The U.S. State Department released its long-delayed 2024 Human Rights Report, a markedly slimmer document that softens or drops criticism of several governments aligned with President Donald Trump while sharpening its focus on countries and courts the administration has publicly challenged. The report’s country chapters are roughly one-quarter the length of last year’s edition and no longer contain dedicated sections on LGBTQ rights, gender-based violence or corruption. Israel and El Salvador—both recipients of stepped-up U.S. cooperation under Trump—receive abbreviated assessments. The El Salvador chapter, four times shorter than in 2023, concludes there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses,” reversing earlier findings of arbitrary killings and harsh prison conditions. By contrast, the report alleges that human-rights conditions “worsened” in Brazil and South Africa, citing court actions that purportedly restrict free speech and racial discrimination against Afrikaners, respectively. The document also accuses European democracies of curbing freedom of expression, highlighting the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act and Germany’s hate-speech laws, and re-casts Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the “Russia-Ukraine war.” Rights advocates—including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—and the German and South African governments condemned the report as politically motivated and selective. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the overhaul improves readability and removes “politically biased demands,” asserting the new structure better reflects statutory mandates.