G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers:
Chart of the Week: Trump is not popular
The president's approval rating is the lowest of any president at this point in their term
Although public opinion on Trump has been slow to move before, today, the fact he is underwater is a product both a loss of support in his approve category as well as a consolidation of undecided adults into the disapprove category. The fence-sitters have mostly jumped off and sided against the president, while his support has softened.
But is -3 all that bad? If 47% of people support him, perhaps the administration will still feel emboldened to pursue Trump’s agenda. We can look at historical ratings to get a good baseline for where a president should be just two months into their term. Here is Trump’s net rating today compared to the net ratings for each 21st-century president over the first six months of their terms:
Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman, and Soha Hammam/Waging Nonviolence:
Resistance is alive and well in the United States
Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches of 2017, but research shows they are far more numerous and frequent — while also shifting to more powerful forms of resistance.
“Where is the resistance?” is a common refrain. Our research affirms that resistance is alive and well.
Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women’s March in particular — immediate in its response, massive in its scope and size — may inform collective imaginations about what the beginning of a resistance movement should look like during Trump 2.0.
In fact, our research shows that street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest. Although it is true that the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025 — held on Jan. 18 — saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22, we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.
Daily Press (VA):
About 100 people showed up at the Williamsburg Regional Library on Thursday, hoping to talk to U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman [VA-01] during his scheduled office hours.
But Wittman wasn’t there. Instead, an aide fielded comments from the dozens of people who lined up from 10 a.m. until about noon in the library. Some brought signs with slogans such as “Defend Democracy,” “Make America Indivisible Again” and “Country Over Party.”Wittman represents the state’s 1st District, which includes James City County, Williamsburg and York County. On his website, the Republican congressman advertises “mobile office hours” in various libraries throughout the district, including at the Williamsburg library on each second Thursday. Prior to Thursday, there was talk on the Historic Triangle Democrats Facebook page about people showing up in force, although it wasn’t known if Wittman would be there.By 10:15 a.m., there were already at least 85 people in line. Each was being allowed into a meeting room individually to talk to an aide for a few minutes. Eventually the aide reportedly began seeing people in small groups. They were told Wittman was in Washington, D.C.
Washington Post:
Federal judge pushes back on acting Social Security head over threat to close agency
Leland Dudek backed off his argument that a ruling blocking Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team from access to sensitive data could apply to all agency employees.
Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with The Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems. But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”
Dan Pfeiffer/The message Box:
Trump's Politically Insane Decision to Shut Down the Dept. of Education
Trump may have just handed Democrats an issue than break through all of the noise.
Every day, Donald Trump does several unprecedented, potentially unconstitutional, deeply damaging, and politically insane things. It is impossible to talk, write, podcast, and protest about all of them—which is the point. As everyone (especially me) has mentioned ad nauseum, Trump is employing a “Flood the Zone” strategy to disorient and exhaust the opposition.
Democrats must discern when to swing; and yesterday, Trump threw a hanging pitch right over the plate for Democrats.
At a White House ceremony, Trump signed an executive order abolishing the Department of Education. This move could not be more politically toxic. Eliminating the Department of Education may break through in ways that the destruction of USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Institute of Peace did not. Unlike those agencies, there is a long history of GOP efforts to eliminate the Education Department and excellent public opinion research on the subject.
It’s worth noting that Trump does not have the power to unilaterally shut down a federal agency created by statute. It would require an act of Congress that would be unlikely to pass the House and have zero chance of surviving a Senate filibuster. But Trump and Musk do hold immense power, and they can still do tremendous damage to public education.
Paul Waldman/The Cross Section:
The Climate Wreckage of the Trump Administration
It's even worse than you think. My interview with Jillian Goodman of Heatmap.
Before the election happened, I don't know if other people were gripped by this impulse too, but as much as I know I was afraid of what was going to happen if Trump won and concerned about it, I also had a desire to kind of think, well, maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe there is some scenario under which things could work out maybe not so terribly. Maybe at the end of a Trump term that, we would have lost a little bit of ground on climate policy. But the things that the Biden administration did were so dramatic, especially with the Inflation Reduction Act, that perhaps they would be durable. And there is only so much damage Trump will be able to do. And also, maybe he just wouldn't care enough.
Sure, he is something of a climate denier. He has this weird thing about windmills where he thinks they're demonic and kill birds and give you cancer. And he talked a fair amount during the campaign about how much he hates electric vehicles. But it's not like it was immigration or tariffs, the things that he really cares about. So maybe he would just kind of let it alone. I think I even wrote a piece to that effect on Heatmap
That didn't turn out to be case. It is, in fact, even worse than you think. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So my guest is Jillian Goodman, who is the deputy editor of Heatmap and knows more about climate change and climate policy than any 10 people you know. So we are going to get deeply into that today. Jillian, welcome to the podcast.
Miami Herald:
Caribbean leaders push back on U.S. travel-ban threats, ask Washington for clarity
The leaders of several Caribbean governments being targeted under a proposed U.S. travel ban say they have received no formal notifications from the Trump administration that their nation is among dozens of countries whose nationals could be shut out of the United States.
The Miami Herald was first to confirm that along with Cuba and Venezuela, which would be hit with an absolute ban on their nationals entering the U.S., Haiti and some other Caribbean countries would also face restrictions on their nationals traveling to the U.S. The following day, the New York Times named 43 countries under consideration, and which of the three tiers each would fall under in the plan being crafted by Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
The proposal would severely restrict access to the United States, including for high-ranking government officials, and has caught many Caribbean nationals by surprise. It is creating consternation not just from a policy standpoint, but among people who have children and other relatives living in the U.S. and would be unable to travel here even if they have a valid visa.
