International Watchdog Adds United States To List Of Countries Attacking Human Rights

The international watchdog agency CIVIVUS has added the United States to their list of countries that are experiencing a “narrowing” of human rights, as well as being a place where travel may be difficult due to the decline in rights. And, as expected, the rational for their ranking of the US stems directly from the moves that Donald Trump has made since taking office. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Under Donald Trump, Republicans and Republican policies, women have lost rights. Transgender people have lost rights. Immigrants have of course lost rights. Hell tourists have lost rights and they're not done yet. They want to take even more rights away from women. They wanna take rights away from gay people. They're actually seriously considering doing away with gay marriage again. So rights are under attack for basically everybody. That's not a straight, well todo white Christian male here in the United States. If you fall into that very narrow category, things are probably pretty good in this country for you, and you don't think there's any issues. But for the tens of millions of people who are not a straight well-to-do white, Christian, male, things are getting tougher by the day. And that, of course, is why the international nonprofit Watchdog organization, civic US, has now listed the United States as one of several countries that is on a human rights threat list.

Let me read you this. US restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable, institutional cutbacks and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic descent, a cherished American ideal. The Trump administration seems hell bent on dismantling the system of checks and balances, which are the pillars of a democratic society. Gross abuses of executive power raise serious concerns over the freedoms of peaceful assembly expression and association. Americans across the political spectrum are appalled by the undemocratic actions of the current administration, and that is from, again, CIVICUS independent, nonprofit, international watchdog, and they're now saying that things have gotten so bad in the United States. We've had to put them on the human rights watch list because people are losing their rights. They clearly have a desperate sitting in the White House, A guy that is ignoring checks and balances by refusing to comply with court orders, the mass firings of government officials, him using the Department of Justice to target his political enemies. Miles Taylor, Chris Krebs, he issued an executive order for the DOJ to investigate these men to find any crime he could prosecute 'em for. We are going to hell faster than anyone could have imagined would be possible. If you look at what's happened, right, a hundred days into this administration, all

The horrible things, the economic destruction, all of it put together. Everything that's happened in this first a hundred days is what all of us assumed was gonna happen over the span of four years, but it didn't even take four years. It took three months before international groups had to say, Hey, wait a minute, you guys are losing your human rights. We have tourists trying to come into this country that are detained for days and then deported because they didn't make hotel reservations, but they did make hotel reservations. They just didn't make enough for every night they'd be in town. Yeah, I'd say we're losing our rights and this is what we've lost in just a hundred days, a shutter to think where we're gonna be at the end of this administration.