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PHILADELPHIA, April 17, 2025 — Many Americans are opposed to President Donald Trump’s speech-restrictive policies, a new national survey of free speech attitudes finds, with only a quarter supporting the deportation of legal non-citizens for expressing pro-Palestinian views.

The National Speech Index, a quarterly survey designed by the ��֭����, also found substantial opposition to pulling federal funding from colleges and universities that failed to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters, or are “not doing enough” to combat anti-Semitism on campus and those that fail to disband DEI programs.

The survey provides the first detailed national snapshot of Americans’ views towards Trump’s policies through the prism of free speech rights in his second term. It also found that those saying they have “very little” or “no” confidence that Trump will protect First Amendment rights has risen ten points since the survey was last conducted in January.

Only 26% of Americans said they support or strongly support deporting foreigners legally in the United States on a student visa for expressing pro-Palestinian views, while 52% are opposed or strongly opposed and 22% neither support nor oppose it. As for green card holders being deported for pro-Palestinian views, only 23% are in support, 54% are opposed, and 23% are neither in favor nor against.

“Deporting someone simply for disagreeing with the government’s foreign policy preferences strikes at the very freedoms the First Amendment was designed to protect,” said FIREChief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “Americans are right to reject this kind of viewpoint-based punishment.”

The National Speech Index also polled Americans about whether they would support the federal government rescinding federal funding from colleges and universities for a host of reasons. (��֭����’s poll was conducted before the Trump administration announced on Monday that it would  $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University as part of a dispute over the administration’s proposed reforms to the institution.)

Just shy of half of Americans oppose pulling funding from colleges and universities for failing to arrest student protesters who express pro-Palestinian views (47%) or for failing to disband DEI programs (44%), while only 26% and 31% of Americans respectively support pulling funding in those cases.

When asked about pulling funding from colleges over insufficient efforts to combat antisemitism: 35% of Americans said they would support that measure and 37% would oppose it.

The latest edition of the NSI also found a notable decline in Americans’ confidence that Trump would protect their First Amendment rights. 51% of Americans now say they have “very little” or “no confidence at all,” compared to 41% who said the same in January.

“Confidence in Donald Trump’s First Amendment bona fides has returned to pre-inauguration levels,” said Nathan Honeycutt, FIREmanager of polling and analytics. “The partisan differences never really went away, but the honeymoon phase for independents appears to be wearing off.”

The National Speech Index is a quarterly poll designed by FIREand conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab to capture Americans’ views on freedom of speech and the First Amendment, and to track how Americans’ views change over time. The April 2025 National Speech Index sampled 1,000 Americans and was conducted between April 4 and April 11, 2025. The survey’s margin of error is +/- 3%.

The FIRE(��֭����) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIREeducates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

The Polarization Research Lab (PRL) is a nonpartisan collaboration between faculty at Dartmouth College, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to monitor and understand the causes and consequences of partisan animosity, support for democratic norm violations, and support for partisan violence in the American Public. With open and transparent data, it provides an objective assessment of the health of American democracy.

CONTACT:

Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, ��֭����: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org