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This year, the average tax refund was up 11%, according to IRS data, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut individual income taxes by almost $130 billion dollars. Which makes the findings of this month’s I&I/TIPP Poll so shocking. Yes, the poll found that the public is fairly evenly split when it comes to tax fairness. [snip] But the poll also found that 40% of adults believe their taxes are “much” or “somewhat” higher, while just 10% said they were either “somewhat” or “much” lower. That’s a 4-to-1 difference. This makes no sense.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration took another step toward liberating the economy by rolling back a Biden-era rule that needlessly hampered oil and gas production. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said that, with this and several other deregulatory actions, the administration “is unleashing domestic energy and revising burdensome, unworkable Biden-era oil and natural gas policies.” That’s the good news. The bad news is that President Donald Trump has barely scratched the surface of the gargantuan administrative state, and other Trump policies are raising the cost of doing business, a report released today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute shows.

President Donald Trump’s favorability ratings fell in April, data from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll indicate. Is the drop possibly a short-term casualty of the month-long war with Iran that has brought higher oil prices and increased economic uncertainty to many Americans? Or is it just a one-off statistical blip? The national online poll was taken by 1,464 adults from Mar. 31 to April 2, and has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points. Trump suffered a clear drop in favorability among voters, with 39% saying their opinion of the second-term president was favorable, while a majority of 53% called their opinion “unfavorable.” Of the remainder,

As President Trump gears up to put even more pressure on what remains of Iran’s regime, do Americans support the Iran war? According to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, nearly half of all Americans do, but an equal share don’t, with political affiliation seemingly the deciding factor in whether one supports or opposes the conflict. I&I/TIPP’s national online poll of 1,464 voters was taken from March 31 to April 2, and has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points. The public opinion survey asked participants three questions about the Iran war, which has now lasted just over a month. The first question: “Do you support or oppose the

It’s easy enough to dismiss Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endless lament that the rich don’t “pay their fair share of taxes,” but he should still be held to account when he flat-out lies about how much the rich do pay. In an op-ed published by the Guardian, Sanders repeats a number of leftist tropes: income inequality has never been greater, the Trump tax cuts benefited the rich and big corporations, the middle class is getting screwed. Yadda, yadda, yadda. But then he starts making some remarkable claims. He says that Warren Buffett’s tax rate is 0.1%, “while the average

It was a very different Donald Trump the nation saw Wednesday night than “the showman president” they experienced in his last prime-time address. Then, an “affordability”-addled America was force-fed the chief executive’s version of “P.T. Barnum, the Prince of Humbugs, blaring hard-sell and hyperbole, mixed with equal measures of vitriol and vituperation.” This time around, 47 stepped forward in a very different, and far more appropriate role: a calm, contemplative, and consolatory commander-in-chief accompanied concerned countrymen and women on a solemn but

By a slender margin, a plurality of Americans see China as a “threat” rather than as a “competitor” or “partner,” the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows. And nearly half say they would back further trade restrictions on China for national security reasons, even if it means higher prices. Americans are at best ambivalent, the I&I/TIPP Poll indicates. The poll of 1,456 voters, taken from Feb. 27 to 29, has a margin of error of +/-3.0 percentage points. The first question: “Do you view China primarily as an economic partner, an economic competitor, or an economic threat to the United States?”

We wonder if anyone has conducted a demographic survey of the people who showed up at the “No Kings” protests around the country, because we suspect the results would be an embarrassment. We noticed as a rally marched down the main street in Pasadena, California, that the protesters were comprised almost entirely of white people who were predominantly middle-aged or older. (This is a city that is 40% black and Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau.) So we looked at videos and pictures from protests in other cities around the country this past Saturday, and noticed

A little more than two months ago, when Zohran Mamdani was still in his first days as New York City’s boy mayor, we suggested that he should be driven from office. It was that bad. Has the situation improved since then? No, it’s only become worse. Let’s start off with the mayor hosting a Ramadan iftar dinner on March 11 at City Hall, where he was joined by Muslim city workers. Well, isn’t that the prerogative of the mayor? After all, Christian elected officials have used government buildings for prayers and faith-based observances since the beginning of the republic. But was this just devout Muslims practicing their religion?

The New York Times recently ran a piece titled “Democrats Hammer Trump on ‘Energy Affordability’ as Iran War Continues.” Our headline above is a more accurate description of what’s going on, because it is the Democrats – not Donald Trump – who have been and still are waging war on affordable energy. The fawning Times article is based on a report from “top Senate Democrats” that “accused the Trump administration of waging a ‘war on energy affordability’ by canceling hundreds of clean energy projects even before the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran — strikes which have sent energy costs higher.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods suffered a Supreme Court legal rebuke in late February, but they’re not doing much better in the court of public opinion. As the latest I&I/TIPP shows, a plurality of voters don’t believe the economy will get a boost from tariffs, which win strong majority support only from Republicans. It was once the case that most conservatives and many moderates rejected tariffs on imported goods as an unwanted distortion of free trade. Meanwhile, liberals embraced tariffs as a welcome tool of government “industrial policy.” But President Trump has flipped the script.

All is well in California, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The milk flows cool and creamy, and the honey has never been so sweet. But beneath the bluster lies bitter experience and, if nothing changes, a sour future. The Golden State, says the presidential aspirant in a recent co-bylined op-ed published by Project Syndicate, offers policy predictability, a welcome home for global capital, and a green agenda like no other. Newsom is correct in that policy is predictable in California. But that’s no virtue when policy is expected to always move in a single direction — toward weightier regulation, more punitive