Americans See Presidential Overreach
Even Republicans are balking at some Trump policies.
Almost a hundred days into his second administration, the American public is turning on President Trump and his policies.
NYT (“Voters See Trump’s Use of Power as Overreaching, Times/Siena Poll Finds“):
Voters believe President Trump is overreaching with his aggressive efforts to expand executive power, and they have deep doubts about some of the signature pieces of his agenda, a New York Times/Siena College poll found.
The turbulent early months of Mr. Trump’s administration are seen as “chaotic” and “scary” by majorities of voters — even many who approve of the job he is doing. Voters do not view him as understanding the problems in their daily lives and have soured on his leadership as he approaches his 100th day in office.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating sits at 42 percent. His standing is historically low for a president this early in a term, but it is in line with his stubborn unpopularity, which did not prevent him from sweeping the battleground states in last year’s election.
Now, however, voters express dimming confidence about Mr. Trump’s handling of some of the top issues that propelled him back to the White House, including the economy and immigration, even as most Americans support deportations. Only 43 percent said they approved of how he has managed the economy this term, a serious erosion on an issue long seen as a strength.
The president’s pursuit of widespread tariffs — which has caused stock-market drops and gyrations — was opposed by 55 percent of voters, including 63 percent of independents.
Taken together, the survey’s findings show that any second-term honeymoon for Mr. Trump is over. His approval rating among crucial independent voters is now at a woeful 29 percent.
WaPo (“Trump’s immigration ratings turn negative, Post-ABC-Ipsos poll finds“):
President Donald Trump’s approval ratings on immigration, relatively strong in the early weeks of his second term, have dipped into negative territory, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a sign that his administration’s hard-line and, in some cases, legally dubious enforcement tactics are losing public support.
A majority of Americans, 53 percent, disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 46 percent approving, a reversal from February when half of the public voiced approval of his approach. Negative views have ticked up across partisan groups over the past two months, with 90 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans now disapproving of the way the president has managed one of his core policy issues.
That Trump is underwater is hardly a new phenomenon. He spent all but a day of his first term in that situation and has been there most of his second as well:
Further, Trump is not eligible for re-election and we’re still almost two years away from the midterms, which tend to trend away from the President’s party regardless. Still, there are troubling signs for Trump here.
As WaPo notes, immigration has been a winning issue for Trump throughout his political career. Not now.
White House aides had hoped that Trump’s actions on immigration and a dwindling number of undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border would help bolster his public standing despite declining support in other areas.
Prompted by frustrations that the pace of deportations was falling short of the president’s ambitious quotas, the administration has taken more aggressive action in recent weeks. It deported 238 migrants to a megaprison in El Salvador without the chance to challenge their designation as alien enemies beforehandand targeted international students and faculty at U.S. colleges and universities for removal.
It also resisted orders from federal judges — rulings backed by a unanimous Supreme Court decision — to facilitate the return to the United States of Kilmar Abrego García from El Salvador. Abrego García, a Salvadoran migrant who lives in Maryland and entered the U.S. without authorization as a teen, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to the Salvadoran facility.
A 2019 legal order barred his removal, and the administration has acknowledged that Abrego García was wrongly deported. But federal officials say they have no authority to bring him back and have sought to portray him and others as violent gang members, despite producing no evidence.
The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll finds that more Americans say Abrego García should be returned to the country than remain imprisoned in El Salvador — 42 percent versus 26 percent. About 3 in 10 Americans, however, say they “don’t know enough” to have an opinion, a sign that views on the high-profile case are still forming among a sizable segment of the population.
In this case at least, the numbers are wildly divergent based on political party; indeed Republicans and Democrats are flipped on the issue, with 82 percent of the former approving and 85 percent of the latter opposed.
We’re in a similar place on deporting international students on the basis of political speech:
The NYT/Sienna poll asked about Trump’s suggestion that even US citizens might be deported. There, even Republicans balked:
Overall, Americans seem to be leery of the potential for Presidential overreach across a wide swath of areas:
The graphic doesn’t break it down along party lines but the article gives some additional detail:
- 61 percent of voters, including 33 percent of Republicans, said a president should not be able to impose tariffs without authorization from Congress.
- 54 percent, including 26 percent of Republicans, said a president should not be able to eliminate programs enacted by Congress.
- 63 percent, including 40 percent of Republicans, said a president should not be able to deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel.
- 73 percent of voters, including 56 percent of Republicans, said a president should not be able to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador, as Mr. Trump has threatened to do.
- And as Mr. Trump’s administration has veered toward open defiance of court orders, a sky-high 76 percent of voters, and 61 percent of Republicans, said a president should not be able to ignore the Supreme Court.
One suspects the party breakdown would be a little different if Kamala Harris were in the White House. Still, there should be some comfort taken that a majority of Americans support the rule of law at least in theory and overwhelmingly oppose the most egregious violations.
Translating any of this into actual checks on Presidential misconduct, alas, is challenging. One would think a sizable number of Congressional Republicans would join their Democratic counterparts in standing up on 73-27 and 76-24 issues. Thus far, there has been no evidence to support that.
There is a point where unpopularity will begin to place its own limits on Trump. We aren’t there yet. His 40-45% floor is still intact. That floor, the MAGA cult, won’t crack absent some truly major change. But interestingly the new Trump-skeptics are already setting up their bullshit defense: He’s changed!
No, he has not changed. We’re just seeing the same man now with no political restraints, acting like the reckless, bumbling thug he always was.
No political restraints at least until the mid-terms, but it’s interesting that even the MAGAts think he should obey SCOTUS. Trump can easily change their minds on that – culties is culties is culties – but it means not everyone is indifferent to what he’s doing with the judiciary.
The big restraint remains the bond market. If people don’t want to buy US treasuries the cost of money goes up and the oligarchs don’t like that. Not to mention that the cost of debt service will erase ten times whatever savings Elon claims from his campaign of random chaos.
Of interest that you don’t cite is polling on foreign policy. He’s 21 points underwater on Ukraine. It seems Americans are not as in love with Putin as Trump is. The NYT has an article today which I’ve barely skimmed, but which goes into the many ways Trump is helping Russia. Trump is evidently so dumb he thought Putin would pay off on Trump’s campaign promise to bring peace to Ukraine. Putin’s laughing at him. Well, the whole world is laughing at him, but Trump doesn’t tongue-bathe the rest of the world, just his master in Moscow who gives him nothing in return.
Art of the Deal:
1) Grovel
2) Get nothing in return.
Psychopaths don’t reward toadies. Trump of all people should know that.
So are Republicans ever gonna do anything about these high egg prices they swore was Biden’s fault, or nah?
The incompetent liable rapist and convicted felon squandered what little political capital he had on Trumpflation tariffs, on a Nazi oligarch’s mass layoffs, on a DUI hire defense secretary who drunk texts top secret info, on a Hitlerian and unconstitutional scheme to disappear undesirables without due process — and yet still hasn’t lowered prices or gotten his master Putin to stop bombing Ukraine. “On day one,” he said.
MAGA overreach was the inevitable downstream byproduct of Trumpers, the MSM, and the center-left’s Vichy caucus pretending the 2024 election was some sweeping rightwing vibe shift mandate and across-the-board repudiation of liberal values and policy, which it was not.
Someone should ask Musk whether all this has been worth Tesla’s brand implosion. The $90-100 billion hit to US tourism alone erases any “savings” from DOGE’s reign of error.
I suspect 49.9% of American voters told themselves they supported the rule of law when they elected as POTUS a convicted felonious fraud, indicted insurrectionist, and adjudicated rapist. (In principle, not theory – SCOTUS and the Republican Party had assured them as much.) They were kidding themselves then, so I take little comfort in them figuring it out now when it’s too late.
The survey results are fascinating – mainstream Republicans now support literally unchecked governmental power with zero oversight or appeal process.
This from the party of Ronald Reagan.
Just not enough of them to matter. Nor are they in the right places to affect outcomes. Come see me again when 30 0r 40% of Republican Representatives or Senators start balking in public. Solo performances by Mitch, Lisa, or others are just for show. Manchin and Sinema had more stroke. (And Manchin’s recommendation to Democrats, according to a recent interview, is that Trump won and Democrats should work with him.)
But only the most egregious ones. We’re firmly opposed to the leopard eating our own faces.
Trump is a megalomaniac with an extreme will to power, and he is too stupid to understand that limitations to his power exist. He expects whatever he commands to be obeyed, to happen.
He does need narcissistic supply, so his behavior is constrained to the extent his polled approval ratings decline, or the financial markets give him downvotes, or conservative media withholds applause.
Apart from that, he just does as he pleases, creating chaos.
Eventually, as the chaos worsens, the affected public wakes up to the reality of the Trump regime.
Republicans are still cowering in the Capitol’s January 6th Memorial Bunker, waiting for Trump’s polling support to consistently drop below 27%. Even then, Trump has nothing to lose.
I’m not waiting for the Republican dissent short bus to arrive. It’s not coming.
@DK:
Egg prices are down 93%, according to the President. I may have missed the peak of $200/dozen for eggs — I guess I wasn’t paying attention.
@Gustopher:
Trump’s math skills have gone fuckity-bye with the senile dementia.
So many people still do not grasp how stupid he is.
@DK:
The rapist has already lied transparently and outrageously about the price of eggs. Isn’t that enough?
My untested theory of polling is that for every point Trump drops, the US is 1% less likely to become an autocracy. But if the MAGA floor cracks, even a little, let’s say it gets down to mid-30’s, that’s a 20% drop in autocracy futures. Get the MAGAts under 30 and Republicans will re-discover the 25th Amendment.
Now, here’s my even less tested conspiracy theory. JD Vance is as loathsome as Trump but without the charisma and will not win a national election. His only path to the Oval is via the 25th Amendment, and the only path to the 25th is a catastrophic polling collapse for Trump. To that end, Vance is actively encouraging that drop in popularity with stunts like the Zelensky meeting and Greenland.
@Michael Reynolds: Several responses:
“Trump hasn’t changed”: There’s a semantic quibble here. He may not have changed, but his behavior has changed. Mostly in his first term he said crazy things, and the rest of his own staff kept him from doing the lunatic things. This time, he hired people who wouldn’t stop him.
“If the Maga Floor cracks things are much better”: You put the MAGA floor at 40 percent. That seems about right. Impeachment will be on the table if his approval gets to 30 percent or lower. I’m not holding my breath.
“Vance is not electable”: Wholeheartedly agree. He doesn’t look right. He probably doesn’t sound right either, but I’m not sure. He doesn’t connect through the camera. Like it or not, a modern president has to have good media skills.
@charontwo:
Trump had math skills?
@Michael Reynolds: You are assuming that Vance realizes how repugnant he is. And then you are jumping to the conclusion that he is doing loathesome things for some form of strategy.
I think the simpler explanation is that he is just a loathsome person, who wants to do loathsome things. Big loathsome things, little loathsome things, whatever.
On his recent trip to Rome to kill the Pope, he demanded that he and his family get the opportunity to visit the colosseum, without any riff raff. This demand was accomodated, and people who had gotten tickets/appointments for that time were shot out of luck. And then Vance didn’t show. (Just his wife and child)
Covered in the London Times, referenced by Josh Marshall here:
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lnq5llaxj22x
Fun detail:
(There’s just so much in that paragraph… it’s epic. Some of the finest writing I have ever read.)
And you are also assuming that half the country isn’t interested in repugnant.
And worse, he comes across as very smart and knowledgeable if you don’t know he is lying to your face without a care in the world. See the VP debate.
He doesn’t have Trump’s personal charisma, but he can look and act like a normal human being in controlled settings, with a bit of preparation.
He is a bizarre freak in donut shops making small talk, of course, as we saw during the campaign.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Jay L Gischer:
I think you’re both right in seeing his core ‘approval’ at about 40-45%, but we know that the hard part is deciphering what the floor is.
A few years ago a blogger (John Rogers) suggested that there is a 27% ‘crazification factor’ present in our voting population. Whether it be a local, statewide, or national electorate, there are about 27% of eligible voters who are prone to believe any excrement that a perceived-to-be extremist candidate throws against the wall. Trump is all that and so much more.
So, that’s where I am. Until we distill Trump’s ‘approval’ levels down to around 30% we’re stuck with Republican control of the federal government at least until November 2026.
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-gop-is-niche-party.html
I think it is worth a moment to note that if Kamala Harris were in the White House, it is more than likely that 5 of the 7 questions in the NYT/Siena College graphic wouldn’t appear in any polling.
This is my point about the lateness of lamenting the loss of the rule of law in the US. Whether something is legal or not is currently a matter of opinion, based on a popularity contest. That is simply nuts.
I would also note that for the two polling questions that might have been relevant during a Harris administration, Fox News would be headlining that the majority thinks a president should not be able to grant legal status to illegal immigrants (regardless of whether a President Harris had or hadn’t made such a claim), while burying any polling that indicated that a president should be able to forgive student debt.
@al Ameda: As it turns out, I was subscribed to John Rogers’ blog at the time he wrote that. Loved that thing. So many fun bits.
@charontwo:
Pfft. The establishment left and right doesn’t even know what woke is.
There was no big vibe shift. There was just stubborn post-pandemic high prices + the wide swath of Latino men, the small but notable sliver of black men, and the podcast bro fanboys who can’t abide a woman president.
If Hillary was a straight guy named Harold Clinton, Trump would be a trivia question at this point. If Kamala was a straight dude named Korey Harris, Trump would’ve lost the popular vote at least — probably still won the electoral college amidst the global anti-incumbent fervor, but he’d probably have a Democratic House checking him.
If Kamala was a white man named Kaden Harris, Trump would’ve lost.
Let’s hope black primary voters in S. Carolina and beyond block this grand plan white liberals have to committ 2028 political seppuku with these hilariously obtuse and oblivious AOC/Pete, Pete/AOC utopian fever dreams.
@charontwo:
So Trump and Musk are blowing it with their fascism and stunning incompetence, Trump 2028 cap grift notwithstanding. Who steps up next with both the charismatic appeal and competence to save the vaunted Republican multicultural, multiracial working class coalition?
Who can drag back the Zoomers who temporarily lost their minds in 2024, addled on TikTok clips posted now regretful Trump simps like Joe Rogan and Candace Owens?
Shoe lift wearing Ron DeSantis? Chipmunk-faced Pope-destroyer JD Vance? Nikki Haley? Lol
Maybe Andrew Tate, Kid Rock, or Tony Hinchcliffe can throw their hat in.
@al Ameda:
So, a giddy optimist! That sounds about right. A quarter of people are crazy, and they aren’t all on their side.
I’m nostalgic for the days when Americans didn’t pay so much attention to politics. It used to be a more niche hobby. And most of the politics hobbyists were reasonably well-informed. I mean, they knew what ‘rule of’ law’ meant, and many could even explain why it was a good idea. Now it’s like we’re experienced D&D gamers stuck playing with people who think D&D stands for Dildos & Dipshits. Once these people started playing the politics game, their ignorance made them vulnerable to manipulation. They became easy marks.
@DK:
The bar for entry into politics is so low I could probably run*. I’ve never even joined a campaign because I believed someone with my history, if exposed, would hurt my own cause. But Jesus, I’m not a rapist, and I never ripped off charity, or tried to violently overthrow the government, or sucked up to murderous dictators, or tried to extort a foreign leader to feed me campaign lies. (I could go on, but you know the list).
* Additional reasons why I will never run: I don’t like people, I am incapable of remembering people’s names for more than 30 seconds, and if I had to give the same speech over and over again I’d have to start day drinking. (I could go on. Big, big list).
@Michael Reynolds: Cultures need enemies to oppose. In the absence of external ones, we turn to ourselves and look for differences to oppose. Our external enemies are currently Palestine and Terrorism. You call those enemies? I’m a more formidable enemy, and I’m just a cracker.
@Michael Reynolds: Do it! I’d vote for you.
I think the favorables over 50% was the unrealistic part here. It was mostly independents who voted for Trump because they were angry about inflation hoping Trump would be better. They have now seen he is actually worse as he has hired people based upon loyalty rather than competency so no one tries to stop him when he is on his crazy binges. We are just back to his base support like he had in his first term. I would like to think they will move away from if he is awful enough but am doubtful. I think they will always find a way to justify Trump’s behavior and some way to blame it on the media/Democrats/trans/woke/immigrants.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds:
Good points.
I thought D&D stood for ‘Dildos and Douchebags.’
I do not think it a coincidence that as the digital world has made it that, with respect to news and information, quantity has completely overwhelmed quality, and we have a less informed electorate.
In Economics there’s a concept – Gresham’s Law – basically, that “bad money drives out good.” This also spins off a similar ‘law’ that applies to digital information platforms – “bad information buries good information.”