The past few years have been rocked by the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, and debates over race relations, education and border security. But none of those are the biggest problem facing the nation, according to Americans. Rather, the government itself is the most important problem – and not for the first time.
In fact, this is the seventh time in the past 10 years that government has been the No. 1 problem in Gallup’s annual assessment, but the numbers have been trending down.
The highest rate of dissatisfaction occurred in 2019, at 27 percent, but has been declining and hit 19 percent this year.
Gallup notes in its summary that “government” is a catchall term that includes multiple response options that include the president, Congress, partisanship and gridlock.
As with most issues, there is a partisan divide on responses, with government ranking as a bigger problem among Republicans (25 percent) than Democrats (18 percent) and independents (16 percent).
The poll of 1,020 adults was conducted Nov. 9-Dec. 2. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
The Fulcrum asked a number of experts on improving government their thoughts on how to restore trust in government.
Julia Roig, founder and chief network weaver, The Horizons Project:
In a democracy, what many have forgotten is that government is the responsibility of all of us, accountable to all of us, and the way in which we care for each other as citizens. If there is dissatisfaction, the answer is to get involved, be a part of the solution, participate actively and organize within your community while respecting the many different opinions and perspectives we have in such a diverse country. Americans have such ingenuity, but we are stuck in a story that government is the problem as opposed to an opportunity for innovation and positive change. It’s time to flip the script and imagine what’s possible, and then work for it together.”
Peter Levine, associate dean, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University:
I suspect that the people who name ‘government’ as the biggest problem hold a wide range of opinions about why it’s problematic. They may include people from all the way across the political spectrum. This ideological diversity makes it hard to develop a response that would really improve public opinion across the board.
In my opinion, a priority is to spend the very large amounts of money authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act in ways that are – and that appear – fair and that engage a lot of Americans. People should feel they can influence the spending and that they can be part of the actual work: for instance, helping to build infrastructure or reduce carbon emissions. In turn, spending the federal money well will require adequate investments in processes and training.
Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar, American Enterprise Institute
The results didn’t surprise me. Let’s face it – if you go on a multi-decade assault against the government it’s going to have an impact. The thing I find unsettling about this is there isn’t much of a response to the direct threat to our democracy. … It’s a testament to the failure of our journalists in not sounding the appropriate alarms.
Thirty percent of Americans elect 70 percent of the U.S. senators. That is not representative of the country and its diversity. [Ornstein said he doubts whether even a tragedy like 9/11 could pull the country together today.
Prabha Sankaranarayan, president and CEO, Mediators Beyond Borders
This is quite frankly a time of national emergency and what I know is that we can come together with a resolve. Not a single person can afford to be uninvolved. People are working hard at every level and the country is abuzz with what is possible. We are in the middle of re-imagining our democracy, in lots of ways. We are engaged in creating shared narratives of who we want to be as a nation; we are focused on reforming our electoral system, we are addressing our history of harm and resilience ... and so much more.
So instead of taking this Gallup poll in isolation, I keep in mind all these activities (that don't get reported enough) as well as other things like More in Common's research on the “perception gap” in our views of each other and know that we have work to do.
We have to move beyond binaries – that is our job as peacebuilders – to introduce nuance and layers into every attempt to reduce things to simplistic dichotomies. We are capable of better than that. We are capable of creating this next iteration of our democratic republic.
What we can all do is encourage and support all forms of civic engagement – from parents in communities who want to ensure the best education for their children by reshaping their local school board meetings to be constructive spaces, to those involved in updating our electoral system, our healthcare, our safety and security systems.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.