In recent months, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has continued to challenge executive branch norms as well as legal and con­sti­tu­tion­al limits on the powers of the pres­i­den­cy, including dra­mat­i­cal­ly expanding the capacity and activ­i­ties of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deploying the military to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. A Republican effort to change con­gres­sion­al district maps to gain five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 election was enacted in Texas, prompting California Democrats to develop a redis­trict­ing plan to offset those losses. Most recently, the con­ser­v­a­tive activist and com­men­ta­tor Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a public event at a Utah uni­ver­si­ty, prompting a nation­wide debate over political violence and free speech. 

In this context, we fielded parallel surveys of 703 political science faculty at American colleges and uni­ver­si­ties (whom we refer to as “experts” below) and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample of 2,750 Americans (whom we refer to as “the public” below). The expert survey was fielded from September 5–17, 2025 and the public survey from September 5–16, 2025.