Americans rate these 6 federal agencies lower than the USPS
FILE-Commuters walk near the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Six federal government agencies received low job ratings from Americans based on data from a new Gallup poll.
However, the only agency that received a favorable rating from respondents was the United States Postal Service.
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Data for the poll was gathered through phone interviews conducted by ReconMR between Sept. 2-16, 2025, with 1,000 adults 18 years old or older living in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
Which federal agencies had low ratings?
Why you should care:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) were substantially low, according to Gallup.
Gallup noted that the decline in these agencies' job ratings since last year is the highest for FEMA (20 percentage points), the CIA (10 points), and the CDC (nine points).
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Meanwhile, the FDA and EPA have dipped seven points each, and the IRS is down six points. According to the poll, these federal government agencies’ job performance ratings as "excellent" or "good" range from 25% to 31%, which are record lows for all except the IRS.
Separately, the Department of Homeland Security saw its rating jump by 10 points to 42%. And less than 35% of respondents rate six other agencies positively, and these include the IRS, State Department, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which has a record-low 25% rating in 2025.
USPS earns high grades among Americans
Dig deeper:
The U.S. Postal Service is the only federal government agency that received a high rating among respondents at 56%. But Gallup found that Americans were split on the next highest-rated agencies, which are the Department of Defense and NASA, with both earning 48% excellent/good ratings.
Political parties divided on their ratings of federal agencies
The other side:
The views of federal agencies were split among Republicans and Democrats. According to Gallup, majorities of Republicans and Republican leaners give the Departments of Defense (74%) and Homeland Security (73%) positive ratings. While a slight 51% of Republicans also gave the FBI a positive rating.
And Democrats and Democratic supporters have majority positive ratings for two agencies — the U.S. Postal Service (66%) and NASA (52%). But FEMA, the EPA and the CDC received similarly low ratings among Republicans and Democrats.
Moreover, the poll noted a disparity in favorability ratings among the political parties for the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, the Justice Department, State Department, FBI, and Secret Service.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by Gallup, which collected results for its poll through phone interviews conducted by ReconMR between Sept. 2-16, 2025, with 1,000 adults 18 years old or older living in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.