Has the Land of the Free Become a Failed Democracy?
Is America's descent from democracy now definitive?
For much of modern history, the United States has proudly billed itself as “the land of the free” and a model democracy. In recent years, however, prominent watchdogs and research organizations have raised alarms about the health of American democracy. To evaluate whether the U.S. is sliding toward a failed democracy, we can apply several tests or criteria defined by respected, nonpartisan organizations. Below, we delve into each of these dimensions using authoritative measures to see where the United States stands as of 2025.
Free and Fair Elections
One fundamental test of a democracy is whether its elections are free, fair, and competitive, allowing citizens to choose their leaders without undue hindrance or fraud. By this measure, the U.S. has a mixed record in recent years. On the one hand, American elections remain open and hotly contested, with high voter participation in 2020 (the highest in over a century) and robust legal safeguards against outright fraud. International observers have consistently found no evidence of significant fraud in recent national elections, and institutions ultimately upheld the results in 2020 despite unprecedented pressure from the incumbent, losing candidate. However, the quality of U.S. elections has deteriorated on several fronts:
Election Integrity Rankings: A global study on electoral integrity by researchers (the Electoral Integrity Project) ranked the United States as the lowest among liberal democracies, and just 75th worldwide in election quality. The U.S. score plunged particularly after the tumultuous 2020 election, when the incumbent’s refusal to accept defeat and the ensuing January 6th riots revealed a failure to ensure a peaceful, widely-accepted transfer of power. In fact, experts note that disputed results and lack of loser’s consent – as seen in 2020 – severely undermine democratic standards, since democracy requires that elections are decided by ballots, not violence.
Free Voting Access: Following 2020, numerous U.S. states passed new voting restrictions under the pretext of “fraud prevention.” According to Freedom House (a leading pro-democracy NGO), many of these 2021–2022 laws “made voting more difficult,” for example by imposing stricter ID requirements and limiting mail-in ballots. While some states simultaneously expanded voting rights, the net effect has been uneven access, with minority voters often hit hardest by obstacles such as voter-ID laws, roll purges, and reduced early voting. These measures, combined with the Supreme Court’s rollback of Voting Rights Act safeguards, have raised concerns that not all citizens have equal opportunity to vote.
Gerrymandering and Electoral Fairness: Another chronic issue in the US is gerrymandering, the partisan drawing of electoral districts. US elections are free but not always fair in representation; boundaries are often “craftily drawn” by state legislators to entrench one party’s power. This leads to many “safe” seats and can distort outcomes (e.g. a party winning a minority of votes but a majority of seats), undercutting the democratic principle that voters should choose their representatives, not vice versa.
Election Administration and Trust: In several states, election-denying candidates (who openly questioned the 2020 result) ran for offices like Secretary of State or Governor, which oversee elections. Many were defeated in 2022, preventing a potential takeover of election machinery. However, the fact that a significant faction attempted to politicize election certification has shaken trust. A stark indicator comes from the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index: the US now ranks a mediocre 43rd in the world on the “lawful transition of power”, after a 12% decline in that score since 2016. In other words, compared to other nations, the United States is no longer a top-tier performer in smoothly transferring power after elections – a direct consequence of the 2020 crisis.
Erosion of Election Oversight: President Trump has enacted various efforts to undermine the fair electoral system since his second term began, most memorably attempting to remove the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and signing an executive order bringing independent regulatory agencies under his control. Subsequent resignations left the FEC without a quorum, incapacitating its ability to enforce campaign finance laws during a critical election period.
In summary, U.S. elections are still competitive and legally legitimate, but democratic integrity is eroding. Respected evaluations show growing problems, from new voting barriers and gerrymandering, to a fraying norm of accepting election results, all of which put the U.S. at risk of further democratic backsliding if not addressed.
Independent Media and Information
A second crucial pillar of democracy is a free and independent press, which informs the public and holds power to account. The United States has a strong tradition of press freedom protected by the First Amendment. There is no official censorship regime, and journalists can criticize leaders openly. However, this is just surface level media independence. The test here is not just formal freedom, but whether the environment is truly vibrant, independent of undue influence, and trusted by citizens. On that front, recent data is troubling:
Press Freedom Index: Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a highly regarded watchdog, now ranks press freedom in the U.S. as “problematic.” In the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, the U.S. fell to 57th out of 180 countries, the lowest position ever for America since RSF began its rankings two decades ago. This marks a steady decline from 2013 (when the U.S. was 32nd) to around 45th in 2023, and down further into the 50s in the last two years.
Such a drop indicates that the U.S. media climate is now worsening significantly. The RSF report cites increasing economic pressures on newsrooms (many local outlets have closed or been bought out, concentrating ownership) and rising hostility toward journalists as key drivers of the decline. In recent years, journalists in the U.S. have faced record numbers of arrests and physical attacks (especially during protests), and inflammatory rhetoric from some politicians has labelled the press as “enemies”. All contributing to a prohibitive environment for free journalism.
Independence from Powerful Interests: Although the U.S. government generally does not censor media, powerful private interests do hold major sway. A handful of conglomerates own a large share of TV networks, newspapers, and social media platforms, raising concerns about media consolidation. Partisan outlets and billionaires (from across the political spectrum) also exert influence, whether it’s politically motivated ownership of outlets or the funding of disinformation campaigns.
This environment makes truly independent, unbiased reporting harder to sustain. RSF notes that U.S. media ownership is “highly concentrated,” and many outlets are politically polarized, which skews coverage and limits the diversity of viewpoints reaching the public.
Public Trust and Truth Decay: Perhaps the starkest sign of trouble is the collapse in public trust in the media. According to Gallup polling, only 31% of Americans in 2024 say they have a “great deal or fair amount” of confidence that the news is reported fully and fairly. This ties record-low levels, meaning roughly two-thirds of citizens have little or no trust in the mass media. In fact, for the past three years, more Americans say they have no trust at all in the media (36%) than those who have even a fair amount of trust.
Such pervasive distrust is fueled by perceptions (across the political spectrum) that media outlets are biased or influenced by hidden agendas. For example, 69% of teens in a recent survey believed the U.S. media intentionally inject bias into news stories. This breakdown in a shared factual foundation harms democracy, as citizens cannot even agree on basic facts or which sources are credible.
In summary, the U.S. still possesses a surface-level free press by law, but practical press freedoms have been undermined for political gain. Objective indices and surveys show that the media’s ability to function as a truly independent watchdog is compromised by economic and political pressures, and that public faith in media has been deeply eroded. A healthy democracy depends on informed citizens, so this trend is a worrisome marker against America’s democratic health.
Corruption and Government Integrity
Another test of a functioning democracy is its immunity to corruption – that is, whether public officials operate with transparency and in the public interest, rather than being bought off by private interests or abusing power for personal gain. High levels of corruption (or even perceptions of corruption) indicate democratic failure, as governance serves the few at the expense of the many. To assess this, we turn to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and related measures of institutional integrity:
Corruption Perceptions Index: The CPI is a globally recognized benchmark that scores countries on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). In the latest 2024 CPI report, the United States scored 65/100, which is a record low for the U.S. since the current methodology began.
The drop to 65 represents a four-point decline in just one year and places the U.S. rank at No. 28 globally, tied with countries like the Bahamas. In other words, over two dozen nations are perceived as less corrupt than the United States, and America has not been among the top 20 “cleanest” countries since 2017. This is a sobering statistic: the self-styled leader of the free world is now seen as having more corruption than more advanced democracies elsewhere.
What’s Driving the Decline?: Transparency International’s analysis points to several factors behind the U.S. downturn. One prominent issue in 2024 was ethical breaches at the highest court – a series of scandals involving Supreme Court justices receiving undisclosed gifts and benefits from wealthy donors. This raised doubts about the independence and integrity of the judiciary. In fact, TI noted that an index tracking perceptions of judicial ethics “dropped substantially,” dragging down the overall U.S. corruption score. The situation became so concerning that the Supreme Court hastily adopted a new ethics code, but observers argued it lacks enforcement teeth, so public confidence remains low. The judiciary is supposed to be a bulwark of rule of law; when its reputation for impartiality falters, it counts as democratic backsliding.
Money in Politics: Another longstanding form of “legal corruption” in the U.S. is the outsized influence of money and special interests on politics. Thanks to court decisions like Citizens United (2010), election spending by corporations and super PACs has exploded. Freedom House notes that extremely wealthy donors now play an outsized role in campaign financing, often via “dark money” groups that hide donor identities.
Lobbyists representing industries or foreign governments also seek to sway policymakers, at times blurring lines with unethical conduct. While bribery in the classic sense is rare in the U.S., this systemic flood of private money amounts to institutionalized corruption: policies tend to favor those who fund campaigns, undermining the democratic ideal of equal representation. It’s no surprise public trust in government is low when people perceive politicians as captive to special interests.
Transparency and Accountability: A healthy democracy requires that officials who engage in misconduct face consequences. The U.S. has strong laws on paper, but enforcement can be inconsistent. The Federal Election Commission (FEC), for example, is tasked with policing campaign finance, yet it is often deadlocked and ineffective, as it’s evenly split between parties and can’t reach the needed votes to act.
This has allowed dubious funding practices to continue unchecked. On a positive note, investigations and prosecutions have targeted some abuses, e.g., over 1,200 individuals have been charged for the January 6 Capitol attack, with hundreds convicted. That accountability for an anti-democratic assault is a good sign.
Backsliding Under Trump: Much of those positives have been reversed in recent months under the renewed influence of Donald Trump. During his second term, Trump pardoned numerous Capitol rioters, effectively shielding those who engaged in anti-democratic violence from consequences and undermining the sanctity of elections free from violent overthrow.
More recently, he has been accused of monetizing political influence through a meme-based cryptocurrency, where top-tier investors receive perks like private dinners, photo ops, and exclusive access. This raises severe concerns about pay-to-play politics, where political power becomes a direct reward for financial backing. Some commentators and ethics experts have warned that the U.S. may now be entering a "golden age of corruption" under Trump’s leadership, although these developments are still too recent to be reflected in formal democracy indexes. If unchecked, these trends may further erode public trust and push the U.S. toward a system where wealth, rather than votes, determines access to political power.
"Thursday Night Massacre": In February 2025, seven senior prosecutors resigned from the Department of Justice after being ordered to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. This unprecedented event, dubbed the "Thursday Night Massacre," raised serious concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department and the erosion of the rule of law. The resignations were compared to the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal, highlighting the gravity of the situation.
By the corruption test, the U.S. is faltering massively. Many public servants still operate honorably, but by global standards the U.S. now has a significantly tainted image. From a president pardoning supporters attempting insurrection, to the receipt of money for access (hidden in digital currency), to the pervasive role of money in politics, the indicators of corruption have worsened.
This signals a democracy that is losing the trust of its own people, and the international community, in its integrity. Reversing this trend would likely require major reforms in ethics rules, campaign finance, and stricter enforcement of anti-corruption laws. The fact that presidents have now been deemed to be entirely unable to be prosecuted for any act whilst president – including refusing to accept election results, or encouraging insurrection – is a sign that the US may have lost its grip on the ability to rein in corruption at all.
Checks and Balances & Rule of Law
This brings us on to checks and balances and the rule of law. A defining feature of true democracies (versus failed ones) is the presence of strong checks and balances, meaning independent institutions that can constrain abuses of power by an individual or group of individuals, and thus that a prevailing rule of law applies equally to all. This includes an independent judiciary, a legislature that can oversee the executive, and respect for constitutional limits. How does the U.S. fare on this test? Once again, credible data shows both strengths and growing weaknesses:
Constitutional System Under Strain: The U.S. Constitution’s design provides for separation of powers, but in practice partisan polarization has weakened effective checks. For instance, Congress’s ability to serve as a check on the president has been undermined by party-line dysfunction, e.g., impeachment processes devolving into purely partisan votes, or key oversight functions grinding to a halt due to political deadlock. Freedom House rates the U.S. well in having freely elected officials in charge, but notes that “partisan polarization” often paralyzes policymaking.
In recent years, this has led to frequent brinkmanship (like near government shutdowns and debt default standoffs) rather than good governance. The Economist’s Democracy Index specifically flags “political gridlock” in Washington as an ongoing problem that drags the U.S. score down. When basic legislation or appointments cannot get through due to hyper-partisanship, it suggests the “functioning of government” – one of the Democracy Index categories – is impaired. Indeed, the U.S. score in that category is relatively low for a developed democracy, reflecting institutional stalemate.
Judicial Independence: The judiciary has long been a cornerstone of rule of law in America. Federal judges, once appointed, are insulated from politics and have struck down unconstitutional actions. That said, trust in judicial independence has eroded due to political contention over court appointments (e.g. battles over Supreme Court seats) and, as noted, ethical lapses. The Supreme Court’s legitimacy has suffered in public opinion; approval of the Court hit historic lows around 2023–24 amid perceptions it is driven by partisan agendas and affected by unethical influence. A democracy “fails” if courts no longer impartially uphold the law. The U.S. isn’t there yet, but alarm bells are ringing, particularly with the decision to make a president above the law regardless of how personally-enriching his actions are.
Encouragingly, courts did play a role in 2020 by rejecting dozens of baseless election fraud lawsuits, showing independence in the face of political pressure. The rule-of-law test was also met when judges sentenced perpetrators of political violence (from the Capitol riot) to lengthy prison terms, however a system where the president has overturned this has cast huge doubts over its functioning democracy. These are signs that some checks and balances are no longer fitting.
Civil Liberties and Accountability: Democracies also protect civil liberties (free speech, assembly, minority rights) and allow civil society and media to serve as watchdogs. The U.S. record on civil liberties is still comparatively strong, but not spotless. For example, freedom of expression remains robust, yet there have been concerns about government surveillance, heavy-handed policing of protests, and attempts at book bans or gag orders in some states.
Freedom House’s Global Freedom Score for the U.S. stands in the mid-80s/100 – solidly “Free” but significantly lower than many peer democracies in Western Europe. This decline over the past decade stems partly from issues like racial justice protests met with force, restrictions on voting rights, and the previously discussed media and corruption problems. Furthermore, the unequal treatment of minority groups (e.g. racial disparities in criminal justice and voting disenfranchisement of ex-felons) has been identified as a factor undermining the promise of political equality. All of this feeds public cynicism. According to Freedom House, a vicious cycle has formed: partisan polarization, racial inequality, and special-interest influence reinforce each other, breeding distrust and democratic dysfunction. When large segments of the population feel the system is “rigged” or not responsive to them, the foundations of liberal democracy grow unstable.
Backsliding Under Trump: In 2025, the Trump administration has initiated a series of aggressive immigration policies that have raised significant concerns among civil liberties advocates. These measures include mass deportations, the revival of controversial legal statutes, and the expansion of executive powers, leading to widespread apprehension about the erosion of constitutional protections.
One of the most notable actions is the administration's push for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct 3,000 arrests per day, a substantial increase from previous years. This directive has led to collateral arrests, where individuals encountered during operations, regardless of their criminal history, are detained. Such practices have been criticized for potentially violating due process rights and fostering an environment of fear among immigrant communities.
Additionally, the administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify the detention and deportation of individuals from countries deemed hostile. This application, particularly targeting Venezuelan nationals, has been challenged in courts for its constitutionality and the lack of due process afforded to those affected.
The administration's actions have also included the termination of humanitarian parole programs, such as the CHNV program, which previously allowed individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to reside temporarily in the U.S. The abrupt end of these programs has left many in legal limbo and heightened the risk of deportation.
Furthermore, the establishment of the proposed Office of Remigration within the State Department signals a shift towards policies that align with far-right ideologies advocating for the removal of immigrants to achieve ethnic homogeneity. This move has been met with alarm from human rights organizations, who view it as a step towards normalizing extremist rhetoric within federal policy.
Collectively, these developments represent a significant departure from established norms and have prompted widespread concern over the potential long-term impacts on civil liberties and the democratic fabric of the nation.
Using Justice Department to Target Political Enemies: In early 2025, President Trump directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate political opponents, including members of the Biden administration and Democratic fundraising platforms like ActBlue. These actions marked a significant departure from the post-Watergate norm of DOJ independence, raising concerns about the use of federal law enforcement for political purposes.
Overall, America’s institutions are being tested as never before. Checks and balances do exist, the question is whether they are still strong enough to prevent democratic collapse. The evidence shows cause for concern: the guardrails held during the insurrection attempt of 2020, but efforts to undermine them (pressure on election officials, threats to journalists, ethical compromises by judges, attempts to use justice systems for political gain, etc.) have increased. The rule of law is fraying at the edges when officials flout norms or when political loyalty trumps objective accountability. Yet, it’s not all doom: many judges, journalists, and civil servants continue to do their duty, and civil society is actively pushing back to defend democratic norms. The United States hasn’t fully failed the democracy test in this section, but it is certainly ailing.
Conclusion
So, has the “land of the free” become a failed democracy? Not outright, but it has undeniably declined by multiple objective metrics. The United States is now rated a “flawed democracy” rather than a full one, with trust in democratic institutions at rock-bottom and several key markers of a healthy democracy flashing red.
Elections still happen and power changes hands, but free voting access and acceptance of results can no longer be taken for granted in U.S. politics. The press remains free of state censorship, yet it is not remaining truly independent and credible, as seen by its downgraded global ranking. The U.S. government is not collapsing, but corruption is the worst in many decades and special interests too often hold sway. Checks and balances exist on paper, though extreme polarization has made governing difficult and put the rule of law under stress.
The encouraging news is that America’s democratic decline is not irreversible. The fact that these problems are measured and debated openly is itself a feature of a democracy capable of self-correction. However, the warning signs are stark. Reversing the slide will require reforms: protecting voting rights, reducing the role of big money, ensuring media diversity, enforcing ethical standards, ensuring the president is not above the law, and renewing civic education. A huge amount is needed just to stop the country sliding further from democracy before any attempt to strengthen it can begin. The tests above – developed by credible organizations across the political spectrum – make clear that American democracy, once a shining example, now needs serious repair to live up to its ideals again.