The results of the 2024 election and the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency have done little to dispel the apathy and distrust Americans feel toward politics. In a new survey of over 6,000 adults, Director of the Survey Center on American Life Daniel A. Cox sheds new, and worrying, light on Americans’ social connections and public attitudes.

This darker public mood is matched by prevailing political rhetoric that emphasizes division, fear, and victimhood. In a new essay for The New York Times, Thomas Chatterton Williams traces how pessimistic identity politics displaced the post-racial optimism of 2008, especially in younger generations.

One of Cox’s most striking findings is that 54 percent of Americans now support mass deportation of illegal immigrants, up from 32 percent in 2016. In a new AEI Economic Perspectives report, AEI economist Stan Veuger and coauthors provide the first comprehensive estimate of the economic consequences of our nation's aggressive anti-immigration policies.

The Democratic Party and the news media are finding themselves increasingly out of step with public opinion, not just on immigration but also on climate and energy issues. Using data from a 2024 AEI Energy/Climate Survey of over 3,000 registered voters, Roger Pielke Jr. and Ruy Teixeira reveal the gulf between prevailing narratives and Americans’ actual attitudes toward climate change, fossil fuels, and the green energy transition.

On July 3, Freedom of Information Act requests revealed the Trump administration’s legal rationale for its continuing refusal to enforce the TikTok ban. Department of Justice veteran and AEI constitutional law expert Jack Landman Goldsmith details the unprecedented assertion of executive power.