Amnistía Internacional Cites Rule-of-Law Slide in US Under Trump’s Second Term, Protests Follow

The national erosion of rights under a resurgent Trump presidency is reverberating throughout New York City, testing the city’s institutions and civic spirit.

On a sullen January morning in 2025, New Yorkers woke to the distant sound of gavel and pen scratching away at rights they once considered immutable. The annual report by Amnesty International, released last week, paints an unflattering tableau of American governance under President Donald Trump’s return: the systematic chipping away of constitutional guardrails, policed borders both literal and figurative, and a relentless crackdown on dissent. Beneath the abstraction of “State of law,” the effects are being felt keenly in the stolid brownstones and glass towers of New York City.

The report catalogues a “parade of unprecedented measures,” from direct attacks on the judiciary and newspapers that refuse to toe the line, to bald-faced reprisal against critics—political and academic alike. Perhaps most galling for New York’s universities, the administration has wielded federal purse strings as a cudgel, slashing research funds to institutions critical of government policy, most notably those implicating Israeli actions in Gaza. For many of the city’s 600,000 university students and faculty—one of America’s densest hubs of higher education—the chill has been palpable.

At street level, the change is more than atmospheric. The resurgence of blanket immigration enforcement—ICE agents prowling subway stops, masked federal marshals posted outside schools—has sown anxiety both among the city’s roughly 3.1 million foreign-born residents and the broader population who recall the sanctuaries of the de Blasio and Adams years. Asylum-seekers and green-card holders alike now eye each police siren with trepidation. The creation of new “detention centres,” such as the bleakly titled Alligator Alcatraz far from the City’s boundaries, have sent a signal as muscular as it is merciless.

Trump’s executive orders have also suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a blow felt acutely in neighbourhoods from Flushing to Harlem, whose rich tapestry is woven with those fleeing violence and persecution. The collateral damage extends even to the warren of social services and NGOs that act as the City’s shock absorbers—now left to stretch thinner and thinner scraps of state and private funding.

Financially, the City stands to lose as the Trump administration dismantles diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes and withdraws federal grants from “uncooperative” localities. City Hall, already juggling a $7 billion budget shortfall, finds itself trimming everything from legal aid for migrants to LGBTQ youth centres—a direct consequence of curtailed federal largesse. Data from the Mayor’s Office suggests non-profit funding has plummeted by nearly a quarter since January, with knock-on effects for tens of thousands of the city’s most vulnerable.

Politically, the new landscape is no less treacherous. Trump’s explicit hostility to sanctuary cities has spurred a predictable tug-of-war between Albany, City Hall, and Washington. Lawsuits pile up as city attorneys challenge, and occasionally defy, sweeping executive orders and Department of Justice decrees. The state legislature, led by Governor Kathy Hochul, has moved to ringfence rights but with limited fiscal capacity to back its pro-migrant rhetoric.

Socially, grievances are mounting. New York’s streets, so often an amphitheatre for protest, have become flashpoints anew. University campuses have erupted over Israel-Gaza, with federal reprisals including research cutbacks, visa revocations for international students, and threats to Title VI funding. Amnesty’s report underscores the “systematic targeting” of outspoken academics, with CUNY and Columbia among the highest-profile casualties. The city’s self-declared tolerance for dissent is now being stress-tested under rare strain.

The impact on minorities, particularly LGBTQ and transgender New Yorkers, has proven doubly corrosive. Federal reversals of discrimination protections—once guarded by executive order—have undercut hard-won workplace and healthcare rights. For a city that has long prided itself as a sanctuary for those shunned elsewhere, the shift bodes ill. Reports of discrimination cases filed with the NYC Commission on Human Rights are, unsurprisingly, on the rise.

At times, the prevailing mood recalls darker moments in the city’s history, when federal power was wielded against its cosmopolitan instincts—from McCarthyite purges in the 1950s to the AIDS crisis forty years ago. Yet if the lessons of the past offer any succour, it is that New York City’s pluralism proves stubbornly resilient, even—perhaps especially—in adversity.

A national tide, a local undertow

Elsewhere in the country, the calculus is no less fraught. Minnesota, for example, witnessed deadly confrontations between protestors and federal agents during recent immigration sweeps—episodes that echo through New York’s own activist corridors and minority communities. Nationally, Amnesty’s catalogue of civil rights erosions—encompassing curtailment of reproductive freedoms, the whittling of LGBT protections, and a return to workplace discrimination long thought consigned to the past—portends a redefinition of America’s social contract.

Abroad, such measures have done little to enhance America’s standing. European governments, once inclined to view American jurisprudence as a counterweight to illiberal regimes, now issue wary travel advisories. Major NGOs and educational exchange programmes report a decline in applications. New York’s universities, whose allure had always rested on a promise of openness, now find themselves locked in an unseemly competition with Canadian, Australian, and even German counterparts for global academic talent.

What should the city make of this gathering gloom? New York’s particularity—its buoyant population mix, its centuries-old tradition of noisy dissent—may at least act as a partial buffer. Even so, we reckon that these latest assaults from Washington will thin the city’s institutional defences and social trust, especially if they persist beyond the current term.

What matters most, as ever, is confidence—in courts, in laws, and the capacity of City Hall to devise creative workarounds. History suggests that federal overreach often begets local nimbleness. Past waves of illiberalism have prompted new spikes in legal aid, protest, and private philanthropy. But the road ahead promises a sterner test than at any time in recent memory.

For now, the question for New Yorkers is whether the city’s famously unflappable spirit can transcend the risks and fissures imposed from above. Neither resignation nor jingoism will suffice. In adversity, New York has always prized adaptation. History, in the end, will judge if that alone can secure its social contract for another generation. ■