Taegan Goddard:
An Unpopular President Is a Weak President
The early reviews are in: Trump 2 is a box office disaster.
The polls show President Trump’s approval is deeply underwater:
- New York Times/Siena: 42% approve, 54% disapprove.
- Fox News: 44% approve, 55% disapprove.
- AP/NORC: 39% approve, 59% disapprove.
- Washington Post/ABC News: 39% approve, 55% disapprove.
Trump has now matched his own record as the only president in modern history to post net negative approval ratings just 100 days into a term.
Even Bill Clinton — whose early struggles are legendary — didn’t hit numbers this bad until much later.
And presidents who later crashed and burned — like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush — started their terms with positive approval ratings.
Washington Post:
Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, poll finds
After high expectations before he returned to office, most Americans say the president has made the economy worse
As he nears the end of his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump is facing growing opposition to his ambitious and controversial agenda, with his approval rating in decline, majority opposition to major initiatives, and perceptions that his administration is seeking to avoid complying with federal court orders, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll...
Trump’s overall approval rating is lower than it was only two months ago. The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative.
Dan Pfeiffer/The Message Box:
Why the New NYT Poll is Very Bad News for Trump
A+ rated poll shows the collapse of the premise of Trump's election.
There is something inherently triggering about writing about a New York Times/Siena poll. Throughout the 2024 campaign, I waited with dread for the New York Times/Siena polls to drop.
Other than that glorious, but fleeting period, known as “brat summer,” a new NYT poll is usually bad news.
You never know when they are going to come, and because it’s an A+ rated poll from the country’s most influential media outlet, a New York Times/Siena poll can change the entire political narrative.
Well, late Friday afternoon, the New York Times dropped a new poll, and this time, it’s bad news for Donald Trump. Most of the recent polling had been bad for Trump. His approval rating was sinking, and he is now underwater on the economy and immigration — his two strongest issues last November. Trump was floundering and failing, and this sentiment percolated right below the surface of the political conversation. However, this new poll underscores the reality of Trump’s failures in a way that only a Times/Siena poll can.
Trump’s approval rating is pitiful, but that’s not the biggest story. Trump has been unpopular before, but this poll shows something much more alarming for Trump (and encouraging for America) – a fundamental rejection of the entire premise of his presidency.
New York Times:
Trump’s Tariffs Prompt Wave of Lawsuits as States and Businesses Fight Back
The cases are the latest test of the president’s expansive claims of executive power.
The lawsuits carry great significance, not just because the tariffs have roiled financial markets and threatened to plunge the United States into a recession. The legal challenges also stand to test Mr. Trump’s claims of expansive presidential power, while illustrating the difficult calculation that his opponents face in deciding whether to fight back and risk retribution.
None of the lawsuits filed this month are supported by major business lobbying groups, even though many organizations — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — have been sharply critical of the president’s tariffs and lobbied to lessen their impact. The chamber privately debated bringing a lawsuit, but ultimately decided it was “not the best course of action at this time,” said Neil Bradley, the executive vice president of the group.
“Engaging the administration in order to achieve a quick and immediate reduction in tariffs has the best chance of aiding businesses,” he said.
G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers:
Young people are anti-Trump again
Voters under 30 are highly exposed to economic downturns and don't want Trump's agenda
We do know that Trump made gains with young people in 2024, even if they were smaller than the popular media narrative would lead you to believe. It just doesn’t matter that much to me for the narrow purposes of this newsletter whether the shift was 20 points or just 15.
Instead, what I'm interested in is what young voters are telling pollsters about Trump today — and what this new data might be able to tell us about their previous and future vote choices.
...
Comparing Trump's approval directly to the results of the 2024 election, that's a pretty huge (23-point!) shift. This means there's a large group of young people out there who do not like Trump, but voted for him last year because either (a) they did like him then or (b) they liked Trump more than Harris. There are also a lot of young people who didn't vote at all.
Pew's poll also finds Black and Hispanic voters are more anti-Trump now than they were in 2024, so there's some amount of overall shifting going on here. As you'd expect with a topline 60% disapproval and 40% approval.
But it's not just Pew finding Trump doing poorly with the youths. I took all the polls conducted in April and averaged their age-level crosstabs together. That average for adults and voters under 30 is still Disapprove +27, though the other age crosstabs differ from Pew's findings.
CNN:
Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades
Trump’s 41% approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days dating back at least to Dwight Eisenhower – including Trump’s own first term.
Approval of Trump’s handling of the presidency is down 4 points since March, and 7 points lower than it was in late February. Just 22% say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the job, a new low, and about twice as many say they strongly disapprove (45%).
The only president less popular than Trump is trump.
David Schuster on Trump’s unpopularity and how it affects Fox News:
