World freedom report slams Trump: No president has shown ‘less respect’ for norms

President Trump has shown “less respect” for norms and principles than any president in “living memory,” according to Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World Report released on Tuesday. 

The report from the government-funded nonprofit says that Trump is straining the United States’s “core values” and testing the Constitution. 

{mosads}“Trump exerts an influence on American politics that is straining our core values and testing the stability of our constitutional system,” the report reads. “No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms and principles.”

“Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including the separation of powers, a free press, an independent judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards against corruption and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections,” the report continued.

Freedom House goes on to blast Congress for failing to “push back against” Trump by offering no “meaningful oversight and other defenses.”

The report, put out yearly by Freedom House, gave the U.S. a freedom score of 86 out of 100. Last year, the U.S. also received an 86. It received a 90 in 2016, the year before Trump took office.

The report found democracy to be in decline globally for the 13th consecutive year, noting that the developments, both in democracies like the U.S. and authoritarian regimes, are “shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century” but the decline is “consistent and ominous.”