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President Donald Trump’s approval rating sank in a new poll to its lowest level since the start of his second term amid Americans’ concerns about his attempts to expand his power.
The poll, conducted by Reuters/Ipsos over six days and closing on Monday, found that just 42 percent approved of Trump’s performance as president, compared to 43 percent three weeks prior. Following his second inauguration, his approval rating stood at 47 percent.
Trump’s initial months in power have seen him attempt to boost his power, using dozens of executive orders to target government departments, as well as universities and law firms.
The president’s approval rating is still higher than President Joe Biden’s numbers during most of his time in office. The poll results, however, indicate that many Americans have grown uncomfortable with Trump’s efforts to penalize universities he views as political opponents, and to make himself chair of Washington’s Kennedy Center.
Out of the 4,306 respondents, 83 percent said that the president must obey court orders that he disagrees with. That includes 73 percent of Republicans and 96 percent of Democrats.
Administration officials could be charged with criminal contempt for not following a federal judge’s recent order to stop the deportation of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who didn’t get the chance to challenge the decision in court to remove them from the U.S.
Participants were asked to react to the statement: “It’s okay for a U.S. president to withhold funding from universities if the president doesn’t agree with how the university is run.” Fifty-seven percent disagreed, with 28 percent of Republicans among them.
Trump has claimed that some universities are not doing enough to fight antisemitism, or are promoting diversity programs, and he has frozen federal money earmarked for some schools, including more than $2 billion for Harvard, which refused to comply with Trump’s dictates on how to run the university.
Meanwhile, 66 percent of poll respondents said they didn’t believe that the president should have power over national cultural institutions such as museums and theaters. Last month, Trump issued an order that the Smithsonian Institution remove “improper” ideology.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance on several issues, including inflation, taxation, immigration, and the rule of law. Immigration remains Trump’s top issue. While 45 percent of survey respondents approved of his performance on the issue, 46 percent disapproved.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents, a third of Republicans among them, agreed that the U.S. is losing global credibility.
Trump has said that he’s interested in seeking a third term, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution prevents him from doing so. In the poll, three-quarters said the president shouldn’t attempt to win a third term, including 53 percent of Republicans.
The poll also found that Americans aren’t happy with how Trump is handling inflation and the economy amid his aggressive trade agenda, which has upended global financial markets. He has also pushed the Federal Reserve to do his bidding, creating the worst sell-off in U.S. markets since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Only 37 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of the economy. Just after his January 20 inauguration, that number was 42 percent. During his first term, his approval rating on the economy ranged from the mid-40s to the mid-50s.
James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, told Reuters: “You have a president who promised a golden age. But everything that’s supposed to be up is down, everything that’s supposed to be down is up.”
He added that the warning signs in the economy pressured Trump to backtrack on tariffs, but that the economy might already be badly hurt. A quarter of Republicans and 56 percent of all respondents said Trump’s economic moves have been “too erratic.”
“Despite the populist appeal of tariffs, they are broadly unpopular,” Ipsos President Clifford Young wrote in a recent op-ed. “In recent Ipsos polling, fewer than one-third of Americans support a generalized tariff regime. The very word ‘tariff’ now evokes inflation, higher costs, and economic pain. Americans may want to punish trade cheaters, but they don’t want to pay more at the register to do it.”
The poll found that 52 percent of those who took part in the poll agreed with the statement that “Trump’s actions could make it harder for me to live comfortably when I retire.” Thirty-one percent disagreed.
