uring the first months of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his administration challenged constitutional and democratic norms on a wide range of issues, including the scope of executive power and the authority of courts to check it, individual freedom of expression, due process and habeas corpus, immigration, and academic freedom.
As Trump completed his second first 100 days, we fielded parallel surveys of 760 political scientists (whom we refer to as “experts” below) and a representative sample of 2,000 Americans (whom we refer to as “the public” below). The expert survey was fielded from April 21–28, 2025 and the public survey from April 21–24, 2025.
Our key findings are the following:
Assessments of democratic performance
- Overall ratings of American democracy dropped significantly among every group surveyed — academic experts, the public overall, and Republican and Democratic members of the public.
- For the first time since we began surveying in 2017, public ratings of democratic performance dropped below the scale’s midpoint, reaching 49 in April. Ratings dropped even among Republicans, decreasing from 59 in February to 56 in April.
- Across 31 democratic principles, experts perceive the largest declines since Trump returned to the presidency in protections for unpopular speech or expression, government agencies not being used to punish political opponents, freedom of the press, the impartiality of criminal investigations, and judicial independence.
Threats to democracy
- Experts overwhelmingly rate the following federal actions as threats to democracy: Trump’s failure to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador after he was deported due to an administrative error, the executive order targeting the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, and the administration’s actions to withdraw funding from leading universities and to limit their academic freedom. In each case, more than three-quarters of respondents rate the threat as serious or extraordinary.
- Experts see Columbia University’s initial response to the Trump administration’s demands as a threat to democracy and Harvard’s refusal to concede as a benefit.
- Regarding future threats, experts are nearly unanimous in their view of Trump’s oft-discussed idea of sending American citizens to foreign prisons: 97% say it would pose a threat to democracy, and 78% say it would be an extraordinary threat. Almost all experts rate Trump’s plan to drastically increase the number of denaturalizations of American citizens as a threat to democracy. And almost all view partisan impeachment of a federal judge by Republicans as a threat to democracy. Nearly half rate denaturalization of citizens and judicial impeachments extraordinary threats….