On January 22, 2026, after a New York Times/Siena poll showed his approval at just 40% with 56% disapproval, President Trump declared on Truth Social that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offence.” He announced that the NYT/Siena poll would be added to his existing $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, and warned they “will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing.” He also posted, “Something has to be done about Fake Polls! They are truly OUT OF CONTROL.”
Less than three weeks later, on February 11, 2026, Gallup announced it would stop tracking presidential approval ratings entirely—ending an 88-year tradition that began in the 1930s. Gallup's last published poll showed Trump at approximately 36-37% approval, among the lowest the organization had ever recorded. Gallup stated the decision was “a strategic shift solely based on Gallup's research goals and priorities” and denied receiving feedback from the White House.
To be clear: there is no proven direct connection between Trump's threats and Gallup's decision. Gallup may genuinely be restructuring its research priorities. But the sequence of events speaks for itself—a president publicly threatens to criminalize unfavorable polling, sues a major newspaper partly over its polls, and then America's most iconic polling institution quietly stops measuring presidential approval during his historically low numbers. Whether through direct pressure or chilling effect, the result is the same: one less institution measuring public accountability of the president. When the leader of the free world suggests that publishing unfavorable poll numbers should be a crime, polling organizations notice—and the public loses a vital tool for democratic accountability.
Update (September 24, 2026): the Selzer suit, the first of these cases to reach a decision, was dismissed with prejudice on September 23. The judge held that a poll is not the sort of statement that can be true or false for purposes of fraud law, and that the case would fail even assuming the poll had been deliberately faked. See An Iowa Judge Threw Out Trump's Suit Against the Des Moines Register and Its Pollster, Saying It Fails Even If the Poll Was Faked.