Voters, including Republicans, oppose gov. punishing critical speech | Weekly roundup for September 28, 2025

Also this week: Immigration attitudes move left; NSF cuts hit red states hard; Can Democrats become the anti-corruption party?; + more!

Dear readers,

There are two big stories in Washington this week. One is that the government is about to shut down, which I covered in my Friday Chart of the Week, as well as in this conversation with Paul Krugman.

The other story is Trump’s continued imperial bullying of his political opponents. That includes (all of these events happened this week): his continued calls for media censorship (he said he’ll try to sue ABC over bringing back Jimmy Kimmel), the sudden indictment of James Comey for allegedly committing perjury during a 2020 testimony to the Senate, and the president’s Thursday night executive order instructing the justice department to go after left-wing “terrorist organizations” (the DOJ is now looking for charges against several non-profit groups that give to Democratic causes — and are not in fact recruiting terrorists).

Since I have already covered the former, this week’s Sunday post focuses on new polling related to the latter. As ever, if you have data for me to shar…