Is Trump’s Teflon fading? Amid slumping polls, the president faces new pushback.
A year ago, President Donald Trump emerged as an unstoppable juggernaut, radically upending Washington and the international order as he aggressively subjugated opponents and allies to his will.
But there are gravitational forces in politics that even President Trump cannot seem to overcome. His approval ratings – which were above 50% a year ago – have continued to decline, now hovering around 40%. And recently, the president has encountered notable reluctance, particularly from Congress, amid growing concerns from the Republican Party about a midterm “blue wave.”
He even made some discreet withdrawals, unlike Trump.
Why we wrote this
Recent votes on tariffs and vocal public criticism signal a Republican Party more willing to challenge President Donald Trump — and worried about this fall’s midterm elections.
On Thursday, Border Official Tom Homan announced that the administration was ending the deployment of immigration agents to Minnesota, after a two-month deployment that led to violent clashes with protesters and the deaths of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. The move follows a similar withdrawal in Maine.
Last month, the administration also withdrew federalized National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland — a decision made with little public acknowledgment other than a social media post from the president. The withdrawal came after a series of court rulings against the deployments, which were met with stiff resistance from those Democratic-led cities. Mr. Trump claimed the troops were needed to fight crime and said he might send them in again if crime rates rose.
This week, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department received a remarkable rebuke when prosecutors failed to secure a grand jury indictment of six congressional Democrats who had released a video reminding members of the military and intelligence community that they had a constitutional duty to defy illegal orders. And the Republican head of the National Governors Association said the bipartisan group would not attend a White House meeting because the administration was considering excluding Democratic governors. Mr. Trump responded Thursday by saying that Democrats had indeed been invited (except for two).
In many ways, Mr. Trump is following a historical model. Presidents often take office amid grandiose promises and high expectations, but ultimately run up against the limits of their power and the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. Gallup polls dating back to Harry S. Truman show a steady decline in the first presidential year.
Since the Civil War, the president’s party has almost always lost seats in the House of Representatives in midterms – including Mr. Trump’s net loss of 40 seats in the 2018 election, during his first term. Current polls suggest November could be worse. The only real question now, according to investigator Charles Franklin of Marquette University Law School, is “how bad the damage will be.”
With slim majorities in Congress, particularly in the House, the Republicans have little margin for error. Some House Republicans already appear to be changing their plans, with a significant number — 30 so far — choosing not to run again. That doesn’t include those who have already left Washington, like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a once-strong Trump ally who resigned last month after a falling out with the president.
To be sure, Mr. Trump’s die-hard MAGA base is still with him. It was “moderate supporters” – some mainstream Republicans and right-wing independents – who turned bitter against him, polling experts say. The economy and immigration have been particular weak spots for the president, with net approval on both falling to their second-term lows, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll.
Perhaps most scathing of all is that three recent polls, some conducted by fairly conservative polling firms – Harvard CAPS/Harris, Rasmussen and Economist/YouGov – find that voters now say that former President Joe Biden did a better job than his successor, Mr. Trump.
But Democrats shouldn’t get too confident. The RealClearPolitics poll average shows their party favored at just 36 percent.
Reprimands over tariffs and immigration
Republican lawmakers have notably begun to oppose some of Mr. Trump’s most controversial policies, after following his administration for much of the last year.
The House voted to roll back U.S. tariffs on Canada on Wednesday, with six Republicans joining nearly all Democrats. The measure, a similar version of which has already passed the Senate, is largely symbolic — Mr. Trump is expected to veto it — but its passage remains important, reflecting the most significant effort ever by Congress to reassert its power over trade policy. Other tariff votes are expected in the coming days and weeks.
Late last year, Congress defied the president’s initial opposition to pass legislation requiring the release of documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who was at one time a friend of Trump’s (although Mr. Trump maintains that they argued years before Mr. Epstein’s crimes became public). The drip-drip of information from these files, which include references to many notable figures in Trump’s orbit, has kept the administration on defense.
There has also been a subtle change in tone from some Republican lawmakers. Members of the Republican Party have been quicker to criticize Trump’s policies. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, for example, expressed concern about an Ecuadorian boy wearing a bunny hat arrested by U.S. immigration authorities in Minnesota.
Many Republicans sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s posting on social media last weekend of a video that portrayed the Obamas as monkeys. The Senate’s only black Republican, Tim Scott, called him “racist” and several Republican lawmakers called on the president to apologize. He did not apologize, but Mr. Trump ultimately eliminated the position, which the administration blamed on a staffer.
Such moments of challenge, although more frequent, remain unusual. Many of those speaking out are not up for re-election this fall – like Senator Britt – or are already considering retirement. For those on the ballot, displeasing the president can still be dangerous. In some cases, Mr. Trump supports, or openly plans to support, primary opponents of congressional Republicans whom he views as disloyal or weak.
“He still has the Republican Party in his grasp,” says John Kenneth White, presidential historian and professor emeritus at Catholic University. “The thing that [GOP members] The scariest thing is an angry tweet.
Yet with Republicans needing to hold every seat to protect their majority, Mr. Trump’s threats against vulnerable members in swing districts — such as those voting to repeal tariffs on Canada — may carry less and less weight. Or be seen as a form of self-sabotage.
Team Trump posts winning record
Mr. Trump may be on the verge of becoming a lame duck — the ultimate fate of any second-term U.S. president — but he and his team are not giving up. On Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt presented reporters with a list of “wins” that, she complained, they didn’t ask about: The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high. Two major medical groups endorse restrictions on youth sex change. Federal appeals court upholding Trump’s immigration detention policy. And the murder rate in the United States is at its lowest level in 125 years.
The jobs report on Wednesday was better than expected. In January, unemployment fell to 4.3%, compared to 4.4% a month earlier, with 130,000 jobs created. Mr. Trump and Company shouted the numbers from the rooftops.
It remains to be seen whether this will make a difference to voters. Last month, the White House announced that the president would begin weekly campaign-style trips to tout his record on the economy and how he was working to lower prices. This travel schedule already appears to have been reduced.
Even these speeches have not always gone smoothly. During a visit to a Ford plant in Michigan last month, Mr. Trump was heckled by a worker about his ties to Mr. Epstein. The president, who seemed upset, uttered an expletive and told the worker, “You’re fired.” This week, media reported that the worker actually kept his job.
