Olivia of Troye - Pope Francis said, "Heal the Wounds."
The U.S. human rights report has served as a global benchmark for decades, naming abusers, defending the oppressed, and documenting uncomfortable truths. Now, it's being rewritten. Not to reflect reality but to protect a narrative. Key parts of the report, once dedicated to documenting systemic abuses, are being quietly erased before its public release. This isn't just bureaucratic editing; it's a calculated effort to reshape the moral compass of U.S. foreign policy. And it marks a dangerous turning point: we're no longer documenting abuses. We're burying them. This isn't some oversight. It's being done intentionally, and it reflects where we are right now under Trump's second term.
As the lead for the United Nations and Africa policy in Vice President Pence's office during Trump's first term, I witnessed firsthand how diplomatic priorities shift when no one's looking. What we're seeing now isn't theoretical—it's the logical endpoint of patterns I observed inside the first Trump White House. What's most alarming is that the same power brokers from the first term are now entrenched, operating with fewer constraints and far more experience in how to dismantle institutional guardrails. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem are the public faces of this administration's foreign policy and national security, the decisions still flow from the same inner circle I watched behind closed doors. The faces may have changed, but the hands pulling the levers remain the same.
We used to be the country that called out these abuses when they happened elsewhere. We used to stand up for people imprisoned for their political beliefs or for journalists silenced by their governments—people like Alexei Navalny in Russia, Mohamed Soltan in Egypt, or the Cuban journalists arrested during the 2003 "Black Spring." The U.S. once viewed it as our responsibility to defend political dissidents against dictators. Now? We're editing those very abuses out of our annual report. Why? Because we're now doing them too.
The Evidence: What's Being Erased
Let's walk through some facts.
Under Secretary Marco Rubio's leadership, the State Department has issued explicit instructions to strip out crucial details from its annual human rights reports, including references to prison conditions, political corruption, suppression of protests, violence against LGBTQ+ people, and the weakening of democratic checks and balances abroad. Press freedom? Political expression? Sanitized. These aren't just omissions; they're strategic erasures. The goal? To align the reports with the administration's political agenda and recent executive orders.
https://www.livingitwitholiviatroye.com/p/pope-francis-heal-the-wounds