U.S. plans to ease human rights criticism of El Salvador, Israel, Russia

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/06/trump-human-rights-el-salvador-israel-russia/

U.S. plans to ease human rights criticism of El Salvador, Israel, Russia
Leaked draft reports show the Trump administration is planning to eliminate or downplay accounts of prisoner abuse, corruption, LGBTQ+ discrimination and other alleged abuses. The administration says the reports are shorter for “readability.”
August 6, 2025 at 7:48 p.m. EDT
By Adam Taylor, Hannah Natanson and John Hudson

Leaked drafts of the State Department’s long-delayed annual human rights reports indicate that the Trump administration intends to dramatically scale back U.S. government criticism of certain foreign nations with extensive records of abuse.

The draft human rights reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia, copies of which were reviewed by The Washington Post, are significantly shorter than the ones prepared last year by the Biden administration. They strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them, and the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened.

The draft report for El Salvador — which, at the Trump administration’s urging, has agreed to incarcerate migrants deported from the United States — states that the country had “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in 2024. The State Department’s previous report for El Salvador, documenting 2023, identified “significant human rights issues” there — including government-sanctioned killings, instances of torture, and “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.”

Several Venezuelans whom the Trump administration sent to a Salvadoran prison said they were subjected to repeated beatings.

The leaked draft reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia underscore how the Trump administration is radically rethinking America’s role in global human rights advocacy. The documents also are consistent with internal guidance circulated earlier this year by State Department leaders who advised staff to truncate the reports to the minimum required by statutory guidelines and executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, and to remove references to government corruption, gender-based crimes and other abuses the U.S. government historically has documented.

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[Solly Mack]

1. The report for 2024, which was supposed to come out in March or early April 2025, and the last one that fell under Biden

was delayed by Trump so they could edit it to their liking.

This is the “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices", which is mandated by U.S. law, and must be a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights.”

BUT

April 2025

Trump Administration rewrites US human rights policy for global reporting

May 21, 2025

The Trump Administration is Trying to Change the Historical Definition of Human Rights

Every spring, since the late 1970s, the State Department has released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This year, those waiting for these documents will have to hold on a bit longer. The Trump Administration is upending decades of precedence to substantially revise the reports. The 2024 version of the reports were initially completed before President Donald Trump took office, but are now being re-edited.

When they are released, these reports will now reportedly exclude information on issues such as government efforts to deny freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, failures to retain or provide due process for political prisoners, and the harassment of human rights organizations. The Trump Administration has also signaled it will cut sections about the rights of women, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ community.

[vanessa_ca]

2. Rewriting history in real time -eom