As the Trump administration has made deployment of the National Guard part of the nation’s discussion about controlling crime, multiple narratives have emerged.
Critics of the approach note that crime is actually down in most places, so it’s hard to discuss an emergency. Supporters argue that crime has long been out of control, especially in big cities, and the approach may help, at least temporarily.
Crime has been a subject of interest for the American Communities Project for years now, and we have asked about it in each of our first two surveys, especially in last’s years poll (see this piece from November 2024). And consistently the ACP finds attitudes about crime are complicated — some places cite it as a major problem, while others see fewer concerns.
But a few points jump out in the 2024 ACP survey data:
Nationally, “gun violence and crime” ranked below a long list of other topics at the community level including: inflation, taxes, homelessness, health care, immigration, and opioid and drug addiction.
In the individual community types, “gun violence and crime” was not cited as the top issue in any community. Across all community types, “inflation” was the top issue.
The African American South counties stood out as the only ones where greater than 30% of the population cited “gun violence and crime” as a top issue.
The Numbers
To be clear, the argument that crime is going down has a lot of merit.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2024 found that violent crime declined by 4.5% compared to 2023 and property crime dropped by 8.1% in the same period. And a smaller study of cities in 2025 found that violent crime was down in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2024.
But the ACP found sharp differences in what people said about crime in their local community depending on where they live.
The 2024 survey offered a long list of topics and asked respondents to choose up to three that are the “most important issues facing your local community.” The chart below shows the percentage in each community type that put “gun violence and crime” into that group.
A few points become clear:
First, the African American South counties truly stood above the others on the question of crime. A 10-percentage point gap in these data was noteworthy, and that followed the 2023 survey, where these same communities stood above all the others.
It’s important to keep those data points in mind as the Trump administration talks about, and deploys, National Guard troops. Crime is an especially complicated topic in the United States where realities can vary city to city and even block to block. And that’s especially true in the ACP’s Big City communities.
Washington, D.C., where the administration deployed National Guard troops more than a month ago, can be a very different city depending on where one sits. The outer reaches of Northwest Washington haven’t really seen guardsmen at all, and some D.C. residents have criticized the deployment on the National Mall especially during the daytime, where and when crime tends to be low.
That’s likely true in other Big Cities as well, where poverty and wealth as well as crime and safety are spread out very unevenly.
Indeed, the 2024 survey data suggest that if the goal is to help communities that have deep concerns about crime, the National Guard might be better deployed in the rural communities of the African American South. And President Trump announced last week that he was sending the Guard into Memphis, Tennessee, which is in Shelby County, an African American South community.
But even that approach is likely to face challenges.
Trump is not popular in Shelby County, where he got only 36% of the vote in 2024. It will be interesting to see how residents respond to the deployment and where the deployments happen.
But beyond that, there are 272 counties in the African American South, and the survey results in the ACP reflect deeply-rooted concerns about crime. That’s a lot of places scattered across a lot of states. It would be difficult to deploy the National Guard to all of them, and even if the administration could (and even if the communities wanted the troops there), they would leave at some point. One wonders how much any deployments would change the long-term concerns in those places.
The U.S. economy is a complicated machine full of difficult-to-read inputs and outputs, but June county-level employment data analyzed by American Communities Project paint the picture of an economy that is stagnant or slowing down.
In 12 of the ACP’s 15 community types, the unemployment rate was up and/or the number of jobs was down in June 2025 compared with June 2024. And there are signs in the data that the current employment picture is different than in the past.
Normally, communities with higher incomes and higher percentages of college-educated workers are less likely to feel the impacts of an economic pinch. When trouble comes, it usually hits people on the bottom of the economic totem pole first. But the June data show effects that are spread across all kinds of people and places. The trends the ACP saw last month seem to be continuing, with discouraging employment numbers in communities that lean more heavily on manufacturing. However, wealthier, better-educated places also seem to be taking hits in the June numbers.
The June Numbers
In these latest figures, the communities of Rural Middle America and the Middle Suburbs led the way in overall employment declines compared with June 2024 — with decreases of 50,000 and 14,000 respectively.
(County-level employment numbers are not seasonally adjusted, so they are best measured by comparing that data from the same month in the previous year.)
As we noted in our post on the May unemployment data, these two community types have the highest shares of manufacturing jobs in the ACP. They may be experiencing supply-chain challenges around the ongoing tariff war with other countries or the data could be showing some uncertainty from manufacturers around the future of consumer demand.
What’s more interesting in these June numbers, however, are the employment changes in other communities, such as the Urban Suburbs.
The Urban Suburbs have the highest percentages of people with a college degree and the highest median household incomes. They tend to be full of people who have higher-end, safer jobs. Yet these communities saw a 0.2 percentage point increase in unemployment and a net loss of 7,000 people employed in June 2025 compared with June 2024.
In some ways, that drop in the Urban Suburbs is not a huge surprise. Business media outlets have been writing about the struggles for white-collar workers for months — and high-earners have seen especially bad numbers.
But the fact that the worsening job picture extends across so many of the ACP’s 15 types, places driven by very different kinds of economic activity, is noteworthy.
The 0.3 percentage increases in the Graying America and Hispanic Center community types are good examples. Those communities are very different demographically and geographically. In the case of the Hispanic Centers, it’s hard to ignore the possible effect of the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. In Graying America, the data could indicate a slowdown in spending in communities where many live on fixed incomes. The ACP will have to visit some of those communities in the months ahead to get a better read on the data.
Messages in the Data
To be clear, none of these numbers signify a sudden, drastic change in the nation’s job picture. The drops in jobs and increases in unemployment are pretty mild. And the U.S. unemployment rate is still relatively low at about 4.2%. But the drops in jobs and increases in unemployment that appear in these June county data follow a not-so-good May, and together the two months suggest a possible directional shift.
Furthermore, the widespread nature of June’s lackluster job picture suggests bigger issues may be affecting the economy.
The 15 community types in the ACP are driven by very different economic factors. They tend to react differently to changes in the economy — with different economic “winners” and “losers.” Usually when there is similar movement across all the types, it’s because the economy is going through a difficult patch.
These kinds of more uniform moves, even with an economy that seems relatively healthy overall, are unexpected and merit a close eye in the months ahead.
In the last 20 years, more than 2,100 newspapers have shuttered across the United States, and tens of thousands of journalists have seen their positions evaporate. But the effects of all those losses have not been evenly distributed, according to an American Communities Project analysis of new data.
In 2025, the news ecosystem is akin to a severely worn patchwork quilt, with many counties left with mere threads of local news, according to an ACP analysis of data from Rebuild Local News, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for policies that revitalize community journalism, and Muck Rack.
Viewed through the lens of the American Communities Project, a person’s local news environment varies greatly depending on the kind of community they call home. In some locales, dozens or even scores of reporters and editors may be covering the local scene, even if the number is dramatically lower than it was 25 years ago, while in other communities, there is not a single journalist to be found.
That dearth of local reportage can have profound impacts on the affected communities. It means fewer (or no) people keeping eyes on local officials and events and, in a broader sense, a loss of community cohesion and identity.
Understanding the Data
The Rebuild Local News/Muck Rack count of journalists is complicated measure. It doesn’t tally all the people working as local reporters, it tries to distinguish them by their roles in the community. It looks at whether someone is a freelancer or an aggregator or whether the person has published anything in the first half of the year, when the data sample of was gathered. And using those measures it comes up with something it calls the “Work Adjusted” number of journalists for each county.
You can see those numbers on the map below.
But sorting those county data into their respective American Communities Project types shows the local news challenges in a different light.
What the Data Reveal
The first thing that jumps out of the ACP analysis is the figure for the Big Cities. That’s likely due to several factors. Metro daily newspapers still have decent-sized staffs. Interior suburbs in many of those counties often have their own small newspapers or outlets.
But the number may also be skewed by cities like New York and Washington that hold huge numbers of journalists. And remember Big Cities also hold a lot more people and generally produce a lot more news than other community types.
Also, on the higher side of journalists per community are the Urban Suburbs and College Towns. Those communities stand out for a few reasons. They tend to be home to more college graduates and higher incomes, which may suggest more reading and appetite for news, and they tend to be more densely populated and therefore more able to support news organizations.
Those are among the most rural community types in the ACP and four of them voted for President Donald Trump by huge margins in 2024 — wins of 30 percentage points or more.
The small number of local journalists in these places is about more than just meetings going uncovered or an increased chance for local corruption. The lack of local news in those places means the dominant source of news is likely to be national outlets, particularly cable news outlets that bring a more partisan cast to coverage.
The red/blue frame for events in the news doesn’t just overwhelm local news; in many ways this frame replaces it, as more news becomes nationalized – and that is especially true in communities where there are very few local journalists working.
Other Notes
One outlier in that local news coverage story seems to be the LDS Enclaves. Outside of Salt Lake County (the home of Salt Lake City), most of those counties are fairly rural. And yet, the average number of journalists per county in that community type is more than 10.
It might be tempting to associate that high overall number with the scores of journalists in Salt Lake, but that isn’t the whole story. About a quarter of the LDS Enclave counties, 9 of 39, are above the national average for working journalists. A big factor here may be community cohesion. LDS Enclave communities tend to be tightly knit, bonded by a common culture, and that may lead them to having more interest in local goings-on.
The Exurban local journalist figure also stands out at 9.2. It’s above the national average, but relatively low for communities with higher incomes and more college degrees. In some ways, these places are the opposite of LDS Enclaves, which may account for the lower figure here.
The Exurbs tend to be among the fastest growing communities in the ACP. In many cases, their community identity may still be developing, and their more recent growth may mean they lack the old media legacy infrastructure (older newspapers and outlets) that are part of the ACP’s more urban communities.
As the broader restructuring of the nation’s news media continues, the shifts in these numbers are worth watching now and in the coming years. Local news has traditionally been a way to get beyond the back and forth of national politics and debates, which have grown increasingly divisive. If local news continues to decline and the nation’s news environment is increasingly national, it may be difficult to stem that tide.
In the second year of the American Communities Project’s study of fragmentation in society, we focused on understanding Americans’ hopes and fears, and found that some communities, including Military Posts, Working Class Country, LDS Enclaves, Rural Middle America, Aging Farmlands, and College Towns, expressed less hope about the country’s future than the nation as a whole. We talked to many residents on the ground to learn more, as seen in the pieces below.
In our survey and field work this past year, we also probed Americans’ lived experiences — from their connections with family and friends, to what contributes to a good life, to crime happening to them and their networks, to why they choose to move, to the media they consume. Responses show that personal, proximate experiences shape people’s views of the important issues in their communities. Furthermore, we asked Americans nine knowledge questions on voting, immigration, crime, and economic issues nationwide, and found that community types of all education and income levels have difficulty discerning facts from falsehoods today.
Below are snippets and links to our full pieces from year two. Peruse the full survey results here.
As the 2024 campaign reaches its crescendo, Americans’ immediate and long-term hopes and fears are front and center. They are a visceral part of the story, heard in intimate conversations and seen in media coverage.
This summer, the American Communities Project delved deeper into understanding the drivers behind these complicated and often anxious views in our ongoing study of the fragmentation of American society, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The latest ACP/Ipsos survey of 5,000-plus Americans finds an overwhelming majority of residents across the Project’s 15 community types have hope for their personal future, but the percentages drop dramatically for the nation’s short- and long-term futures. Reasons for optimism and pessimism vary, but a lack of trust in leaders is a significant concern.
The survey examines the composition of Americans’ personal connections and finds their immediate social circles are complex and diverse across the community types. The survey specifically asks whether or not people of different political and ideological affiliations, income levels, religions, races/ethnicities, and sexual and gender identities are part of respondents’ social circles. In particular, it finds that most people’s circles have fewer scientists and government officials or workers, and only a tiny percent of journalists.
Most importantly, the survey finds these outlooks and personal connections play a large role in shaping Americans’ divergent worldviews including how they perceive inflation and immigration, two issues of sustained importance in American life that are dominating this campaign season. Taken together, the survey’s findings offer a map to better understand the different values and concerns that define the nation and suggest why finding common ground remains a vexing problem.
Editor’s note: Since 2018, we have connected with many residents across the country for our work, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This summer, we asked community members to articulate what’s been happening where they live since President Trump took office in January. Some asked for anonymity for safety concerns. We thank all those who shared their views and experiences for this story.
More than six months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the consequences of his administration’s policies and practices have been stacking and far-reaching. The food system, education, health, and well-being sectors have been hit hard, and anxiety over new hardships keeps surfacing and cresting as the “Big, Beautiful Bill” takes effect. Economic uncertainty is tangible. Immigrants, LGBTQ+, children, elders, veterans, and college residents are heavily bearing these consequences, often in the shadows.
We share perspectives from community members in rural, suburban, and urban community types in nine states from coast to coast: Oregon, North Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia.
A sense of fragmented reality has churned up intense emotions in public and private spaces across America. In this heated climate, where it seems hard to find humor, who’s going out to see comedy in their community? How are comedians performing in different places?
At the American Communities Project, we sought to understand what live comedy feels and sounds like in America, how comedians are tackling hot-button cultural issues on stage, and how various audiences are responding to their acts.
In our quest, writers around the country chronicled their experiences at comedy shows within or near their home counties, from the west to east coasts.
In the matrix used by the American Communities Project to define the nation’s counties, the jurisdictions hugging the Rio Grande are almost all “Hispanic Centers,” places where self-identified Latinos make up the largest share of the population, on average 53%. In the case of Starr and Hidalgo counties, the share is above 90%, making these some of the most uniformly Latino counties in the country. In the 2020 census, rural Starr stood at 97%, more urban Hidalgo at 91.9%.
There’s a bustling border crossing in Starr County’s seat, Rio Grande City. You could easily walk to the border from the domed government building in Rio Grande (pop. 15,317). The city manager, Gilbert Millan, told me Rio Grande City has worked hard to attract retail outlets that appeal to shoppers on both sides of the border, and it shows on his balance sheets. “We have had a historic tax collection year. Last year, we did over a half a million. This year, we’re close to 800,000. I’m sure you saw on the way in…we didn’t have Starbucks, or Chick-Fil-A three years ago. We are just booming!”
As the American Communities Project has explored divisions in the nation these last few years, immigration has stood out as an especially complex issue. People see it differently depending upon whether it is framed as local issue or a national one.
As a local issue, immigration is just one of many problems their communities face, and it ranks below several other concerns. But as a national issue, immigration is a serious threat to the nation that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, survey data show that people in every community type see the issue as a much bigger problem for the nation than they do for their communities.
The recent raft of polls focusing on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office do not paint a sunny picture for the White House. Trump’s job approval numbers seem largely locked in the low 40s in the major media polls — from 44% in the Fox News poll to 39% in TheWashington Post survey — with good-sized drops since his inauguration.
When voters went to the polls last November, they had a complicated set of concerns, but the data suggested the electorate was primarily driven by economic concerns. AP VoteCast found that 39% of Americans said the economy was their top issue in 2024, while 20% said immigration. Abortion was a distant third at 11%.
Digging deeper, a 2024 survey from the American Communities Project found that one issue was driving those economic concerns across all community types: inflation. And as the White House wades deeper into a tariff war with China, that point should not be lost.
To better understand how men and women see the United States more broadly, the American Communities Project analyzed male and female responses around hope for the future of the country in all 15 community types from our 2024 survey with Ipsos.
Two clear points jump out of the data.
First, on the whole, women seem to have a less hopeful view than men about the direction of the nation, both short- and long-term. That shows up in most of the community types and very different kinds of places, from the Aging Farmlands to the College Towns.
Second, the gender divides look very different in the community types. In some places, men and women seem to be largely in agreement about the near-term and long-term hopes for the country. In others, there were wide differences, and there are some where men are more dour.
As the local news landscape continues to shrink, a large swath of Americans say they absorb community news through the ether and their daily chatter, from going about their day to scrolling on social media to connecting with family and friends. At the same time, a large part of the population says they avoid the news, according to the latest American Communities Project/Ipsos survey of some 5,000 Americans, conducted last summer.
As if to underscore these points, our survey found that 40% of Americans spent zero hours or almost no hours reading online news sites in a day, on average. Another 39% said they spent one hour a day on online news sites. Overall, 21% read such sites for more than one hour in an average day.
Where people live and how they live are big parts of the American Communities Project’s work. And as the ACP studies the country’s fragmentation culturally, politically, and economically, our 2024 survey asked: “Would you like to move to a new community, city, or town (inside or outside of your current state)?”
Overall, 39% said yes, and 61% said no. The desire to move was highest in the African American South at 45% (where the nonrenewal rate was higher), Working Class Country at 42%, Big Cities at 41%, Hispanic Centers at 40% (also with a higher nonrenewal rate), College Towns at 40%, and Military Posts at 40%.
Amid America’s political frictions and loneliness epidemic, our recent ACP/Ipsos survey revealed a bright spot in Americans’ social lives: Across communities, people reported feeling connected to family or friends most days.
The American Communities Project and Ipsos asked 5,312 residents across the ACP’s 15 types how many days in the past week they felt connected to family or friends and how often they felt lonely. Overall, Americans said they felt connected to family or friends five out of seven days a week and felt lonely 1.2 days a week.
Feeling connected to family or friends was relatively uniform among the community types, but two very sparsely populated communities separated themselves from the pack.
What impacts the ability to live a good life? It’s a question long pondered — and answered — through one’s lived experiences. The American Communities Project and Ipsos asked this question to nearly 5,000 Americans recently to understand where the public stands today. Our findings underscore the significance of personal and local connections as well as a belief in commerce and civil society over government. Drs. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz chronicled the centrality of relationships in their 2023 best-selling book The Good Life.
In our survey, local enterprises as well as civic, volunteer, or charitable groups emerged in the strongest positions nationally, perhaps because these are well integrated into Americans’ day-to-day, warm interactions with friends, neighbors, colleagues, and community members.
The state of the economy, democracy, immigration, and abortion. Those were the most important issues fueling voters in the 2024 presidential election, according to the exit polls. Crime was not at the top of the list.
That may be because violent crime in the U.S. dropped in 2023 after surging — and drawing much media attention — during the pandemic.
While crime continues to be amplified in America’s different information ecosystems, it is very much felt at the community level and in some communities more than others, as shown in our survey findings of 4,712 Americans this year.
Ever since the day of the 2020 presidential race, rumors have circulated about illegal votes and cases of voter fraud. And for years now, those rumors have been knocked down as false with no real evidence to support them — again and again and again.
And yet…
In this year’s research survey from the American Communities Project, fewer than four in 10 respondents, 38%, knew those rumors were false. Even in communities that voted for President Joe Biden by large margins, fewer than 50% said they knew the following statement was incorrect: “There are tens of thousands of documented cases of voter fraud in the last election.”
As the 2024 campaign winds down, that incorrect understanding of the election facts is important to keep in mind, but it is by no means the only area where Americans struggle to discern fact from fiction.
GivingTuesday Data Commons has been running a weekly national survey on generosity in the U.S. these last three years. We track the sharing of time, treasure, talent, and motivation as well as other key factors to understand giving trends. Helping us is an eight-part survey question about one’s worldview that we use to identify people’s place on the U.S. political spectrum, adapted from a Pew Research survey. This coupled with ACP’s county types brought new regional insights about giving — and surfaced clues about the current political landscape.
About the Political Spectrum
Pew outlines nine political types in the U.S., based on a 2021 survey of more than 10,000 Americans. They broadly fit into liberal, conservative, and centrist units:
They’ve repeated this survey every three to four years back to 1987, and the groups change size and labels over time, but there are always between six and nine distinct groups.
The Progressive Left and the Outsider Left believe many of the same things but don’t find the same leaders appealing or representative of themselves.
Stressed Sideliners are dominated by economic hardship and are too busy to bother with politics.
Faith and Flag Conservatives and the Populist Right both combine to form a group that news media typically mean when they talk about the “populist right,” and both overwhelmingly support President Trump.
We’ll dig into the Populist Right here.
Based on our survey of 3,962 people from Q2–Q4 of 2024, you can see that some parts of the country are dominated by one or a few Pew political types, while most others are not. Nowhere does one political worldview have an outright majority.
Table of American Communities on the Political Spectrum
Table description: Prevalence of Pew political types across the American Communities Project types. Numbers represent the percent of respondents for each type per community. For ease of comparison, only the top four Pew types for each community type are shown.
Source: GivingPulse. Note: Stressed Sideliners and Outsider Left don’t appear because they’re not very prevalent in any community type. We’ll discuss them in a future blog post.
Looking at just the Populist Right across ACP types, we can see that Evangelical Hubs form the strongest conservative base (when combined with Faith and Flag Conservatives) but that Hispanic Centers are essentially matched in the percent of people identifying with the Populist Right. Working Class Country and LDS Enclaves are similar.
However, the percentage of populist right support in deeply left-leaning places is far from zero. Nearly 1 in 5 people living in College Towns, Big Cities, and Urban Burbs identify with the Populist Right, even though these are the places they are least prevalent.
What We Know About the Populist Right
They engage in activism, but not quite as much as others: In Q1 of 2025, 29% of right-leaning Pew-types participated in some form of recent activism (within the last seven days), compared to 37% of people in left-leaning Pew-types, and 31% of centrist groups.
About 3/4 said they try to help those most in need, even if that means helping people in their own community less. This is one of several questions we ask to gauge shifts in polarizing or depolarizing beliefs/actions in the country. This group is typical of the right for depolarizing beliefs, with Outsider Left highest at 86% support, and Faith and Flag Conservatives the lowest at 69% support.
About 3/4 of them recently performed a random act of kindness for someone.
Despite their economic optimism, the Populist Right was among the groups most likely to say “donating money to charities provides too much of a financial strain” on them, at 50% of the group, just behind Stressed Sideliners at 56%.
We also ask people how much money they gave and to whom. In Q1 of 2025, the Populist Right increased their giving to registered charities, compared to that seen in Q3 and Q4 of 2024. They also decreased political donations over this time, the most of any Pew group. The Populist Right also gave more to help individuals of any of the nine groups in Q1 of 2025 — though they still tend to give more to registered nonprofits.
Another thing we noticed: When combining the three left-leaning groups and the three right-leaning groups into “liberal” and “conservative,” there is basically no difference between their rates of giving in Q1 of 2025 (see our full report). The story only appears when you start looking at how people with different worldviews (but not voting patterns) behave. It’s why we found asking about voting, party affiliation, or liberal/conservative to be less useful in understanding what affects one’s willingness to contribute in their community.
We find Pew types and ACP counties useful, but they also present us with a contradiction: Broadly speaking, most (~75%) people aspire to help others and build community across every worldview and community type, with little meaningful variation. Yet on a wide swath of other surveys, people think the world is trending in the opposite direction, and that other people in their community don’t share their same do-good aspirations. We find those perceptions do not match reality. To dig into that perception gap, we’re looking at how one’s media landscape correlates with different perceptions. Stay tuned.
Marc Maxmeister helps organize and convert the world’s generosity data into meaningful insights into how giving works, and what organizations can do to improve the lives of people served. He brings context from mixed methods field research in Africa, rigor from his Ph.D. work as a molecular neuroscientist, and engineering from past AI-driven startups and nonprofits.
by Ari Pinkus, Jenna Modica, Sarah Murphy, Jenna Fisher, Jake Pinkus, and Kathleen MajorskyJune 24, 2025
A sense of fragmented reality has churned up intense emotions in public and private spaces across America. In this heated climate, where it seems hard to find humor, who’s going out to see comedy in their community? How are comedians performing in different places?
At the American Communities Project, we sought to understand what live comedy feels and sounds like in America, how comedians are tackling hot-button cultural issues on stage, and how various audiences are responding to their acts.
In our quest, writers around the country chronicled their experiences at comedy shows within or near their home counties, from the west to east coasts. (Click on the anchor links below to jump to specific vignettes.)
A show ticket for one, including service fees, ranged in price at the chosen venues — about $12 in Los Angeles, $17 in St. Louis, $26 in Sarasota, $32 in Sandoval, $39 in Bucks, and $52 in Cook County’s Chicago.
Between the cost, content, and availability, attending comedy shows is a definite niche activity. The 2024 MRI-Simmons consumer survey found that 6% of Americans went to a comedy club/stand-up comedy show in the past 12 months. (The survey was conducted between September 2021 and August 2023.) Just 3% attended less than once a month. Attending shows was most popular in urban-oriented and affluent communities where entertainment options abound, particularly in the Big Cities and Exurbs.
Reaching Audiences and Communities Online and In Person
At the same time, there are ways comedy has become more inclusive. Michelle Robinson, associate professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who’s taught the course “The Ethics of Stand-up Comedy,” explained by email: “Since the expansion of platforms that offer opportunities for more comedians to make their work available and even deliver hour-long specials has grown, stand-up comedy writ large includes or addresses more people…. Comedians may be more likely to find their audience(s), either by chance or via ‘the algorithm.’ Popular comedians ‘foster’ or ‘mentor’ one another through the production and direction of specials.
“If the [inclusive] question is really about whether popular humor (or trending stand-up comedy) by and large is conscious of diverse sensibilities and identities, it’s hard to say,” Robinson said.
Comedian and producer Jeremy Essig, who’s experienced the ebbs and flows of the comedy business for the past 25 years, knows these trends well. For five years running, Essig’s company Rhizome Art Limited/Rhizome Comedy in Raleigh, North Carolina, has been producing comedy and distributing specials to Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and other outlets. For 20 years previously, he was a touring comic.
“Comedy is in a boom phase right now,” Essig said in a phone interview. “Clubs are a lot fuller. I feel like it’s a very cyclical thing….”
Essig attributes much of this surge to the pandemic and social media, as people were stuck at home and entertaining themselves on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. After the lockdowns ended and in-person entertainment got going again, many wanted to come out and meet the comics they were following online.
The fragmentation of American culture means that “people are playing largely to their own audiences,” Essig said. “You can be a Joe Rogan and be very popular, and or a Joe Rogan derivative, but you can also be someone very left and attract a similar audience. And then, what’s interesting in the middle is people that aren’t as well known.” Some of Essig’s performing comedian peers in the middle ground can see a disgusted face and “people on a hair trigger about smaller things,” he said.
So, is it hard to find comedy that kills everywhere now, compared to, say, 20 years ago, or does it depend on the kind of community where a comedian is working?
Robinson weighed in: “I would compare the situation to network TV before the rise of cable, where comedic ‘gatekeeping’ structured how we understood what good comedy was and trained us (and our bodies) to laugh. This is not to say folks lacked discernment then or now, but cacophony is not bad. ‘Community’ divides can be geographical, generational, virtual (by platform), political, and along so many other lines, and comedians now interface with all sorts of ‘communities.’ Geography probably matters as much as we think…but sometimes the comedy itself changes, because the air is freer.”
What did the writers for the ACP find in their communities? Read on.
Los Angeles County, California (Big City)
By Jenna Modica
It’s a time of great hurt in Los Angeles as immigration raids and protests against them continue. Almost like a split screen, the world’s comedy hub is meeting a need for good humor. About 20 minutes from where the Marines and National Guard troops have been stationed since early June, The Lyric Hyperion is one of the venues soldiering on.
The Lyric Hyperion opening for an evening show in Los Angeles on June 16. Section photos by Jenna Modica.
On the deck of The Lyric Hyperion.
On this mid-June Monday night, the 60-seat theater was feeling especially intimate with the small crowd gathered. Various pictures and plants hung around the space, “Harry Potter” and “Star Wars” soundtracks played on a loop, and the smell of fresh popcorn wafted through the air — $6 for endless popcorn. Alcohol sales were plentiful, too.
The refreshment area at The Lyric Hyperion. Bottomless popcorn for $6 is popular.
A full activity board at the venue.
The 33 attendees reflected some diversity but generally skewed younger. Guests included a group of three white women in their 30s/early-40s, a group of three twentysomething white women, a single early-20s white woman sitting alone, one lesbian couple, three Black men, two females of Indian descent, two males, with the rest mainly white women from their 20s to 50s.
The Hyperion Lyric stage in Los Angeles County.
Audience members settled in for the show.
We were there for the long-form improvised show “Pretty Funny,” starring comedy veterans Jon Gabrus of “High and Mighty” and “101 Places To Party Before You Die,” Ben Rodgers of “Workaholics” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” and Dom Dierkes of Derrick Comedy and “Solar Opposites.” In the opening (which started 15 minutes late), the three men made gestures suggesting they were having a threesome. Two identified as gay dads. The bit drew a lot of laughter. One single thirtysomething male attendee with a very loud, distinct laugh rocked back and forth laughing most of the act. When the men acted as if they were kissing and enjoying it, the audience smiled, clapped, and laughed out loud.
The audience gravitated to Gabrus in a tropical shirt. Appearing as the biggest personality of the three, he drew big laughs when he did female voice impressions.
When the comedians asked for an audience member’s favorite song lyric, a 20s Black, curly-haired woman shouted, “Tell me something good.” Responding to the prompt, the men set the scene in 2001, with one man playing an old computer and the other two shouting out descriptions to us in the audience. The group memorably addressed the tragic September 11th terror attacks with a joke on how an old computer would have operated during that time. With pitch-perfect humorous words and moves, the men did not offend but engaged through the whole show.
From left to right, Dom Dierkes, Jon Gabrus, and Ben Rodgers performing the improv show “Pretty Funny” in Los Angeles.
The three veteran comedians continue their act.
Afterward, I asked Kassandra Galindo for her thoughts. Galindo was striking with tan skin, fresh tattoos, dark hair and eyes, and a welcoming smile. She attended alone from the Inland Empire area, east of LA. The 32-year-old social media coordinator used to work at a comedy club, but this was her first improv show. She desired a more intimate setting and is trying new things in L.A. “The crowd work was fun and cool to see them incorporate it in their act. I like how their gay jokes weren’t inappropriate but rather tasteful.”
Galindo laughed a lot in the first half, but not as much in the second half. Being given too much detail and getting lost in the story made her lose energy, she said. She wasn’t a fan of the late start but will return to Lyric Hyperion, having enjoyed the bar, stage, and overall setting. “Since this was my first time, I was nervous to raise my hand to give a lyric or introduce myself. But now I know what to expect and will be the first hand up next time.”
Sandoval County, New Mexico (Exurb)
Sandoval County looking east. Section photos by Sarah Murphy.
By Sarah Murphy
Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel in Bernalillo, New Mexico.
As I drove north along I-25, the cityscape faded into sagebrush while the Sandia Mountains dominated the eastern horizon. My destination this early June Saturday night: Quezada’s Comedy Club & Cantina inside the Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel in Bernalillo, New Mexico, about 25 minutes from downtown Albuquerque. Upon arrival, I navigated past the floor of slot machines to find the comedy club tucked along an interior wall. Quezada’s, which opened in 2023, is one of a small handful of local comedy clubs, nearly all of which have opened in the past seven years.
The entrance to Quezada’s Comedy Club & Cantina is inside the casino in Bernalillo, New Mexico.
Headlining was Leo Gonzalez, TikTok-star-turned-Hulu-actor of “This Fool,” whose stand-up career began just three months ago. The cantina bartender said the sold-out show was rare, but he attributed the impressive turnout to Gonzalez’s popularity among New Mexicans. Big-name comedians tend to overlook Albuquerque for places like Dallas or Phoenix, but recent club headliners including Margaret Cho, Tom Arnold, and Gonzalez may be a sign of change.
Inside the club, theatrical lights adorned the walls of the intimate and lively 300-seat room. Casually dressed friends and couples in their late 30s to 40s enjoyed drinks and snacks with a warm din. I was seated with the Martinez family — Danny, Jessica, and their son Danny Jr., who lives in Albuquerque and invited his parents out from Mora, New Mexico. The couple moved there 20 years ago, though Jessica’s Padres jersey and Danny’s cheering at the mention of East L.A. pointed to their Southern California roots. Jessica said she discovered Gonzalez’s TikTok videos during the pandemic. They’ve been a bright light for her, a nurse practitioner, and she appreciates that his humor is relatable and not too raunchy.
The audience welcomed Martin Rizo’s and Isaac Castro’s opening sets. Given Gonzalez’s reputation for clean humor, a few graphic jokes drew polite groans from the crowd, but pop culture riffs like Destiny’s Cholas and Brokeback Montaño landed solidly. Once Gonzalez took the stage, his endearing charm shined while taking a birthday tequila shot with a fan, posing for a mid-set photo-op, and celebrating two recent graduates in the audience — Jessica included. A line about Gonzalez’s recent breakup drew some playful flirty banter from a woman in the front row. In a twist of comedic irony nearly two-thirds through the set, the revelation that the woman is married earned the audience’s chagrin and the biggest laughs of the night.
Headliner comedian Leo Gonzalez (r.) poses with writer Sarah Murphy after the comedy show. Photo courtesy of Sarah Murphy.
In an interview with Gonzalez afterward, he acknowledged that navigating hot-button issues is tough. Recent protests and ICE deportations in L.A. hit home for him, but he’s not always sure how to address these topics with an audience whose political leanings feel opaque. During his set, Gonzalez tested the waters with the tentative: “Did you guys have a pandemic here?” but revealed that the crowd was still hard for him to read. Given the moderate leaning of Sandoval County and the diverse communities of the surrounding area, that’s understandable. Because he believes good comedy comes from being a good observer and making the crowd feel seen and understood, he doesn’t want to risk missing that mark: “Sometimes I try to be nonpolitical, and just land on being a decent person as the common ground,” he admitted.
Jessica was first in line for a photo-op with Gonzalez. Her highlight of the night? “How he can make people like me laugh,” she gushed.
The crowd’s mid-set cheers of “We love you, Leo!” were testament to their shared sentiment and Gonzalez’s ability to unite a diverse audience, regardless of their politics. More than punchlines, Gonzalez offered genuine connection and gratitude to the crowd who came to see him and feel seen by him: “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said more than once, and you could tell he meant it.
Danny Jr. was all smiles and hoped that Gonzalez’s show was a sign that Albuquerque’s comedy scene is heating up. The crowd here proved there’s a warm, receptive community ready to welcome touring comedians and eager to celebrate the bridge-building power of comedy.
St. Louis County, Missouri (Urban Suburb)
By Jenna Fisher
Some came on dates, others with coworkers. One table of girls erupted in cheers when the high school teacher on stage called them out. “I didn’t recognize you,” he quipped. “You’re on time.”
The crowd roared.
It wasn’t quite a full house this mid-June Friday night at the St. Louis Funny Bone, but the audience of more than 100 came ready to laugh, even if it meant being nudged a little. Ages ranged from teens to people with gray hair. The average attendee was around 50 years old. Audience members were mostly white, middle class, dressed more casually than not, and quick to respond to the entertainers. Some bits got belly laughs. Others landed more softly, with a ripple of chuckles and nods. While there might have been some squirming from the younger crowd, no one booed. No one walked out. Everyone seemed to be looking up and engaged.
“I was nervous,” admitted Brenda Varnum, 54, who drove nearly an hour from New Baden, Illinois, for a date. A licensed home childcare worker offering daycare programs in New Baden, Varnum used to attend more live comedy before Covid. This was her first show post-Covid. “I thought it might get too liberal. But I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all…. I thought it was hilarious. My cheeks are stuck,” she added, reaching up to her face to emphasize how much she’d been smiling.
St. Louis Funny Bone at a mall in St. Louis County, Missouri. Photo by Jenna Fisher.
Tucked into a St. Louis County mall, the club could have been pulled from a comedy movie set: tightly packed two-person tables with four people tucked into them sipping drinks, as waitresses flit between sets. A single stool and microphone sat on stage in front of a brick wall with the club’s neon logo. Around the corner, by the restrooms and the bar, a karaoke room. If there had been a haze of cigarette smoke in the air, it would’ve completed the scene in the low-lit room.
Three comics performed, each with a distinct style. Host Tim Convy opened with casual banter, noting he avoided political material just before delivering a joke that had the crowd holding its breath, then exhaling in laughter as he ended his long mock political advertisement making absurd promises with, “Vote for me for state treasurer.” Joe Stapleton followed, a poker commentator with high energy and rapid delivery and a tendency to deliver his jokes at a near yell. His set jumped from crude humor to abortion to beer. Some jokes landed well, others drew nervous laughter, especially from a table of college men and the table of high school girls.
Headliner Rob Durham took the stage with the ease and practice of someone who has experience in front of tough crowds (read: high school students). And he leaned into his life as a high school teacher. He joked about Gen Z slang, anxiety, and getting called into the principal’s office to the constant cackle of the nodding audience.
Each comic approached cultural flashpoints without dwelling. Durham came closest to pushing deeper, with whip-like commentary on banned books, the idea of arming teachers, and then more seriously stepped onto a proverbial soapbox to talk about all the things teachers don’t get paid to do, like play chess with the student who doesn’t have friends, and stay after school to support the kid who said he doesn’t want to live anymore. As he took a breath to end his vent, the room was silent. Still, the crowd stayed with him. And that’s when he delivered his punchline, “Nah, I don’t do any of that,” that sent belly laughs throughout the crowd. He later confirmed he does, do that stuff, to more laughs.
Sara Phillips de Borja, of Ballwin, Missouri, is a big comedy-goer and has been in rooms where the comedian did not read the room and completely tanked. From her perspective, these guys did great, and she loved how they were able to localize their jokes, poking fun of different suburban neighborhoods. She felt a little uneasy over a brief comment about East St. Louis, a predominantly Black area of downtown that gets a bad rap and can be a dog whistle for racism, but otherwise she really loved Durham’s observational comedy.
On the way out, as the lights came up and the staff swept in to prep for the next show, several pointed to Durham’s school material as a highlight, including Iowa couple Nate and Tawny, in town for their teen’s soccer tournament.
For them, the evening was about release. The two love comedy, specifically Nate Bargatze, and thought the teen stuff killed. “We just came in to let go and laugh,” Tawny said.
“Nothing should be off the table,” Nate added.
The audience seemed to agree.
Cook County, Illinois (Big City)
By Jake Pinkus
At the entrance to Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. Section photos by Jake Pinkus.
It wasn’t just any June Friday night in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. It was the night before the Old Town Art Festival, which started in 1948 and has become one of America’s foremost juried art fairs. While the neighborhood prepared for the big event — featuring 230 artists and 57 garden stops — I walked around streets I frequented years ago. Little had changed. As I stepped onto North Wells Street, I spotted the familiar red awning of The Second City, the flagship comedy venue.
I came here to see the latest Mainstage revue, “This Too Shall Slap.” As I entered, the air buzzed with chatter and the clinking of glasses. Waiters navigated the crowd, taking food and drink orders, adding to the dinner-theater atmosphere.
Inside The Second City, a premier comedy club in Chicago.
The room accommodating about 300 seats was full, and the audience was diverse. A few tables away sat a married couple in their late 50s from Naperville, Illinois, part of Chicago’s western suburbs. They came for a date night. “We love comedy!” Susan shared. “This is our fifth time coming to Second City. We’ve tried other comedy clubs in the area, but nothing ever compares.” Her husband, Greg, nodded in agreement. “We’ve gone to Zanies right around the corner, but didn’t like the vibe.”
Nearby, a gay bachelor party group of 15 filled a large table, their laughs mixing with hoots and cheers. Across the aisle, six friends were celebrating a college birthday party.
On stage, the diverse six-person ensemble — Leila Gorstein, Adonis Holmes, Hannah Ingle, Bill Letz, Jordan Stafford, and Adisa “Di” Williams — displayed obvious chemistry and skill, with seamless transitions between characters and sketches.
“Musical Chairs,” set in an anger management class, began as a simple game before spiraling into hilarious chaos. Physical comedy was only part of its appeal; the sketch explored psychological issues like the pressure to conform, the release of bottled-up emotions, and the need for validation within a group. The audience, including the bachelor party and couple from Naperville, roared.
In “Claudine’s Kitchen,” a parody of trending cooking shows, Claudine maintained a sugary sweet demeanor for the camera, only for her true unhinged personality to emerge during the commercial breaks. The sketch captured how performative public personas are and the fragile sanity underneath. It hit the mark for the audience.
The “Dictator Nation” musical number showcased the most direct nod to political power. But it satirized the concepts of authoritarianism, groupthink, and control, and did not mock current global leaders or specific governmental structures. The audience was laughing and clapping along through the act.
Ensemble member Stafford delivered a standout performance as an elderly character struggling to reach his sister on her birthday, repeatedly dialing the wrong number. The bizarre and awkward conversations with strangers on the other end of the line were both tender and funny, playing up the modern disconnects and the unexpected human connections that can arise from technological mishaps.
In a world that often feels overwhelming and insane, “This Too Shall Slap” reminded me that sometimes the most profound way to understand reality is to laugh at its absurdity.
As for Susan and Greg, the married couple from Naperville, they’re already planning their sixth trip back to Second City.
Outside The Second City comedy venue in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.
Sarasota County, Florida (Graying America)
McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, featuring a variety of comedians, is an institution in Sarasota, Florida. Section photos by Kathleen Majorsky.
By Kathleen Majorsky
McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre is an institution in Sarasota, Florida. Established in 1988, it moved to the heart of downtown Sarasota in 2014. This small venue draws locals and visitors for comedians’ laughs, bar food, and cocktails most nights, including Sundays.
High season is over in Sarasota. Most snowbirds have flown back north to escape the heat, humidity, and hurricane season that lasts from June through November. But on this first of June, plenty of Sarasota’s seniors were in tow, including at least 20 couples over 55 enjoying cocktails and time with friends before the performance.
Drew Warren, the MC in his late 50s, warmed up the crowd with a few regional jokes — and some generational ribbing. At one point, Warren picked out an 18-year-old from the crowd and joked that he probably isn’t on Facebook anymore. After the guy confirmed he’s not, Warren said something like, ahh, yes, Facebook is where the old people hang.
Geno the Garbage Man, a Black comedian and actual garbage man in the Sarasota/Bradenton area took the stage dressed in his highlighter yellow vest that he wears on the job. Pointing to one of the only Black audience members who was sitting up front, he exclaimed, “I’ve been here three nights in a row, and you’re the first Black person I’ve seen!” In humorous style, he shared very relatable tips for anyone who takes out the trash at home.
Wyatt Cote, the 34-year-old headlining comedian, joked about taking care of his aging father. Cote’s recent air travel got the savage treatment for its sky-high costs. He recounted paying $42 for his seat on Spirit Airlines — and $55 to check his bag. So, the next time, he bought two seats: one for his bag and one for him, then used the extra money to buy a $13 bottle of water.
At a show in Little Rock, Arkansas, Cote had a different numbers problem and regaled us with the story. Referencing his low salary with the Little Rock audience, Cote was like, yeah, people make 10/3 times more than me as a comedian. The audience there did not laugh or seem to understand the fraction, he said. Afterward, Cote said an audience member approached him with the point that she got the joke, adding she understood it because she has a college degree. Cote’s response: Uh, 10/3 is fifth-grade math.
At times, Cote’s style was a bit raunchy, leaving the older crowd to laugh hesitantly.
But not everyone was put off by Cote’s humor. Ashley Linton, 36, an office manager at the local Kia dealership and a Sarasota resident who attended the show with her boyfriend, said, “I’m open to all of it. Whatever resonates. I feel like people get uptight. I like the old school comedy, being able to joke about everything. And not being afraid to joke about things.” This was the second time the couple saw Cote perform at McCurdy’s in the last 12 months.
Lindon waxed nostalgic. “We’ve been watching a lot of ‘Seinfeld’ lately. It was the early ’90s, so it was, of course, a lot of stuff that you can’t say now. It’s old-school comedy.”
She hopes “old-school” comedy is making a comeback. “Now we’ve gotten to a point where we can’t joke about stuff. How do we revert? In the ’90s, you could joke, but now it’s like you can’t say anything about anything. Now we are getting back to, let’s have fun again.”
Fun again. We could all use a little more fun…again.
Fun bathroom decor at McCurdy’s in Sarasota, Florida.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Exurb)
Coworking space FZ Works hosts a Comedy Night once a month on Main Street in Yardley, Pennsylvania. Section photos by Ari Pinkus.
Comedy Night at FZ Works, aka Ceiling on Main.
By Ari Pinkus
Once a month for nearly two years running, a stylish coworking space one floor up on Yardley’s Main Street, morphs into a comedy showcase with a BYOB bar. On some nights, it’s overflowing. On the cool Thursday night of Memorial Day week, the room was not as full, with 30 attendees that included a mix of couples and singles in casual dress, some coming for the first time, all from Bucks County. Room vibes: warm and neighborly.
Guests wait for the show to begin in Yardley, Pennsylvania. FZ Works owner and Comedy Night launcher Charles Barrett stands in a cap behind the bar.Regular host comedian Tim Conniff opens up Comedy Night in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Perennial host comic Tim Conniff kicked things off: “These are the Yardley people who don’t have shore homes.” The money joke got an easy laugh in this relaxed setting. The Jersey Shore, a summer getaway tradition for many, is about 90 minutes away from this idyllic Exurb of Philadelphia along the Delaware River. (Yardley is about 10 minutes downriver from Gen. George Washington’s Christmas night crossing in 1776.) Conniff pointed to the vacant front row, ribbing that he now understands how his priest feels on Sunday mornings. Some clapped when he asked who the fellow Catholics were in the room. Scanning the white faces, Conniff remarked, “I got to be honest with you, though, not the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen.”
His generational teasing engaged the audience. When asking who in the room identified as Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, it was clear Gen X was well-represented. He noted the differences that marked the cohorts. Young people know their pronouns. Older generations used AOL email. People cheered when Conniff called out the Hotmail domain. He played up how Gen Z came on the scene: “This is the generation best known for eating Tide Pods, right?” Only a couple of Millennials were in the audience, including me. Conniff’s quip: “Is your Xbox broken?” Then, he brought up a birthday party on Philadelphia’s Main Line with 50 attendees: “28 Millennials and 22 free-range Millennial offspring.” “Ahhhs” sounded all around.
Taking the stage next was comedy-magician Norman Klar, the first comedian to perform at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Early in his act, he jested: “I just had a birthday. I turned 63…about 10 years ago.” After earning a hardy laugh, Klar moved on to his happily married status, which other longtime couples related to. He and his wife of 35 years watch “Jeopardy!” together. “She gets every answer right.” Meanwhile, the only one he knows is: “What am I watching now?” The two vacation in Cape May, New Jersey, her preferred destination over his nearby Wildwood. “We compromise,” he kidded, then brought up the inflationary prices on the promenade. Pizza costs $12.50, a slice. When the audience chuckled, he stressed, “That’s a good deal there.” Boisterous laughing ensued. The crowd roared when he made a racy joke that involved bringing home roses for his wife after nearly forgetting her birthday!
Klar mentioned his hands shaking, then quipped, “I have to be careful when I eat.” Nonetheless, he nimbly played with a giant deck of cards and kept the rapt audience involved in a series of card tricks, offering participants cards to choose, then guessing their selections. He impressed by picking the right cards out of the deck or improvising a clever cover.
Comedy-magician Norman Klar performs card trick.
Klar enlists an audience member to help him execute the trick.
As Klar squeezed in an animal act, he said these creatures are found in South Africa, “where they’re killing all those people,” seeming to slyly reference the recent confrontation in the White House about what was really happening in South Africa. It was the closest to politics we came.
Headliner and local comedian David Graham in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Headliner and local comic David Graham said the audience looked like “a Hallmark movie crowd.” After watching several of these films, Graham felt he could write one himself. “It’s the same story every time. The corporate lawyer comes to town. She’s going to buy the candle shop from this guy…. They always walk through the mistletoe and her heart melts,” he said. Notably, Hallmark Channel Christmas movies are more popular than average in America’s 196 Exurbs like Bucks County, according to the 2024 MRI-Simmons consumer survey.
Graham went on about how controlling a Fitbit can be, besting a bad Jersey driver on I-95, and joining his wife on weekend girls’ trips to Vegas to people-watch. About his wife of many years he playfully joked, “We still get each other; we don’t understand each other.” Some winding stories Graham shared about his connections and couple dynamics were on the raunchier side — but got a lot of laughs in the room. Graham closed out the show to hoots, claps, even whistles.
After wrapping, friends and regular comedy-goers Denise Kilian and Carrie Foraker said they had a good time. They liked Klar’s performance the most, especially the interactivity. Foraker encouraged her friend to come along this time after a tough week. The generational jokes landed well because “they’re true,” said Kilian from nearby Levittown who owns an outdoor living supply business with her husband in Princeton, New Jersey. She said she may see another show here. Her friend, Foraker of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, enjoys a range of humor. “I’m pretty open-minded. Left, right, that’s why we live in the United States of America, right?”
Ari Pinkus is senior editor/writer/researcher and project manager at the American Communities Project.
Jenna Modica is a production assistant and freelance writer in Los Angeles with experience across indie films and large-scale production.
Sarah Murphy is a recent Albuquerque, New Mexico, transplant who enjoys writing about the intersection of people, place, and community.
Jenna Fisher is a veteran journalist, educator, and doctoral student in journalism with more than 15 years of experience reporting for outlets including The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and Swimmer Magazine. Her research and teaching focus on media and news literacy, preparing people to engage critically and constructively with today’s complex media landscape.
Jake Pinkus is a freelance digital producer and founder of Pinkus Partners in the Chicago suburbs.
Kathleen Majorsky is a professional freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience in email marketing, journalism, and newsletter creation.
As the American Communities Project has explored divisions in the nation these last few years, immigration has stood out as an especially complex issue. People see it differently depending upon whether it is framed as local issue or a national one.
As a local issue, immigration is just one of many problems their communities face, and it ranks below several other concerns. But as a national issue, immigration is a serious threat to the nation that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, survey data show that people in every community type see the issue as a much bigger problem for the nation than they do for their communities.
Some of that dissonance seems to be about the difference between firsthand and secondhand experience with the issue. And this week’s unrest in Los Angeles offers another example of why immigration is so divisive and intractable on the American political scene.
National v. Local Feelings
The 2024 ACP survey on American fragmentation asked respondents about a series of issues, more than 20, everything from unemployment to abortion to taxes — and, of course, immigration. The survey then asked people to pick the three that were the most important “in their community” and “in the country as a whole.”
In 2024, the top five community issues led with inflation, as might be expected, which was far and away the biggest concern, followed by taxes, homelessness, healthcare, and then immigration at only 17%.
But when respondents were asked about the biggest national issues, the list changed dramatically.
Inflation was still the No. 1 issue, again, as expected, but the number of voters citing it fell slightly. Immigration placed second among all respondents, at 31% — 14 percentage points higher than the number citing it as a local issue.
That’s a noteworthy finding. It suggests that immigration is not (or was not) a pressing issue on the ground where people live. In their lived experience, it didn’t rate as a big concern. But when the question moved to a national context, immigration was seen as a much bigger problem — and that was true in every community type.
Among the Community Types
The data show big increases in people saying immigration is a top concern “in the nation as a whole” in every type, double-digit jumps in all of them except the Hispanic Centers, where a larger share of the population (28%) said immigration was a top concern locally. (We only included 13 of the 15 types on this survey question due to time constraints.)
But three types stood out for showing the biggest jump for immigration as a top national concern: Graying America, Middle Suburbs, and Rural Middle America. They all saw increases of 20 percentage points or more, and they are similar in three important ways.
First, none are very racially or ethnically diverse. Second, they all voted for Donald Trump by double-digits in 2024. And third, they do not tend to have large foreign-born populations. In fact, the “foreign-born” figure for all those community types is 7% or less. The national average is 14%.
Those data suggest that immigration is not an issue with big everyday impacts on the ground in those places — or, at least, that the people who live in those places are not likely to run into immigrants too often in their daily lives.
So, what’s shaping the attitudes on immigration as a national issue in those communities — and really in all the types? It seems likely that news coverage and social media posts are drivers.
Inflation, crime, healthcare, and the general economy are issues most of us relate to directly through markers including grocery receipts, local police reports, the cost of doctor visits, and bank account statements.
Secondhand Knowledge
But most of us do not have firsthand knowledge of the situation at the border (something Ray Suarez wrote about for this site recently), nor have we seen a migrant “caravan” with our own two eyes. And, of course, most of us are U.S. citizens. In the ACP survey last year, only 38% of Americans said they had a close friend or relative who was an immigrant from another country. In some community types, the figure was much lower.
Our views on immigration are much more likely to be shaped by news reports and social media posts. Adding to the challenge, our research has shown people are becoming less likely to seek out news. They believe important news “finds them” and don’t generally spend a lot of time trying to suss out what’s accurate in the news they receive.
Those attitudes are all part of the larger story this week concerning the immigration protests in Los Angeles.
There’s no doubt that some of the protests have turned ugly and violent — and they are not over yet. But how widespread are they? And what is the real extent of the damage? Some media accounts suggest that while the images were intense, the areas affected were fairly small. Meanwhile, President Trump has called in the Marines to protect the city.
How one views the protests and immigration as a national issue is likely to be closely tied to what accounts and stories one reads, sees, and hears in the media. Most people don’t have a lot of in-person inputs on immigration in their daily lives. That leaves a lot of room for different understandings of what is an intensely divisive issue.
The nation’s attitudes toward higher education have grown complicated in recent years. Increasingly, many Americans have become skeptical of the importance of a bachelor’s degree, particularly Americans who lean Republican in their politics.
And the Trump administration has largely elevated that skepticism, cutting or revoking already-issued federal grants in a variety of areas, including medical research to the tune of more than $160 billion. At the same time, the administration is threatening deeper cuts and criticizing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at institutions.
But the nation’s college and universities are more than just educational hubs for the next generation, they are economic drivers in small towns and big urban centers around the country. And an analysis from the American Communities Project and the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization, finds two points are generally true:
Communities with a college or a university tend to have higher per capita GDPs than neighboring communities.
Communities with big, “tier 1” research universities that receive big government grants, generally do even better with their per capita GDP than similar communities.
The data suggest that the spin-off commerce created by the schools has an outsized impact on their communities, big and small, all over the country. And cutting funds to the nation’s institutions of higher education is likely to have larger impacts that will be felt on and off campuses in the months and years ahead.
What Is a College Town?
Colleges and universities don’t exist as islands; communities grow up around them to serve them. Some of these communities are considered College Towns in the ACP — places where the college or university, or sometimes more than one, defines the locale.
There is a range of College Towns in the ACP rubric. Some are populous counties where one big university dominates, such as Boulder County, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado. Some are smaller counties where a smaller school has a disproportionate impact, such as Buncombe County, North Carolina, home of UNC Ashville. And some house several smaller campuses, such as Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, home of Harrisburg University, Penn State-Harrisburg and a satellite campus for Temple.
But overall, the data shows a clear story. The College Towns in the American Communities Project have a higher per capita GDP than the counties around them. And the effects are even larger for “tier 1” research schools, the 187 institutions that are classified as having “very high research spending and doctorate production” in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
In College Towns without “tier 1” schools (communities with smaller schools or collections of small schools), the per capita GDP was more than $7,000 higher than it was in surrounding non-College Town counties.
And in College Towns that are home to a big research schools, the impacts are much bigger. The per capita GDP in those counties is $16,000 higher than the surrounding non-College Town counties
Regardless, the takeaways from the data are hard to ignore: College Towns tend to be economic drivers for their broader regions. Some of this business serves students — restaurants, bars, stores — but part of it is the impact of the institutions themselves. Colleges and universities hire a lot more than professors. There are student support staff, maintenance staff, HR staff, and other university workers.
When the federal government cuts money to those institutions, all those employees take a hit. Less scholarship money and grants may also lead to fewer students, which means local businesses suffer.
“Tier 1” Research Schools
And, of course, there are colleges and universities that exist outside the ACP’s College Towns category. There are colleges in Big Cities, big dense Urban Suburbs, and urban fringe Exurbs.
To understand the impact of the nation’s big research universities (the schools facing bigger cuts from the Trump administration), the ACP and EIG looked at per capita GDP in communities with and without “tier 1” research schools across the ACP types.
Again, the data are largely clear.
Those high-research schools are in nine of the ACP’s 15 types, and in most cases communities with such an institution do much better than their non-college counterparts.
The “tier 1” difference in per capita GDP in the Exurbs is +$17,000.
In the Big Cities, the difference is +$29,000.
The difference in the African American South is close to +$40,000.
The two outliers here are Middle Suburbs and Hispanic Centers, which both have a negative “tier 1” difference (-$6,000 and -$33,000, respectively). However, those numbers are drawn from very small samples, three total schools in those two types.
To be clear, in a lot of these communities, the universities are smaller parts of a much bigger story. The fact that these communities were not labeled College Towns is an indication that the schools are not their dominant trait.
Still, the fact that those with big research schools tend to do much better suggests that having a big research school in your backyard pays dividends or at least is part of having a vibrant economic community.
Going Forward
These data may not change how a lot of people feel about the state of higher education in America. The great battles over “woke-ism” and whether college is “worth it” will continue. Like many other issues in the nation right now, much is being driven by cultural divides — what people on different sides of the political spectrum think they are supposed to believe.
And, it should be noted, these latest political headwinds for colleges and universities are coming at a time when many smaller, mid-tier schools are struggling with enrollment declines as a demographic cliff looms for the U.S. college-age population. Those drops may be lessening the potency of mid-tier colleges as economic drivers.
But the numbers here indicate that colleges and universities and College Towns still play a significant economic role in the nation beyond their part in educating the next generation. They are economic drivers in local economies scattered across the country, and cuts to them will have likely have unforeseen impacts that will be felt all over.
The current White House has made many bold promises, but near the top of the list is the pledge to reverse the decline in the nation’s manufacturing sector and usher in a new “golden age” in it.
When you look at the data, however, that task looks to be remarkably tall to the point of being almost impossible. The American Communities Project looked at U.S. Census data since 2010 and found that manufacturing jobs have actually increased in the United States overall and in nine of the 15 community types. Urban and suburban places have seen most of the gains.
The declines have come “per capita.” That is, manufacturing jobs have become a smaller percentage of the workforce in nearly every community type in that time. But labor force experts believe much of that loss is likely attributable to automation.
Manufacturing in the ACP
Data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey finds there were about 15.6 million jobs in the manufacturing sector in 2010 and about 15.9 million in 2023, the latest data available for all counties in the United States. The biggest increase came in the Exurbs in the ACP, which saw an increase of about 144,000 manufacturing jobs in that time.
Close behind were the Urban Suburbs, which added about 141,000 jobs in the sector in the same time frame. Then came the College Towns, which added some 62,000 manufacturing jobs.
There are some big caveats to those numbers. First, all those places saw manufacturing decline as a percentage of total employment in this time period. Second, remember that in 2010 the United States was just emerging from the Great Recession, so some of the increases may be due to relatively low figures in the 2010 data.
Furthermore, the Middle Suburbs, the blue-collar communities largely around the Great Lakes that have become crucial in elections in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, have seen a much smaller increase of only about 31,000 manufacturing jobs in that time, not enough to keep up with population growth.
Still an increase in jobs is an increase in jobs and with that in mind, it’s hard to ignore the larger point in the data: the power of urbanicity.
There is a lot going on behind those declines. First, the working-age population in many of those communities is growing slowly or even declining. But beyond that, some of those declines may be due to the broader long-term changes in manufacturing, including a move toward automation that requires larger capital expenditures on big machines that do the work humans used to do.
Over the last 40-plus years, there has been a steep drop in manufacturing employment. In 1979, more than 19 million people had jobs in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which offers a slightly different measure of manufacturing jobs. By 2024, that figure was about 13 million people.
And remember that drop happened as the population of the United States grew by more than 100 million — from about 225 million to more than 330 million.
Add those numbers up and it looks like a massive decline for manufacturing. But a funny thing happens when you look at the data differently. When examining manufacturing output as a percentage of real GDP, that is GDP adjusted for inflation, the numbers look fairly flat, over a very long period.
Ivan Illan, chief investment officer for the firm AWAIM, notes that since the 1940s, manufacturing has contributed about the same percentage to U.S. GDP, somewhere around 12%. Economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve wrote in 2015 that the percentage had bounced between 11.3% and 13.6% in that time. (The number was a little lower in 2024, about 10%, but that was largely due to the impact of inflation.)
How’s that relatively flat number possible? Manufacturing has become more efficient, and it has become cheaper to produce products made in the United States “likely because of automation.”
Challenges Ahead
To be clear, the message here is not, “Well then, everything is rosy.” The losses in manufacturing employment are real, they disproportionately hit the more rural communities in the ACP, and that momentum isn’t likely going to stop.
For years now, much of the discussion around manufacturing losses has focused on the loss of “small manufacturing.” Those are the kinds of firms that were once big job providers everywhere, but especially in small rural communities. The ACP has visited those places and seen communities dealing with the losses. Big capital investments can be hard in small communities.
Taken together, the data suggests bringing back a “golden age” of manufacturing — or at least manufacturing employment — is going to be especially difficult in rural America and, frankly, difficult in the United States overall.
Ultimately, there may not be a lot of manufacturing jobs to bring back because many of our ideas about manufacturing — men standing along an assembly line doing repetitive tasks — are increasingly outdated. The world has changed. Turning back the clock on history may make for good politics, but it’s a less workable strategy in reality.
The line between consumerism and politics has become increasingly blurry in recent years — and that can create problems for business owners who hold strong political beliefs at odds with their customers. Just ask Elon Musk.
Before he was dominating the headlines as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk was a businessman and owner of well-known companies such as the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and the aerospace company Space Exploration Technologies. But before aiding the Trump White House, Musk was probably best known as the owner of the electric car company Tesla, which has also been making headlines of late … for the wrong reasons.
Tesla’s income dropped by a startling 71% in the first quarter of 2025, and one big reason is thought to be Musk’s role with team Trump. In response, Musk announced he will spend less time at the White House and more time trying to get Tesla back on track. But it may not be that simple.
In many ways, the data suggest that the two sides of Musk — the businessman and the political force — are in conflict.
Recent polling data from Gallup makes it pretty clear that the electric car consumer base and the Trump voter base look very different. The Gallup numbers found that people who own or would consider buying an electric vehicle are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans (71% versus 31%). They are also more likely to have a college degree than not (61% versus 46%), and more likely to make more than $100,000 a year than they are to make less than $50,000 (56% versus 47%). All are data points at odds with Trump’s blue-collar base.
Tesla Dealers in the ACP
And viewed through the American Communities Project’s 15 types, the problem is even more clear. The geographic tribalism that has come to define the nation presents special challenges for Tesla. (This set of data comes from an analysis the ACP did for Business Insider.)
Of the roughly 275 Tesla dealerships in the United States, more than three-quarters (213) are based in the Big Cities, Urban Suburbs, College Towns, and African American South, according to data from ScrapeHero. Of the 15 community types in the ACP, those were the only four that did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
And the two community types with the most Tesla dealerships by far are the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs. There are almost 200 Tesla dealerships in those community types alone, and Democrat Kamala Harris won them both by double digits last November — 27 percentage points and 13 percentage points, respectively.
That’s not a huge surprise, of course. Electric cars remain expensive, and their makers are still trying to grow market share. It makes sense that Musk would want to locate the dealerships in very populous areas where households have higher incomes.
To be clear, the politics of the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs are not uniform. Republicans live in those places, too. Even in Washington, D.C., the bluest of Big City communities, some 6% of voters (about 21,000 people) cast ballots for Trump in 2024. That’s not insignificant.
And, of course, people can travel to shop for a car. The dealership can be a few counties away if the buyer is motivated. But the data show the challenge of doing business in a country where consumption has become part of the political divide.
The demographics behind the ACP show that Musk would have been better off locating more Tesla dealerships in Exurbs. They seem to fit the electric vehicle consumer profile better than other right-leaning communities. Trump won the Exurbs by 14 percentage points, and those places tend to have higher median household incomes and more college degrees than other Trump-friendly communities.
Consumerism in the ACP
The impact of the Trump/Musk bromance on Tesla is not exactly a surprising development. It’s simply the latest example of politics impacting consumer behavior. Before Tesla there was Bud Light. There was the dust-up over Disney. Even looking at someone’s blue jeans can be revealing, we explored in The Wall Street Journal.
But Tesla’s situation is more problematic in some ways. One can sell beer or jeans anywhere. It’s a question of shelf space. And TV and movies can find their audiences where they live over any number of devices and platforms. A car dealership is the definition of a brick-and-mortar experience. Customers need to come in, have a seat, take a test drive. Shopping is done in person.
If you’re a car company and your outlets are in the wrong place, the fix is more complicated — especially if you are a newer car company without an extensive dealer footprint.
Of course, the current Tesla situation is unlikely to be the last time that consumer choices bump into politics. Much of the ACP’s work focuses on how different communities are developing different cultures within the United States, and consumerism is clearly a big part of those cultural divides.
Increasingly, shoppers are bringing their politics with them to the store — and to the online marketplace. The ACP has a vast collection of consumer data from MRI-Simmons, the consumer research firm, which we will continue to explore in the next year.
Marc Maxmeister helps organize and convert the world’s generosity data into meaningful insights into how giving works, and what organizations can do to improve the lives of people served. He brings context from mixed methods field research in Africa, rigor from his Ph.D. work as a molecular neuroscientist, and engineering from past AI-driven startups and nonprofits.
Ari Pinkus is senior editor/writer/researcher and project manager at the American Communities Project. 
Jenna Modica is a production assistant and freelance writer in Los Angeles with experience across indie films and large-scale production.
Sarah Murphy is a recent Albuquerque, New Mexico, transplant who enjoys writing about the intersection of people, place, and community.
Kathleen Majorsky is a professional freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience in email marketing, journalism, and newsletter creation.
