People

• Trump began his second term by matching a record-high 52% approval from March 2017. But voters soured on his job performance during the most disruptive part of his trade war, and he’s yet to return to a net positive approval rating.
• Even so, at a similar point in Trump’s first term, 43% of voters approved and 52% disapproved of his job performance, leaving his net approval rating slightly better now than it was around this time eight years ago.

• Trump’s favorability ratings remain underwater, which has been the case more often than not since he took office.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) still face relatively low awareness from the electorate, though awareness about the top House Democrat improved a bit following his pushback against Trump’s legislative agenda.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the most high-profile congressional leader, is also the most unpopular one, though he’s maintained decent numbers at home in New York.

Policy

• Voters are most likely to want Trump to focus on lowering prices for goods and services, health care and energy following a campaign that was dominated by voters’ concerns about inflation.
• However, not nearly as many Americans see Trump placing those priorities at the top of his list.

• In terms of his handling of specific policy areas, the president receives his best approval ratings on immigration (49%) and national security (48%).
• His highest disapproval rating from voters comes on health care (50%), followed by the economy and entitlement programs (49% each). 

• Republicans hold advantages over Democrats on trust to handle immigration and national security.
• Voters are more likely to trust Democrats to handle Medicare and Social Security, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion and health care.
• Voters are closely divided over whom they trust to handle the economy, taxes, trade, the national debt, energy and foreign policy.

News

• Voters are 14 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive over the past week, his best net buzz rating in weeks.
• Though Republicans in Congress enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over congressional Democrats between the November elections and the opening months of the second Trump presidency, the inverse has been true more often than not since late March.

• Voters are 26 points more likely to have heard something negative than positive about the economy, marking the worst net buzz rating since early May.
• As was the case throughout much of the 2024 campaign, immigration has been one of the most salient issues voters are hearing about in the news, with roughly 7 in 10 saying they'd heard something recently about it in our latest survey.

• While Kirk’s assassination was far and away the most salient news event from last week, it’s clear that coverage of another recent murder has also broken through: 3 in 5 Americans say they’d heard “a lot” or “some” about last month’s fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train in Charlotte.
• That’s a slightly higher share than we measured for two unflattering stories for the Trump administration: The release of the birthday letter supposedly sent by President Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, and the detainment of hundreds of South Korean nationals at a Hyundai plant in Georgia.