Leaked drafts of the State Department’s 2024 annual human rights reports reveal that the Trump administration is preparing to sharply scale back criticism of certain allied governments with extensive records of abuse.
The draft reports for El Salvador, Israel, and Russia—reviewed by The Washington Post—are markedly shorter than those compiled last year by the Biden administration and remove entire categories of violations historically documented by the U.S. government. All references to LGBTQ+ individuals and crimes against them have been struck, and descriptions of abuses that remain have been softened.
The changes come as the administration faces criticism for reorienting America’s approach to global human rights advocacy, aligning assessments more closely with statutory minimums and executive orders issued by President Donald Trump. Internal guidance circulated earlier this year instructed staff to truncate reports, remove references to government corruption, gender-based crimes, and other abuses, and focus only on “core issues.”
Major reductions and softened language
In the draft for El Salvador—whose government has agreed, at the Trump administration’s urging, to incarcerate migrants deported from the United States—the report states there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in 2024. The 2023 report compiled under the Biden administration described “significant human rights issues” including government-sanctioned killings, instances of torture, and “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.”
Several Venezuelans deported by the U.S. to a Salvadoran prison told reporters they were subjected to repeated beatings. Yet the current draft emphasizes an “overall reduction” in prison violence, with purported deaths described as “under government review.”
The draft report on Israel, reduced from more than 100 pages last year to 25 pages, omits mention of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial and his government’s judicial overhaul plans, which critics warned could threaten judicial independence. The report also removes references to Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, including Amnesty International’s finding that Israel used “an experimental facial recognition system to track Palestinians and enforce movement restrictions.”
In the Russia report, all references to the Supreme Court’s ban on LGBTQ+ organizations—labeling them “extremist”—and subsequent raids and arrests last year are absent.
Former State Department official Keifer Buckingham, now managing director at the Council for Global Equality, called the Russia omissions “a glaring omission” and said, “Secretary Rubio has repeatedly asserted that his State Department has not abandoned human rights, but it is clear by this and other actions that this administration only cares about the human rights of some people … in some countries, when it’s convenient to them.”
Internal direction to remove key content
The internal guidance directing these changes was written by Samuel Samson, a Trump political appointee at the State Department who was assigned to review the reports for El Salvador, Israel, and Russia. Samson, little known when he joined, attracted attention after writing in May on the State Department’s Substack that Europe was becoming “a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom, and numerous other assaults on democratic self-governance.”
According to The Washington Post, Samson’s instructions told diplomats to eliminate references to abuses such as deportations to countries where torture is likely, crimes involving violence against LGBTQ+ people, and government corruption.
The drafts for El Salvador and Russia are marked “finalized,” while Israel’s is labeled “quality check.” All were edited within the last few days, the documents show.
Administration’s defense
A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, defended the restructuring: “The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report. The human rights report focuses on core issues.”
The official also said the Trump administration will bring a new focus to “backsliding on freedom of expression” in certain allied countries. That stance comes as the administration faces its own criticism for seeking to deport foreign students who criticized Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
Amnesty International condemnation
Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director of government relations and advocacy, condemned the revisions: “The leaked chapters of the latest Annual Human Rights Report reveal a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.”
She said her organization understood “that the mandate from Secretary Rubio was… to go back and wipe out portions of the reports that had already been written—to delete stories from survivors of human rights violations.”
Klasing accused the administration of turning the reports “into yet another tool to obscure facts to push forward anti-rights policy choices” and warned, “it would be a travesty and subversion of congressional intent to downplay or ignore human rights violations faced by marginalized populations including refugees and asylum seekers, women and girls, Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQI+ people throughout the world.”
A broader policy shift
The changes to the reports align with a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy on democracy promotion. In July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed diplomats not to publicly comment on other countries’ elections—including whether they were “free and fair”—unless there was a “clear and compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.”
This represents a departure from decades of U.S. practice, including Rubio’s own record. In 2012, as a senator, Rubio said, “The State Department’s annual human rights report sheds light on foreign governments’ failure to respect their citizens’ fundamental rights,” adding that it was important for the world to know that “the United States will stand with freedom-seeking people around the world and will not tolerate violations against their rights.”
The administration has continued to selectively apply human rights sanctions, including using the Magnitsky Act to target Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro for his alleged role in a 2022 coup plot.
Congressional mandate and credibility concerns
The annual human rights reports, produced for nearly 50 years, are congressionally mandated and relied upon by courts in the U.S. and abroad. Their reduction and omission of entire categories of abuses raise concerns over whether they still meet legislative intent.
Amnesty International and former State Department officials have warned that politically motivated omissions could undermine U.S. credibility in advocating for human rights globally and erode the reports’ historical integrity as a reference for policymakers, legal bodies, and human rights defenders.
The State Department has yet to officially release the 2024 reports, and it is unclear whether the final versions sent to Congress and made public will match the leaked drafts.
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