Americans feel favorably about many federal agencies, especially the Park Service, Postal Service and NASA

… Americans view 14 of 16 federal agencies more favorably than unfavorably, according to a survey of 10,701 adults conducted March 13-19 by Pew Research Center. Of those 14 agencies, 11 have net favorable ratings of 15 points or more. … Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party […] Read more »

More Than Ever, We Should Be Grateful for Those Who Served in Afghanistan

If there was a time that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan could have been declared a success, it would have been at least ten years, perhaps even 15 years, ago, when we had crippled the country’s ability to host and train terrorists. Since then, the mission was cloudy, and victory […] Read more »

Pausing To Reflect: Emerging from the pandemic into a more expansive summer

This is Memorial Day weekend. Truly a transitional point of the year. … There is much cause for optimism. We find ourselves in a markedly different place than last year. COVID is receding, Americans are making plans to travel and get out more than they did during the pandemic. Many […] Read more »

Americans are not unanimously war-weary on Afghanistan

In debates on the future of the war in Afghanistan, policymakers and analysts have come to invoke it as a given that Americans want the troops to come home quickly. But does this conventional wisdom hold true? Not necessarily, based on our analysis of a number of polls on Americans’ […] Read more »

Why Trump’s alleged comments about soldiers brought so much outrage

Last week, a widely reported article in the Atlantic said President Trump disparaged fallen service members as he wondered why he should visit a military cemetery “filled with losers” and calling more than 1,800 fallen Marines “suckers” for being killed. … Some Americans were especially outraged by Trump’s alleged remarks […] Read more »

Trump likely can’t win without veteran support

… Trump’s campaign flourished in 2016 even after saying then-Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war, was “not a war hero.” He won a larger share of the primary vote from active and former military members than he did from other Republican voters, according to an academically […] Read more »