democracy —........

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