In this news:
Trust in Washington just hit a new low. A fresh Gallup survey shows Americans' views on government corruption are the worst they've been in two decades since Trump came back into office. 89% of U.S. adults think government corruption is widespread right now. That's up 10 points from last year alone. For context, this number usually sat somewhere between 72% and 79% going all the way back to 2010. So this isn't a small bump, it's a genuine jump. Here's where it gets interesting. Democrats are basically the reason this number climbed so fast. 91% of them now say corruption is widespread. Back during Trump's first year in office, that number was 76%. In 2024, when Biden was still president, only 57% of Democrats felt this way. That's a massive swing in just a couple years. Independents shifted too, just not as sharply. Roughly 90% now say corruption is widespread, up 12 points since 2024. Where Trump's money comes inA lot of this ties back to Trump's own finances. He pulled in more than $2.2 billion in year one of his second term. Compare that to 2024, when he reported around $600 million. Big jump. Axios notes a lot of that money is coming from less traditional sources, his crypto business being a major one. That crypto venture hasn't been free of controversy either. An investment firm linked to the United Arab Emirates bought up almost half of his main crypto company. That set off accusations that foreign money could be buying influence over U.S. policy. Add to that a new plan where people can pay for early access to his Truth Social posts, posts that can literally move markets, and you start to see why people are uneasy. Congress has noticed tooIt's not just voters raising eyebrows. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, put out a report back in November claiming Trump and his family profited heavily once crypto regulations, ones meant to protect regular Americans from scams, got rolled back. Democrats have also pointed to things like the $400 million jet Trump accepted as a gift from Qatar. And honestly, it's not just him. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been under fire too, for making eyebrow-raising amounts of money trading stocks while in office. Republicans, meanwhile, haven't moved muchRepublican opinion has stayed fairly steady through all this. About 8 in 10 say corruption is widespread, close to the 87% who said so in 2024. Which kind of tells you something, this feeling doesn't seem tied to just one party being in charge. It seems more baked in than that. The US is going the opposite direction of everyone elseHere's the part that really stands out. In most wealthy countries, people actually feel their governments are getting less corrupt over time. The US is doing the exact opposite. Look at the OECD, that's the group of 38 developed nations, and the median share of people who think their government is corrupt has actually dropped, from 69% back in 2009 to under 60% since 2022. Americans are moving the wrong way while the rest of the developed world trends the other direction.
.png)
