When the Supreme Court Locks Arms With Republicans

This term, the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices locked arms with their GOP counterparts in the White House and Congress against the unstinting forces of demographic change. In muscling through a series of 5–4 decisions on voting rights, redistricting, and President Trump’s travel ban over the unified objections of the […] Read more »

Military, Small Business, Police Still Stir Most Confidence

Americans’ confidence in an array of U.S. societal institutions is holding steady in 2018, with the military continuing to earn the highest confidence of 15 institutions tested. Small business and the police retain their second and third place rankings, and Congress continues to rank last — consistent with the patterns […] Read more »

Bright Line Watch Report on American Democracy

In April 2018, Bright Line Watch conducted its fifth expert survey, and its third public survey, on democracy in the United States. Between April 9 and 22, we surveyed an expert sample of 935 political science faculty at American universities and a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults. Respondents in […] Read more »

The Public, the Political System and American Democracy

At a time of growing stress on democracy around the world, Americans generally agree on democratic ideals and values that are important for the United States. But for the most part, they see the country falling well short in living up to these ideals, according to a new study of […] Read more »

50 years after Martin Luther King’s Assassination: Assessing Progress of the Civil Rights Movement

On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis. Most Americans today say at least some of the goals of the 1960’s civil rights movement that he spearheaded have been attained. But black and white Americans differ widely in how they perceive the treatment of […] Read more »