We’re Number One! Really?

In Many Domestic Policy Categories, We’re Not Number One—Not Even Close

How Could This Happen in the Wealthiest, Most Powerful

Country on Earth?

What has happened to the United States? This website highlights the major findings of a new comprehensive international study, We’re Number One!? America’s Uncertain Standing in the World (Routledge, August 2025). The book looks at how the United States compares to other industrialized, democratic countries in major domestic policy programs. All the data come from international rankings published by over thirty agencies and institutions. This is the frank, unequivocal conclusion: in many areas of domestic public policy, the United States has fallen behind, sometimes embarrassingly so. With a country so rich in talent, in wealth, in vibrancy and energy, why, in comparison to others, does the United States perform so poorly? In the consequential areas of health care, equity and justice, education, elimination of poverty, protection of democracy and its fundamental values, stewardship of the environment, and more—the United States has fallen behind. In too many categories, we’re not Number 1, we’re more like Number 20, or 30, or even worse. Which countries are doing better and are we open and willing to learn from them?

All the rankings found below were published before the second Trump administration. This website will be updated as more and more policy decisions are made and implemented. We’ll see what impact Trump’s actions have on future rankings. Make America great again? Let’s take a look.

Let’s Look at the Latest Actions of

the Trump/Musk Wrecking Ball

Will They Improve America’s Standing in the World?(👍)

or Will They Sink Us Further? (👎)

(click on headings to get more information)

FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

👎 The Threat to Democratic Institutions and Values (ongoing)

👎 Grifter-in-Chief. Hawking Bibles, memes, cryptocurrencies, sketchy family deals in foreign countries.

👎 Executive Order to fundamentally change rules for voting (March 2025)

👎 Thousands of experts leaving federal government, causing an unprecedented “brain drain.”

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

👎 Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord (January 2025)

👎 “Drill, Baby, Drill.” (January 20, 2025)

👎 Opening up Alaska lands for oil drilling (March 20, 2025)

👎 EPA administrator Lee Zeldin: “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion” (March 21, 2025)

👎 EPA plans to stop collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from most polluters.

👎 Hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s major report on the impact of global warming were dismissed.

HEALTH CARE

👎 Withdrawal from the World Health Organization (January 20, 2025)

👎 Medical Research in Peril (March 2025)

👎 Abrupt cuts of billions of dollars for state health services (March 2025)

👎 Termination of dozens of COVID-related research studies and studies on potential future pandemics (March 2025)

👎 20,000 jobs (about one-quarter of workforce) eliminated by Health and Human Services (March 2025)

INFRASTRUCTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION

👎 Rescinding Biden Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence (January 20, 2025)

👎 Removing tax incentives to purchase electric vehicles (January 20, 2025)

👎 Cutting and Threatening Academic Research and Development (March 2025)

SOCIAL SAFETY NET

👎 Mass firings in Federal Homelessness Program (March 2025)

👎 Social Security Administration makes it much more difficult for citizens to gain information; closing offices, firing staff (March 2025)

OBESITY, HUNGER, AND ADDICTION

👎 Feeding America estimates that in just the first few months of 2025, the Trump administration has cut about $1 billion in federal aid to anti-hunger groups.

EDUCATION

The unprecedented assault on America’s most prominent private universities

👎 Trump Withholds $400 Million in federal funds from Columbia University (February 2025)

👎 Johns Hopkins University was compelled to lay off more than 2,000 workers (February 2025)

👎 Trump administration withholds $175 million in federal funds from University of Pennsylvania. (March 2025)

👎 Trump administration threatens to withdraw $2 billion in federal monies from Harvard University; Harvard sues the administration; Trump threatens to withdraw tax-exempt status from the university.

👎 Trump signs Executive Order to close down the Department of Education (March 20,2025)

👎 Trump takeover of Kennedy Center; attempted whitewashing of history at the Smithsonian (February, March 2025)

👎 Public school systems threatened with withholding of federal funds unless they rid themselves of DEI programs (April 2025)

BUDGET, TAXING, TARIFFS, SPENDING, AND PRIORITIES

👎 Elon Musk and his DOGE operatives promise $2 trillion in federal savings (January 2025)

👎 House Republicans plan for funding tax breaks for the richest Americans: cut out Medicaid funds for the neediest and those who provide for them. (March 2025)

👎 Tax revenue could drop by 10 percent in 2025 thanks to DOGE firings and disruptions. (March 2025)

👎 Trump tariff wars: threats, reprisals, counter-threats (January, 2025-present)

CRIME, PUNISHMENT, AND FIREARMS

👎 Trump Department of Justice dismantles Biden-era gun policies, rescinding “zero-tolerance” policy aimed at firearms dealers who don’t comply with federal gun sales laws, and cutting a deal to allow sales of trigger mechanisms that modify semiautomatic guns to fire more rapidly. (April, May 2025).

AND THIS IS HOW WE MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?