One hundred days into his second term, President Trump has led with cruelty and chaos, creating a human rights emergency by systematically eroding human rights protections, fostering a climate of fear and division, and undermining the rule of law.
The president, his administration, and Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, have targeted and undermined vital U.S. and international systems, institutions, and initiatives designed to make ours a safer and fairer world, using authoritarian tactics, policies and rhetoric, and turbocharging harmful trends already present. This all-out assault on multilateralism, asylum, racial and gender justice, global justice, global health and life-saving climate action threatens decades of painstaking work to build up and advance universal human rights and risks an acceleration of such practices globally.
The Trump administration has also weaponized the government to punish and silence dissent. The administration has withheld funding from colleges and universities, limited journalists’ access to the White House, and arrested and threatened to deport students exercising their right to freedom of expression.
In this review of President Trump’s first 100 days, we highlight the compounding impacts of many small and large actions by the administration, identifying how these attacks are jeopardizing human rights in ten key areas.
This is not intended as a comprehensive assessment of the many anti-rights actions taken in the last 100 days but offers a snapshot of how the “shock and awe” of policy changes are fundamentally shifting human rights protections in key areas affecting millions of people.