United States

General Overview

The area of freedom of expression shows a negative trajectory throughout the entire period under analysis, with serious episodes both under the Biden administration and — in a more systematic and direct manner — under Trump. Unlike other areas, setbacks in press freedom and the right to protest did not begin in January 2025 but had been accumulating in the context of the pro-Palestinian protests of 2024.

Biden Administration (June – January 2025)

The final semester of Biden recorded the first significant setback: throughout 2024, there were 48 arrests of journalists covering protests against the war in Gaza, half of them at the hands of the New York Police Department. In July 2024, the Capitol Police detained around 200 people for protesting in Congress during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. These episodes remind us that the repression of protest and the harassment of the press are not phenomena exclusive to far-right governments, though they do find their most systematic expression under administrations of that character.

Trump Administration (January – June 2025)

Press Freedom: Direct and Institutional Attacks

From the very first day, the Trump administration adopted measures with direct impact on the media:

• Suspension of 268 million dollars in federal funds for international independent media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, through executive order (January 20).
• Indefinite exclusion of an Associated Press reporter from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to use the term “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico” (February 11). A federal judge ordered their immediate reinstatement.
• Arrest of photojournalist Matthew Kaplan while covering an anti-deportation protest in Indiana (January 18).
• Arrest and detention for more than 100 days of journalist Mario Guevara, while livestreaming a protest against ICE raids in Georgia. He was kept detained despite charges being dropped and a judge ordering his release on bail (June 14).
• Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — last used during World War II — to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador without due process (March 14).
• On the institutional resistance front, a federal judge blocked the dismantlement of Voice of America in March 2025, ordering the reinstatement of more than 1,200 journalists placed on leave and prohibiting the closure of offices.

The Right to Protest: Repression and Resistance

The period recorded growing tension between state repression and citizen mobilization:

• Demonstrations under the slogan “No Kings” on Presidents’ Day (February 17), rejecting Trump’s policies including the first ICE operations.
• Mass protests in Los Angeles following ICE raids in June 2025, with thousands of people gathering peacefully at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
• Arrest of David Huerta, leader of the California janitors’ union (SEIU), during a protest against an ICE raid (June 6).
• Trump signed a memorandum deploying 2,000 members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles to suppress protests, without the consent of Governor Newsom — the first federalization of the National Guard to suppress civil protest in recent times (June 7).
• Thousands of people marched through Manhattan in national demonstrations against immigration raids and the military deployment in California (June 11).
• Mass march in Chicago against ICE raids and immigration policies (June 12).

The set of mobilizations during the period — which at their peak brought together tens of thousands of people across the country — represents one of the broadest expressions of civil resistance in the early months of the Trump administration.

General Overview

No other set of rights concentrated as much regressive activity during the period under analysis as sexual and reproductive rights. With 28 recorded events — including setbacks, threats, defenses, and forms of resistance — this area constitutes one of the key nodes of the Trump administration’s agenda and, at the same time, the field in which civil society responded most actively during the period under analysis.

The Biden administration closed its tenure with positive signals in this area: in November 2024, seven of the ten states that put abortion rights to a referendum — including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, and Nevada — voted in favor of constitutional enshrinement. The Supreme Court that same year rejected an attempt to restrict access to mifepristone, one of the medications used to guarantee safe abortion. In June 2024, Biden granted pardons to veterans convicted of “sodomy” offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

With Trump’s arrival, this landscape shifted dramatically and systematically from the very first day of his administration.

Biden Administration (June 2024 – January 2025)

Advances

The final phase of the Biden administration recorded significant advances in LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. In June 2024, pardons were granted to veterans who had been prosecuted for homosexual conduct under legislation now repealed. In November 2024, the results of referendums in seven states represented a historic advance for abortion rights at the subnational constitutional level, in a national context marked by the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also dismissed in June 2024 a lawsuit seeking to restrict access to mifepristone.

Trump Administration (January – June 2025)

LGBTQ+ Rights: An Unprecedented Normative Offensive

On January 20, 2025, hours after taking office, Trump signed Executive Order 14168 “Defending Women from Gender Ideology,” which officially defines only two sexes — male and female — determined at birth. This measure was the starting point of a chain of executive orders that included:

• The suspension of passports with X gender markers or those not matching the sex assigned at birth (January 22 and February 21, 2025).
• The ban on transgender persons in the armed forces (January 27, 2025).
• The elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in federal agencies (January 21, 2025).
• The restriction of access to gender-affirming care for those under 19 years of age through Executive Order 14187 (February 3, 2025).
• The ban on the participation of trans women in federally funded women’s sports (February 5, 2025).
• The revocation of Biden-era policies protecting LGBTQ+ people in education, housing, and immigration (February 22, 2025).
• The directive to review and withdraw funding from schools that promote content considered “gender ideology” (January 29, 2025).

This sequence of measures constitutes the most systematic dismantlement of LGBTQ+ rights at the federal level in recent American history.

Sexual and Reproductive Rights: Cuts, Restrictions, and Institutional Erasure

On sexual and reproductive health, the Trump administration simultaneously deployed multiple lines of action:

• Reinstatement of the “Global Gag Rule” (January 24), prohibiting U.S. funding to international organizations that inform or promote abortion using their own funds.
• Signing of an executive order to apply the Hyde Amendment and eliminate federal funding for abortion services (January 24).
• Removal of the ReproductiveRights.gov website, taken down on the day of inauguration.
• Order for the immediate halt of PEPFAR, the global HIV/AIDS program, with direct consequences in dozens of countries (January 20). Later modified to eliminate access to PrEP for anyone other than pregnant or breastfeeding women (February 1).
• Cuts of 20,000 employees from the Department of Health (HHS), eliminating a large part of the infrastructure for overseeing reproductive care.
• Elimination of government offices dedicated to reproductive health, HIV, maternal and child health, and research on assisted reproduction techniques.
• Freezing of approximately 35 million dollars in Title X program funds — a program dedicated to providing family planning and reproductive health services — affecting more than 840,000 patients (March 31).
• Withdrawal of the federal lawsuit seeking to guarantee emergency abortions under the EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) (March 1).
• Request by Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. for a full review of mifepristone by the FDA (May 6), in open contradiction with decades of scientific evidence.
• A federal judge overturned the reproductive privacy rule under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — the U.S. federal law establishing national standards to protect sensitive patient medical information from disclosure without consent) implemented in 2024 (June 18), eliminating safeguards on the use of data of patients seeking reproductive care.
• Cuts or elimination of programs that monitored maternal mortality, fertility outcomes, and reproductive health tracking (April 2025).

In parallel, the government systematically dismantled data, scientific guidelines, and digital public health resources on HIV, reproductive health, and LGBTQ+ rights — what organizations such as Interfaith Alliance characterized as “digital censorship” in service of a conservative ideological agenda.

Resistance and Defense

The response from civil society and the judiciary was significant, though in most cases it did not succeed in reversing the measures adopted:

• Nine organizations, including the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, filed a federal lawsuit against Trump challenging the executive orders on gender identity (February 20).
• The State of Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the application of orders against trans persons, including the threat of withholding funds from schools (April 22).
• The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of NFPRHA (National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association) against the Department of Health for the unlawful withholding of Title X funds (April 24). The lawsuit was withdrawn in December 2025 following the gradual restoration of the funds.
• Mass mobilizations during Pride Month in June 2025 expressed the LGBTQ+ community’s rejection of the Trump administration’s policies.
• The Supreme Court unanimously rejected in June 2025 an attempt to restrict access to mifepristone, ruling that the anti-abortion plaintiffs lacked standing.

General Overview

The area of labor rights shows a clearly differentiated trajectory between the two governments of the period: the Biden administration closed its tenure with a historically positive balance on trade union organization, while the Trump administration rapidly dismantled the main labor protection mechanisms built over previous decades.

Biden Administration (June – January 2025)

Advances in Trade Union Organization and Working Conditions

Biden’s final year recorded a peak in the creation of new unions and in the election of pro-worker union representatives, according to a report by the Center for American Progress that monitored the past 15 years. This result was closely linked to the profiles of the officials appointed to lead the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In October 2024, the Department of Labor launched a specific WANTO (Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations) fund of 6 million dollars to promote the labor inclusion of women in non-traditional jobs. In December 2024, the Starbucks workers’ union staged an unprecedented strike in more than 300 stores across a dozen cities, demanding a collective bargaining framework.

Trump Administration (January – June 2025)

Dismantlement of Labor Protections

The Trump administration began a systematic dismantling of labor protections from its earliest days, acting on three simultaneous fronts: oversight bodies, federal workers’ rights, and the minimum wage.

Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the body without a quorum and unable to protect labor rights. He also fired Jennifer Abruzzo, General Counsel of the NLRB, who had implemented policies strengthening the right to trade union organization (January 27).

The Executive Order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” revoked Executive Order 11246 of 1965 — which required affirmative action programs from federal contractors — and eliminated DEI programs in agencies and contracts (January 21).

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) instructed agencies to disregard telework clauses in union agreements when implementing the full return-to-office policy (February 3).

The Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of the collective bargaining agreement with Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, eliminating union rights for approximately 47,000 workers (March 7).

The Executive Order “Additional Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” revoked Biden’s EO 14026, which established a minimum wage of $17.75 per hour for federal contractors, affecting approximately 390,000 workers. The applicable minimum wage reverted to $13.30 and in some cases even to $7.25 per hour — a potential reduction of between 25% and 60% of annual income (March 14).

Trump signed Executive Order 14251 excluding approximately 1 million federal workers in more than 20 agencies from collective bargaining rights, invoking a national security clause. The affected agencies suspended the automatic deduction of union dues, financially weakening the unions (March 27).

Resistance

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and various union leaders responded sharply to Trump’s executive order eliminating collective bargaining rights for federal workers (March 28). However, resistance in the labor area was fewer in number and more limited in scope than in other areas, reflecting the structural weakening that the government’s own measures imposed on trade union actors.

General Overview

The set of rights addressed in this section presents a particular feature within the period under analysis: it was the only one in which the Biden administration already recorded significant setbacks, which were then drastically deepened by the Trump administration. Migration policy constitutes the central axis of this area, with measures of first-order humanitarian impact.

Biden Administration (June – January 2025)

Restrictions on the Right to Asylum

In June 2024, Biden issued an executive order enabling the apprehension and expulsion of migrants entering through the southern border without processing their asylum claims. In September 2024, this measure was ratified and strengthened. These restrictions were characterized by human rights organizations such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) as “harmful and illegal” and were challenged in court. In May 2025, a federal District Court overturned key parts of these measures at the initiative of the Immigrants’ Rights Advocacy Center of the Americas.

Advances in Religious Freedom

In parallel, in December 2024 the Biden-Harris administration launched the first National Strategy to counter Islamophobia and violence toward the Arab community in the United States, including measures against discrimination in access to employment and housing.

Trump Administration (January – June 2025)

Migration Policy: An Escalation of Setbacks

The Trump administration’s migration policy in its first six months constituted the set of measures with the greatest direct humanitarian impact of the period under analysis:

Executive order to enable Guantánamo Bay as a mass detention center for up to 30,000 migrants (January 29). On February 4, a first group of Venezuelans was transferred to Camp IV, previously used for detainees from the “war on terror.”

ICE memorandum for the re-detention of persons with deportation protection, with the aim of deporting them to third countries (February 2).

Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 200 Venezuelans to the CECOT prison in El Salvador without due process (March 14) — the first time this law has been used since World War II.

Termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of eleven countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela. Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the “self-deportation” of those affected (May 1).

Signing of agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala to accept deportation flights of people of other nationalities in exchange for financial compensation (April 13).

New travel ban for nationals of 19 countries, with a total ban for 12 of them and a partial one for 7 (June 4). The measure represents an expansion of the travel ban implemented during Trump’s first term.

The set of these measures — which combines the use of military facilities for immigration detention, the application of wartime legislation, the elimination of historical protections, and the use of third countries as destinations for forced deportation — constitutes a pattern of rights deterioration without precedent in the recent history of U.S. immigration policy.

Resistance and Defense

The D.C. District Court overturned in May 2025 key parts of the asylum restrictions implemented by Biden (May 9). This decision, driven by the Immigrants’ Rights Advocacy Center of the Americas, also has implications for the continuities of that policy under Trump.

Federal Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued an order limiting rapid deportations from Guantánamo, requiring that migrants be given the opportunity to express concerns about safety in destination countries (April 30).

Mass protests in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities against ICE raids and mass deportation policies (June 2025).