For the past six years, Americans have lived in a “flawed democracy,” one dragged down by high levels of polarization and events like the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to an annual study of global democracy.
The latest edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index ranks the United States 26th of 167 countries, sandwiched between Chile and Estonia, when measuring electoral process, government functionality, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.
On a 10-point scale, the U.S. earned 7.85 points — slightly down from last year’ 7.92 and the nation’s lowest score since the EIU created the index in 2006. The United States also dropped one spot in the rankings over the past year.
The researchers pinned the United States’ low score on two factors, both of which are tied to polarization: functioning of government and political culture.
“Pluralism and competing alternatives are essential for a functioning democracy, but differences of opinion in the US have hardened into political sectarianism and institutional gridlock,” they wrote, explaining why the U.S. score for government functionality had hit a new low point.
The narrowly divided Congress “has further crippled the legislative process, particularly as Democrats contend with widening divisions between their moderate and hard-line members. Obstruction will worsen ahead of the November 2022 mid-term elections — which could flip the majorities in both houses of Congress — as neither party will want to appear to be ceding ground to the other,” they wrote.
Even though the United States reached a new low in that category, the nation scored even worse in “political culture” as election disputes and debates over the pandemic response have riven the population.
“Social cohesion has collapsed and consensus has evaporated on fundamental issues, such as election outcomes and public health practices,” according to the report, which notes that only 55 percent of Americans believe President Biden won a legitimate election despite the absence of widespread voter fraud.
But the insurrection and other attempts to change the outcome of the 2020 election were just that: attempts. The system’s resilience boosted the American score.
“The run-up to the change of administrations in late January 2021 was uncharacteristically tumultuous, marked by a riot at the US Capitol and attempts by the outgoing president, Donald Trump, and several Republican lawmakers to overturn the election results,” the report reads. “However, the inauguration of the new president, Joe Biden, a Democrat, proceeded smoothly, and the first year of his presidency has not faced significant disruptions.”
Two other factors helped keep the United States from ranking lower: participation and civil liberties.
American turned out to vote at a record rate in 2020, with 66 percent of the voting-eligible population casting a ballot. The EIU report also factored in the unprecedented participation in Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections in January 2021.
While the civil liberties score was high, EIU researchers caution that partisan gerrymandering and state-level efforts to change voting laws could result in a lower score in the future.
"That the United States continues to rank lower than many of our peers, and is considered a flawed democracy, should surprise no one that has observed our political system in recent years," said Mike Murphy, director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's FixUS program. "Our polarizing division and government dysfunction have led to an increasing level of distrust in our democracy, and only a comprehensive approach that attacks the root causes of this challenge will help turn this around. We can do so by tapping into the frustration of the majority of Americans who are fed up with the status quo, and rally them behind solutions they can advance in their communities which among them include political and electoral reforms to change governing incentives, revitalizing civic education, and promoting norms and engagement models that support bridge building and deliberation."
The highest rated democracies, according to the EIU, are Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark. In January, Transparency International ranked 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand tied with the best score, followed by Norway, Singapore and Sweden.
The United States ranked 27th in that index.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.