Survey Says is a weekly column rounding up three of the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about. You’ll also find data-based updates on past Daily Kos reporting, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Whose economy is it anyway?
With President Donald Trump’s second term past the 100-day mark, he’s scrambling to dodge blame for a stock market that’s fallen since he took office
. On April 30, he declared
in a social media post, “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s.”
He appears to be one of the few who believes that.
More Americans blame Trump (46%) than former President Biden (27%) for the current state of the economy, according to Gallup
. Another 21% say responsibility is shared. That might be flattering for Trump if people liked where things stand—but they don’t.
A CBS News/YouGov poll
, which was conducted shortly before Trump’s “Liberation Day
” tariffs took effect, found that 64% of Americans think he’s not doing enough to lower prices. And the share who believe his policies will make them worse off financially jumped from 28% in January to 42% by late March. It’s safe to assume sentiment has only worsened since.
The latest Civiqs
data backs that up: As of Friday, 32% of registered voters rate the economy as “very bad,” and another 30% say it’s “fairly bad.” Just 30% call it “fairly good,” and only 4% say it’s “very good.”
Republicans are especially conflicted. In the Gallup poll, 55% of Republicans said Biden was responsible for the state of the economy, while just 21% blamed Trump. Yet many in the party also oppose his tariffs
—the very policies dragging down the markets and driving up prices
.
Republicans were the only partisan group more likely to fault Biden for the economy. Most Democrats (75%) and a plurality of independents (43%) pointed to Trump.
Trump’s spin doesn’t hold up. Last year, we were told the markets were rising
because investors anticipated his return. Now we’re supposed to believe they’re falling because investors suddenly remembered Biden?
Will voters ultimately blame Biden—or Democrats—for the state of the economy? Probably not. Trust in economic issues is beginning to tilt back
toward Democrats. Trump might want to take note, but he’s never been one for accountability. The truth is simple: The pain Americans are feeling is the direct result of Trump’s policies, especially his tariffs. He wants credit for the highs and none of the blame for the lows. Voters may not let him off the hook.
At the time, Americans were paying attention. In June 2020, more than 80% were closely following the protests, on par with their focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Pew Research Center
. Support for Black Lives Matter peaked that summer, with 67% of adults
backing the movement.
But nearly everything has changed.
Today, just 52% of Americans support Black Lives Matter—a 15-percentage-point drop. Nearly three-quarters of Americans (72%) now say that the renewed focus on racial inequality after Floyd’s death didn’t lead to meaningful improvements in the lives of Black people.
Even more troubling is that Americans have grown more pessimistic about the future of racial equality. Among those who believe the country hasn’t made adequate progress, 49% now say it’s possible Black people will never have equal rights with white people—up from 39% in 2020.
Pew’s new report doesn’t dive into why sentiment has shifted so drastically, but the burden of change has always fallen on communities of color and Democrats. In eight years of Civiqs polling, a majority
of white registered voters has never supported Black Lives Matter. Support peaked at 44% right after Floyd’s murder but fell quickly after that. Now only 34% of white voters support the movement, while 52% oppose it.
It’s not just white Americans or Republicans
standing in the way. Corporations that once sprinted to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are now quietly ditching them
, many doing so even before Trump signed his executive order
dismantling DEI across the federal government. That says it all. For many, the goal was never justice; it was about branding
.
Is racial progress possible with a president who stokes division at every turn? Probably not. Five years after Floyd’s murder, these numbers show just how far the country still has to go.
America was great—just not now
Was America ever truly great? That’s up for debate, but there are a few periods when Americans think things were at least better than they are now.
A newly released YouGov
survey asked Americans to rate the quality of life during various points in U.S. history. Unsurprisingly, respondents agree that life wasn’t exactly thriving during the Great Depression (1929-1939) or the Civil War (1861-65), a time defined by national and racial upheaval. More than 70% of Americans say life in the U.S. was “poor” or “terrible” during each of those periods.
The era associated with former President Ronald Reagan (1980-91) tops the list, with 57% calling it “excellent” or “good.” Close behind are the Clinton years (1993-2001) at 55%, the post-WWII baby boom (1946-1964) at 51%, and the turbulent counterculture era of 1964-74, which 46% of Americans score as “excellent” or “good.”
And the present moment? Just 32% give it a positive rating, while 34% say it’s “poor” or “terrible” and another 29% say it’s merely “fair.”
Why the gloom? While broader Trump-fueled discord in American politics surely plays a role, the poll was also fielded shortly after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs first went into effect and tanked the stock market. And the same survey also finds that 21% of Americans say the current quality of life feels most like the Great Depression, and 28% says it feels like the Great Recession. In other words, the survey likely caught Americans at a particularly negative time.
So when Trump says he wants to make America great “again,” what era is he trying to revive? Maybe the Reagan years, but the fact that he leaves it vague suggests he’s appealing to Americans’ hazy nostalgia for glory days that never really existed.
Any updates?
Despite Trump’s repeated threats
against Harvard University, the public sees the school in a positive light. A new Economist/YouGov
poll finds that 57% of Americans view Harvard favorably, compared with just 24% who view it unfavorably. It’s a reminder that Trump’s pettiness can’t undo the prestige of the country’s wealthiest
and most storied university. As for Trump’s vow to strip Harvard
of its tax-exempt status? Americans are mostly split—41% in favor, 36% opposed.
Analysts warn
that Trump’s promised tax
on foreign-made films could shrink Hollywood’s output and drive up ticket prices, so it’s no surprise that 55% of Americans oppose a 100% tariff on movies produced outside of the U.S., while just 25% support it, according to a new YouGov
poll.
Trump is trying to dismantle AmeriCorps
, a service program helping communities nationwide. His administration has placed roughly 85% of its staff on leave
and canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. But voters aren’t on board. A new Data for Progress
poll finds that after reading a brief description of the program, 74% of likely voters support the program, with just 14% opposing it. That support spans party lines too: 79% of Democrats, 73% of independents and third-party voters, and even 70% of Republicans support it.
“You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic,” Trump said. “You look at—I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here. No, I think we have a tremendous party. And you know what I can’t name? I can’t name one Democrat.”
But how do Vance’s numbers stack up next to Trump’s? According to Civiqs
, Vance has a 41% favorable rating and 55% unfavorable, which is worse than
Trump’s favorability (43% favorable, 54% unfavorable).
Partisan lines are clear: Republican voters have warmed to Vance, with his favorables
rising from around 79% in July 2024 to 88% now. Democrats, unsurprisingly, loathe him even more than before—up from around 92% unfavorable
last July to 95% today.
Vance’s bigger problem, though, mirrors Trump’s: independents. Civiqs finds that 56% of independent voters view the vice president unfavorably, compared with just 38% who view him favorably. And that’s a slide from where he started. On Jan. 20—the day of Trump’s inauguration—independents were nearly split on Vance: 45% favorable, 46% unfavorable.
Whatever goodwill he had appears long gone.
It’s not hard to see why. He’s hitched himself to an administration that’s causing economic chaos, gutting immigration protections, and lurching further into authoritarianism. If voters see him as Trump with a younger face, who can blame them?
President Donald Trump
reportedly is ready to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar
during his trip to the Middle East this coming week, and U.S. officials say it could be converted into a potential presidential aircraft.
The Qatari government acknowledged discussions between the two countries about “the possible transfer” of a plane to be used temporarily as Trump’s Air Force One, but denied that the jet “is being gifted” or that a final had been decision made.
ABC News reported
that Trump will use the aircraft at his presidential plane until shortly before he leaves office in January 2029, when ownership will be transferred to the foundation overseeing his yet-to-be-built presidential library.
A 13-year-old private Boeing aircraft that President Donald Trump toured on Saturday to check out new hardware and technology features, and highlight the aircraft maker’s delay in delivering updated versions of the Air Force One presidential aircraft, takes off from Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The gift was expected to be announced when Trump visits
Qatar, according to ABC’s report, as part of a trip that also includes stops in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the first extended foreign travel of his second term.
But hours after the news, Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s media attaché, in a statement said, “Reports that a jet is being gifted by Qatar to the United States government during the upcoming visit of President Trump are inaccurate.”
“The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense,” the statement said. “But the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made.”
Meanwhile, administration officials, anticipating questions about the president accepting such a large gift
from a foreign government, have prepared an analysis arguing that doing so would be legal, according to ABC.
One expert on government ethics, Kathleen Clark of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, accused Trump of being “committed to exploiting the federal government’s power, not on behalf of policy goals, but for amassing personal wealth.”
“This is outrageous,” Clark said. “Trump believes he will get away this.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer poked fun at Trump’s “America first” political slogan.
“Nothing says ‘America First’ like Air Force One, brought to you by Qatar,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.”
Air Force One is a modified Boeing 747. Two exist and the president flies on both, which are more than 30 years old. Boeing Inc. has the contract to produce updated versions, but delivery has been delayed while the company has lost billions of dollars on the project
.
Delivery has been pushed to some time in 2027 for the first plane and in 2028 — Trump’s final full year in office — for the second.
Trump intends to convert the Qatari aircraft into a plane he can fly on as president, with the Air Force planning to add secure communications and other classified elements to it. But it will still have more limited capabilities than the existing planes that were built to serve as Air Force One, as well as two other aircraft currently under construction, according to a former U.S. official.
The official was briefed about the plane and spoke Sunday on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been made public.
The existing planes used as Air Force One are heavily modified with survivability capabilities for the president for a range of contingencies, including radiation shielding and antimissile technology. They also include a variety of communications systems to allow the president to remain in contact with the military and issue orders from anywhere in the world.
The official told The Associated Press that it would be possible to quickly add some countermeasures and communications systems to the Qatari plane, but that it would be less capable than the existing Air Force One aircraft or long-delayed replacements.
Neither the Qatari plane nor the upcoming VC-25B aircraft will have the air-to-air refueling capabilities of the current VC-25A aircraft, which is the one the president currently flies on, the official said.
ABC said the new plane is similar to a 13-year-old Boeing aircraft Trump toured in February
, while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport and he was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Clark said the reported Qatari gift is the “logical, inevitable, unfortunate consequence of Congress and the Supreme Court refusing to enforce” the Emoluments Clause.
Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, which is now largely run by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, has vast and growing interests in the Middle East. That includes a new deal to build
a luxury golf resort in Qatar, partnering with Qatari Diar, a real estate company backed by that country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Qatar, which is ruled by the Al Thani family, is home to the state-owned airline Qatar Airways. The country also has worked to have a close relationship to Trump after he apparently backed a boycott of Doha by four Arab nations in his first term. Trump later in his term applauded Qatar.
Administration officials have brushed off concerns about the president’s policy interests blurring with family’s business profits. They note that Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children and that a voluntary ethics agreement released by the Trump Organization in January bars the company from striking deals directly with foreign governments.
But that same agreement allows deals with private companies abroad. That is a departure from Trump’s first term, when the organization released an ethics pact
prohibiting both foreign government and foreign company deals.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked Friday if the president might meet with people who have ties to his family’s business, said it was “ridiculous” to suggest Trump “is doing anything for his own benefit.”
Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
After Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday that he wants to reopen the infamous Alcatraz prison
to house some of the country’s most violent offenders, experts chimed in to call it an idiotic plan that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars
and have no actual benefit to the public.
But GOP lawmakers had zero objections to the nutty notion.
Indeed, a number of Republicans were gleeful at the thought of reopening the federal penitentiary located on an island in the San Francisco Bay and even shared sick fantasies about who they would send there first.
“President Trump is very smart to put this out there and have a place where the worst of the worst go in this country,” Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said
in a Fox News appearance.
Schmitt added that Alcatraz “means something” to people, and that Democrats who criticize reopening the prison—which closed because it was stupidly expensive to operate
and would also lose the federal government $60 million in tourism revenue per year since it is currently operated as a national park—have so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, one of the president’s biggest cheerleaders since Trump took office again in January, said reopening Alcatraz—which would take untold millions to make operational again—is a great idea from his Dear Leader.
“Let’s have Riker and let’s have Alcatraz both open,” Mullin said
on Fox News, butchering the name of the state prison off the coast of Manhattan that is being closed in phases
. “So we got East Coast and West Coast both covered, and put our most notorious criminals in them so people understand we’re a nation of laws again, unlike under Biden.”
Of course Rikers Island is a state prison, so Trump and the federal government would not be sending any inmates there.
Mullin added that Congress would be happy to look into giving Trump the money needed to reopen the prison, throwing the idea of cost savings and efficiency to the wind.
“The president said it. If they want to do it, we’ll look into it,” Mullin told
Semafor.
Meanwhile, Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas tweeted an image of Alcatraz with the caption “ALCATRUMP
!”
If only our convicted felon
president was housed there instead of the White House …
And Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, best known for saying that Adolf Hitler was “right
” about some things, gave Trump ideas of who she’d send to Alcatraz if it ever became operational.
“The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci,” Miller wrote
in a post on X about the doctor and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who spent his career trying to save others
.
Honestly, Republicans cheering on every stupid idea that Trump blasts out in social media posts is the true definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
They say Kennedy uses the disorder as a political tool and pushes damaging stereotypes that spread misinformation.
“The U.S. Secretary of Health, RFK Jr., made false comments about autism, like people with autism are broken, that autism is caused by vaccines, and that people with autism will never have jobs or families,” said Teddy, a fourth grader from New Jersey
whose statement at a school board meeting went viral earlier this month.
“I have autism and I’m not broken,” Teddy said. “And I hope that nobody in Princeton Public Schools believes RFK Jr.’s lies.”
The New Jersey schoolkid and autism awareness groups felt the need to speak out after Kennedy’s vile comments
last month about U.S. autism rates, where he repeated his false claim that autism is an epidemic that “destroys families.”
Kennedy also mischaracterized autism as a “preventable disease” and falsely asserted that 25% of autistic people are non-functioning—ridiculous notions that experts say are inaccurate
.
“His comments were incorrect, but more to the point, they were eugenic,” Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told the Boston Globe
. “Talking about autistic people as themselves being destroyed but also having destroyed their families is a horrific argument.”
“There’s an unscrupulous industry of alternative medicine providers who exploit families by charging them tens of thousands of dollars to ‘recover’ people with autism,” Ari Ne’eman, who is autistic and an assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told NBC News
. “The way that industry works is by terrifying families.”
David Mandell, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatry professor and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health, told PBS News
that Kennedy’s “fixed, myopic view” stems from needing to interface with parents of autistic children and scientists who work in the field.
Julie DeFilippo, a social worker with an autistic son, told the Boston Globe
that “as a parent of an autistic kid, I get hundreds of moments of joy every day. That’s the easy part—being at home and supporting him.”
Kennedy’s characterization of autism as a preventable tragedy also appears connected to his notorious anti-vaccine
crusade. In a recent interview
with Dr. Phil McGraw, he repeated the vigorously debunked
claim of a link between autism and vaccines.
“Many of the parents have reported that their kid, that their child, developed autism immediately after [childhood vaccinations],” Kennedy told the psychologist-turned-TV star.
Kennedy has used his position as America’s chief public health official to launch
what he claims is a scientific study into the cause of autism, to be led by an anti-vaccine activist
with heinous ideas about treatments for the condition that include experimenting with chemical castration drugs.
“I have seen a lot of people treat [Autism Spectrum Disorder] as some sort of disease that needs to be ‘cured,’ which is very offensive towards people like me,” John Trainor, a high school student, told the Boston Globe
. ”We are normal people who have a much harder time socially.”
Kennedy has also announced plans to create an autism database
, using the private medical information of millions of Americans, promising Trump in a surreal Cabinet meeting in April that he’d be able to identify the cause
of autism by September
.
Kennedy announced on May 7
that he intends to direct the National Institutes of Health to use Medicare and Medicaid insurance claims related to autism diagnoses to build his database
.
Critics point out that Kennedy’s plan amounts to an autism registry, and experts add that Kennedy’s promises are unrealistic.
“If you just ask me, as a scientist, is it possible to get the answer that quickly? I don’t see any possible way,” Dr. Peter Marks, a former top vaccine scientist for the FDA, said on Face the Nation
last month.
It’s a voluntary program launched during a Republican administration, endorsed by manufacturers and well-recognized by U.S. consumers, who have saved an estimated $500 billion over the past 33 years guided by its familiar blue label.
But President Donald Trump’s administration has decided the Energy Star program has got to go.
CNN
and The Washington Post
first reported the plan to eliminate the program that certifies the most energy-efficient appliances and buildings with the Energy Star label. Knowledgeable sources have confirmed to Inside Climate News that Environmental Protection Agency staffers learned the details at an internal meeting earlier this week.
The EPA press office, when asked about Energy Star, did not comment directly about the program, but noted the reorganization of the agency
that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last Friday. “With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission, while Powering the Great American Comeback,” EPA’s press office said in an email.
Because Energy Star has had strong support across the political spectrum and from industry as well as environmentalists, some close observers are struggling to understand the Trump administration’s motivation for eliminating it.
Steven Nadel
, executive director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, thinks Energy Star simply had the misfortune to be located inside EPA’s Climate Protection Partnership Division, and that Zeldin is eliminating offices with the word “climate” in its name.
“I’m not sure they totally thought it through,” Nadel said.
But Joseph Goffman, who headed up air pollution programs at EPA under President Joe Biden, thinks the decision aligns with the Trump administration’s other actions—its regulatory rollbacks, its cuts in personnel and its clawing back of clean air and water grants.
“What I think we’re looking at here is an absolute distillation of the ideology of this administration, which is a thoroughgoing hostility to anything that the government does that helps people,” Goffman said. “If you want to destroy the relationship between the public and government, you’re going to target the Energy Star program.”
One of Bush’s “Points of Light”
Energy Star was first established under President George H.W. Bush’s administration in 1992, the year of the Earth Summit in Rio, where nations around the world first joined in a framework convention to address climate change.
That international treaty, at Bush’s urging, relied on voluntary action rather than targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Back at home, the Energy Star program, too, was a way to encourage, but not force, energy savings.
“It was kind of one of his thousand points of light
,” Nadel said. “He didn’t want to do serious things about climate change, but a voluntary program to provide information and let consumers decide fit very nicely into his mindset.”
At first focused just on personal computers, monitors and printers, Energy Star expanded over the years to cover more than 50 home appliances, from heating and air conditioning systems to refrigerators, washers and dryers and lighting. Beginning in 1995, Energy Star certification expanded to include homes and commercial buildings.
A Republican-controlled Congress wrote Energy Star into law in a sprawling 2005 energy bill
that President George W. Bush signed. It is not clear that the Trump administration can eliminate the Energy Star program, which is administered by both EPA and the Department of Energy, without a new act of Congress.
In a report to mark the 30th anniversary of Energy Star in 2022, the Biden administration estimated the program had achieved 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions by helping consumers make energy-efficient choices. Nadel said the impact in the marketplace is visible, as companies increase the number of product choices that meet Energy Star standards whenever a new standard is adopted by EPA through a public notice and comment process.
The nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy has estimated that the Energy Star program costs the government about $32 million per year, while saving families more than $40 billion in annual energy costs.
Eliminating the program, Nadel said, “is million-wise and billion foolish.”
“It Will Not Serve the American People”
Word of Energy Star’s potential demise began to circulate weeks ago. On March 20, a wide array of manufacturers and industry associations signed on to a letter to Zeldin, urging him to maintain the Energy Star program.
The groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the Air Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration Institute; and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers released their letter publicly this week. It called Energy Star “an example of an effective non-regulatory program and partnership between the government and the private sector.”
Companies that have invested in making more efficient products are faced with the loss of the Energy Star brand as a marketing tool. The Energy Star logo has helped them make the case, with the government’s support, that the initial higher cost of efficient appliances will be offset over time in reduced water and energy consumption.
“Eliminating it will not serve the American people,” they wrote. “In fact, because the Energy Star brand is highly recognizable to consumers, it is likely that, should the program be eliminated, it will be supplanted by initiatives that drive results counter to the goals of this administration such as decreased features, functionality, performance, or increased costs.”
The Energy Star program has weathered at least one high-profile controversy in recent years. The Biden administration briefly considered a plan to eliminate Energy Star certification for most natural gas appliances, in order to drive consumers toward greater use of electrified options. But the American Gas Association and other groups representing the natural gas industry successfully fought
that proposal.
Over the years, the conservative Heritage Foundation, best known for its role in organizing the Project 2025 roadmap, has called for the government to get out of public-private partnerships
like Energy Star. Heritage argued the role should be taken over by a nonprofit entity outside the government.
But Goffman says he never encountered any serious constituency that was opposed to the Energy Star program in his time in government, which spanned the Obama administration as well as the Biden years. “The engine of the Energy Star program is the willing participation of businesses to participate in it,” he said. “Consumers, taxpayers and businesses are what make the Energy Star program real, by using the information it provides.”
Nadel said that he doubts that a non-government efficiency labeling program would have the consumer trust Energy Star has built. A 2022 survey
showed the Energy Star brand is recognized and understood in 90 percent of U.S. households.
