Federal agency X accounts are getting far more engagement in the second Trump term than under Biden

Federal agency accounts on X are drawing sharply higher audience engagement during the second Trump administration than in the final year of the Biden administration, a Pew Research Center analysis found [1]. The study examined 30 government X accounts — 27 run by Cabinet-level agencies and subagencies, plus the White House, its rapid-response team, and the Department of Government Efficiency — collecting data from February 11 to 18, 2026 [1]. Of the 24 accounts with comparable year-over-year data, all but two recorded more likes and reposts, on average, in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term than in the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency [1]. Accounts including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor now routinely receive thousands of likes after previously drawing minimal engagement [1]. The White House, DHS, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are posting more than twice as often as they did during the Biden administration [1]. The platform itself, rebranded from Twitter to X and acquired by Elon Musk in 2022, has been criticized for enabling disinformation and hate speech and for shifting rightward since the ownership change [2]. The language in agency posts has also shifted. Terms such as “American” and “president” appear more than twice as frequently as they did in the Biden era [1]. ICE posts mentioning “criminal” rose fivefold, while the Department of Energy now uses “AI,” “dominance,” and “coal” in roughly one-in-ten posts after those words rarely appeared before [1]. Several agencies have deleted posts from previous administrations. The State Department removed its pre-January 2025 posts, and similar deletions occurred at Customs and Border Protection, the Justice Department, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Department of Defense — which now also operates under the secondary title Department of War [1]. The @StateDept and @DeptofWar accounts rank among the top three government accounts on X by follower count [1]. The Department of Government Efficiency account, created in early 2025, had 4.8 million followers as of February 2026 and drew a median of nearly 29,000 likes and reposts per post — more than triple the engagement of the @WhiteHouse account [1]. The rapid-response account @RapidResponse47, also launched in January 2025, averaged almost 40 posts per day and received about 3,400 likes and reposts per post [1]. The Biden administration, which ended on January 20, 2025, had used social media to promote policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and pandemic relief [3]. By contrast, the second Trump administration has pursued a hardline deportation policy, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement alone deporting roughly 540,000 people by January 2026 [6]. Trump’s approval rating, which began his second term at 47%, had declined to an average of 37 to 40% by 2026 [7].