U.S. SOFTENS criticism of these nations

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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.
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