Todd Robinson, who served as U.S. asst secretary of state for international narcotics & law enforcement affairs at the State Dept, said online: “We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this.”

"We assess with high confidence that democratic backsliding in the United States is accelerating, characterized by a consolidation of executive power, erosion of institutional checks and balances, and deliberate weakening of civil service protections and oversight mechanisms,” it says.

The assessment, titled “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” is written in the detached language typically used in spy agency reports on foreign states.