“Less than 30 minutes ago — accusations are growing that the U.S. is entering an ‘authoritarian shift’ under Trump, with civil liberties and press freedoms under threat… but there’s even more to this story 👇👇”

“Less than 30 minutes ago — accusations are growing that the U.S. is entering an ‘authoritarian shift’ under Trump, with civil liberties and press freedoms under threat… but there’s even more to this story 👇👇”

The U.S. is showing signs of undergoing a “rapid authoritarian shift” as civic freedoms in the country decline following President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a group that tracks the status of such liberties and the threats they face around the world is warning.

CIVICUS, an international network of civil society groups that advocates for stronger civil liberties, downgraded its assessment of U.S. civic freedoms from “narrowed” to “obstructed” in a new report on Tuesday, months after it addedthe country to a global human rights watchlist earlier this year.

Long-established democracies are showing signs of rapid authoritarian shift, marked by weakened rule of law and growing constraints on independent civil society. Argentina and the USA exemplified this trend,” the report said.

CIVICUS, in collaboration with 20 other civil society partners, assesses countries’ current state of freedom with five categories: closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed, and open.

The “narrowed” label, which the U.S. was previously classified under, is applied to countries where the groups find that people are generally able to exercise their rights of expression, free speech, and assembly, but there are some attempts to violate these rights by the government.

The “obstructed” category, meanwhile, contains countries where the organizations have determined that “the full enjoyment” of civil rights is constrained through legal and practical means.

“Although civil society organisations exist, state authorities undermine them, including through the use of illegal surveillance, bureaucratic harassment and demeaning public statements,” CIVICUS writes in its description of the label. “Citizens can organise and assemble peacefully but they are vulnerable to frequent use of excessive force by law enforcement agencies, including rubber bullets, tear gas and baton charges.”

Describing its reasoning for downgrading the U.S., the group wrote that “Trump has issued unprecedented executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, global cooperation and international justice.”

The report also pointed to what the group described as a “militarised response” to protests against Trump’s aggressive immigration moves.

Trump has sent troops to multiple cities across the country, including the deployment of thousands of National Guard members and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles over the summer after protests broke out in the city over immigration raids. A federal judge ruled in September that Trump violated longstanding federal law when sending the troops to the city, finding the Administration “systematically used armed soldiers” for law enforcement purposes. The President has also deployed federal troops to several other Democratic strongholds in what the White House has characterized as an effort to combat crime.