washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

There is a sector of working class voters who can be persuaded to vote for Democrats in 2024 – but only if candidates understand how to win their support.

Read the memo.

The recently published book, Rust Belt Union Blues, by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol represents a profoundly important contribution to the debate over Democratic strategy.

Read the Memo.

The Rural Voter

The new book White Rural Rage employs a deeply misleading sensationalism to gain media attention. You should read The Rural Voter by Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea instead.

Read the memo.

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy The Fundamental but Generally Unacknowledged Cause of the Current Threat to America’s Democratic Institutions.

Read the Memo.

Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.

Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.

Read the memo.

 

The Daily Strategist

February 14, 2025

How Much Do Americans Care About Musk?

Here’s the stub of “Trump is giving Elon Musk an unprecedented amount of power: The Department of Government Efficiency could wind up hurting Trump politically” a 538/abcnews chat, featuring Nathanial Rakich, Julia Azari and Cooper Burton:

Welcome to 538’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior editor and elections analyst): One of President Donald Trump’s core campaign promises was to cut government spending and dismantle the federal bureaucracy — and two weeks into his presidency, he’s attempted to consolidate an extraordinary amount of power in order to do just that. Last Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave the Department of Government Efficiency — a unit of Trump advisers led by billionaire Elon Musk — access to the federal payment system, giving DOGE a huge amount of oversight and power over how government money is spent. Over the weekend, two top officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development were also placed on leave for refusing to give DOGE access to classified information at the agency, which Musk now says he and Trump are shutting down. And on Monday, the Small Business Administration also gave DOGE access to all its systems.

All this has greatly alarmed independent watchdogs and Trump critics, who argue that DOGE is operating without oversight and point out that Musk, the world’s richest man and an owner of several businesses that work with the government, could use the data he now has access to for personal gain. But do Americans share that alarm, or are they just interested in getting results? In today’s installment of the 538 politics chat, we’ll talk about whether this weekend’s events — as big of a story as they have been inside the Beltway — will matter to the general electorate.

So, team: I know this story is still developing, but do we have any sense yet about how much Americans care about Musk’s heavy-handed attempts to cut the government?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political scientist at Marquette University and 538 contributor): The story really seemed to bubble over on Monday when Musk announced that he and Trump were trying to shut down USAID. This might be less true among the broader public, which may or may not have much of an opinion about USAID, and more among members of Congress (who gathered outside the agency to protest its dismantling) and the press.

nrakich: Well, it may be breaking through with the broader public too. Google Trends data is imperfect, but it does show that, over the weekend, Google searches related to USAID exceeded those related to the upcoming Academy Awards. And on Monday morning, Americans were Googling USAID more than they were Googling the search topic “pizza” at dinnertime on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights!

cooper (Cooper Burton, researcher and copy editor): It’s too early to have polling data about Musk’s attempted dismantling of USAID, but we have seen surveys ask more generally about DOGE and its mission, and that data has been mixed. For example, in late January, Data for Progress found that likely voters supported the creation of DOGE, 46 percent to 36 percent. And an AP-NORC poll found that wide majorities of Americans think that issues like corruption, inefficiency and red tape are major problems in the federal government.

But they don’t really like any of DOGE’s proposals to fix those issues. Out of four proposals that the AP-NORC poll asked about, only one was above water: requiring federal workers to return to the office five days a week. Other ideas, like eliminating a large number of federal jobs or eliminating federal agencies, were quite unpopular, though large shares said they didn’t have an opinion either way.

I think these latest actions with USAID and the SBA will probably provoke a similar response from the public: People like the abstract idea of eliminating waste and bureaucracy in the government, but usually dislike it when specific cuts have to be made.

Read more here.


Political Strategy Notes

In “What Is Donald Trump’s Mandate? Voters want big changes from Biden’s failed policies, but many are not in Trump’s plan,” Stanley B. Greenberg, one of America’s most respected pollsters and poll analysts, writes at The American Prospect: “Democratic leaders sound understandably cautious when talking about whether President Donald Trump has a mandate, or what steps Democrats should take now. They are respecting the voters who put Trump back in office, and they recognize the elites have gotten a lot of hot-button issues wrong….We will have no clue about the Trump mandate or what Democrats should do, of course, unless we are frank about what happened with Joe Biden and what changes voters want. Major parts of the mandate will help Trump, but failure to deliver change will hurt. And other parts of Trump’s agenda insult voters in ways that will push down his already unimpressive approval ratings….Knowing what happened starts with knowing voters were more fearful of “Biden continuing as President” than “Trump winning a second term.” A 53 percent majority in a Democracy Corps survey felt that. And that majority grew to 54 percent after seeing all the Trump attacks….President Joe Biden gave an upbeat account of his progress, but he was deeply and singularly unpopular. About 60 percent disapproved of his presidency in our November election poll. And other polls have shown his approval and favorability decline further as he left office in January.”

Greenberg explains further, “Kamala Harris ran much worse with working-class voters than Biden did in 2020, but his approval in our November poll was below her vote. His support was eroding further. And how do you get a strong vote in the base when 37 percent of Blacks, 56 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of white millennials disapproved of Biden on Election Day?….According to Gallup, 3 in 5 Americans thought the country “lost ground” under Biden on debt, immigration, crime, the economy, “the gap between the wealthy and less well-off,” and “United States’ position in the world.”….What is so difficult for all of us to process is that Trump has a mandate to fix where Biden failed on the border, the economy, crime in cities, and certain aspects of the woke agenda. Those actions will help Trump….But voters’ disappointment with Biden also included not helping the middle class enough or addressing inequality. Trump has no mandate to exploit all energy sources and reverse Biden’s climate policies. He has no mandate to put the oligarchs in the White House. And contrary to Trump’s actions, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is very popular with the public.”

Greenberg goes on to share the results of poll questions he posed. Here is one example: “Trump’s top mandate is to secure the open border and deport undocumented immigrants in our cities. We examined many possible reasons to vote for Trump, but nothing came close to support for his commitment to “secure the border and deport illegal immigrants.” The same is true in the reasons to vote against Harris. Nothing is close to the “open border and illegal immigrants in all our cities.” These are each 10 to 20 points above the next reason cited….Over 70 percent of white working-class men, women, and union households give it as the top reason to vote for Trump—about 20 points above the next reason….Democratic leaders need to understand that this mandate is also the very top reason Hispanics voted for Trump and against Harris. They are not looking for “comprehensive immigration reform” or policies that “solve the problem.” Fully 64 percent chose that Trump would “secure the border and deport illegal immigrants,” and 54 percent rejected Harris because of the “open border and illegal immigrants in our cities….Blacks and Hispanics were angry that non-citizens were competing for housing, schools, and health services in their cities. And they were already much more likely to say that “crime and homelessness in the cities” should be a top priority….Democrats may be paying a price already. They get their most Fs from voters on “prioritizing citizens over non-citizens.” Additional issue attitudes explored in the poll and Greenberg’s analysis include: inflation; taxes; crime; abortions; tariffs; and transgender identity, and others. Read Greenberg’s entire American Prospect article right here.

From “Trump Caves On Tariffs After Getting Virtually Nothing From Canada” by Jason Easley at Politicususa: “As markets started getting shaky and outrage was growing over his tariffs, Donald Trump needed a way out. Mexico gave Trump an escape hatch by staging a little performance on the border, and Canada got the tariffs postponed by continuing to implement their already passed border plan….Trump got some Mexican troops to go to the border and parade around, and Canada is going to keep doing what it was already doing, plus a new intelligence directive and a fentanyl czar, whatever that is….Trump settled for getting nothing because he is so poorly informed that he thinks he is getting something in the deal.” Clearly, the president needs some better economic advisors. At Daily Kos, The Critical Mind saw it this way in “Promises? What promises? Trump folds as Canadian/Mexican tariffs are postponed – likely permanently”: “Trump will spin this as a victory. ‘I got what I wanted and more — much more. It was the best deal ever.’ The reality is otherwise. Both Mexico and Canada made vague promises. But there will be no real change — or money spent. Trump had seen the polls — and realized people knew his tariffs would slam their pocketbooks….Even he had to admit that his ill-considered nationalism was financially catastrophic. It would spur inflation. And the promised income to the treasury from tariffs would prove far less than the federal subsidies he would have to send to American farmers and manufacturers to keep them onside. So he caved.” However, nobody should be surprised if Trump argues that his tariffs initiative was mostly a successful negotiating tactic designed to tighten up the border and reduce fentanyl smuggling. His tariff on China is a bigger gamble, with larger potential for disaster.


Teixeira: The Democrats’ Governance Problem

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Democrats’ electoral problems have received a lot of attention—as they should! Whatever the commitments of a political party, they’ve got to be elected to pursue them. But that can distract attention from what they do when they are elected. Typically that underlies electoral problems that come to the fore and explains why it’s rarely enough for a party to tout their allegedly wonderful values or continually disparage their nefarious political opponents to fix their problems.

In other words, governance is key. You’ve got to run the government well and get things done voters care about if you want those voters to stick with you. And that’s where Democrats have been running into problems—big problems.

Think about it. If you wanted safe streets and public order would your first impulse be to turn to…a Democrat? Or if you wanted a secure, actually-enforced border? How about efficient, effective delivery of public services? Or rapid completion of public projects and infrastructure? Or nonideological public administration?

I don’t think on any of these fronts the reaction of a typical voter would be: “Democrats! Of course, I need Democrats to do all these things because they’re so good at them!” On the contrary, it seems like over time Democrats—both nationally and in many localities where they dominate—have become worse and worse at delivering in these areas. That’s a huge problem because why should voters take Democratic plans to improve their lives seriously if Democrats persist in running government so poorly? Democratic governance is their advertising and the advertising makes the Democratic “product” look pretty bad. So voters don’t want to buy it.

Let’s look at some specific areas. Take safe streets and public order. The Democratic-leaning commentator Noah Smith admits:

In the late 2010s, blue cities brought [a] problem on themselves: urban disorder. Crime rates began rising in 2015, fueled by national unrest. But blue cities didn’t respond by cracking down on crime as they did in the 90s and 00s. Progressives in the late 2010s reviled and rejected “stop-and-frisk”, “broken windows policing”, and other tools that blue cities had used to keep order in previous decades. Instead, they elected a bunch of progressive prosecutors, enacted more permissive policies toward public drug use, passed laws that made it hard to use violence against shoplifters, and sometimes even reduced penalties for minor crimes.

The result was entirely predictable. Blue cities became increasingly afflicted by pervasive, low-level urban disorder—drug needles in children’s parks, epidemics of car break-ins, and so on. Female friends of mine in San Francisco started to report being followed for blocks, harassed on the train, or even slapped in the head by street people on their way to work. The housing crunch made the disorder much worse, of course, by exacerbating homelessness.

Then the pandemic and the riots hit, and the trend got turbocharged. Without “eyes on the street” to deter crime, and with police cowed or disgruntled by the protests of summer 2020, progressive cities became increasingly lawless, chaotic zones. Violent crime soared in 2020-21, with waves of attacks on vulnerable populations like Asian elders….

Many progressives believe that any actions to curb urban disorder—restrictions on sidewalk tents, making people pay for public transit, arresting people for nonviolent crime, and so on—represent the exclusion of marginalized people from public life. In the absence of a full-service cradle-to-grave welfare state, progressives think they can redistribute urban utility from the rich to the poor by basically letting anyone do anything they want.

Opinions vary about how much things have improved in blue cities since their nadir. But the fundamental problem is: this never should have happened in the first place. And the culprit is well-articulated by Smith in the last paragraph of the quote above. Blue city Democrats have adopted a philosophy that is antithetical to good governance—it is not surprising it does not produce good governance; it is not intended to. Public order is treated as optional, subordinate to ideological goals Democrats wish to pursue. Until that philosophy changes in a big way and Democrats unapologetically and aggressively enforce public order, voters will continue to view Democratic governance negatively in this area. And they’ll be right to do so.

Voters also see de facto open borders and uncontrolled immigration on Democrats’ watch as symptoms of public disorder and poor governance. In their view, illegal (Democrats cannot even bring themselves to use the word) immigrants are in fact breaking the law by making unauthorized entry to the United States and creating a chaotic situation at our nation’s border. And they were shocked that almost all candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination endorsed decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

And then, even more astonishingly to the typical voter, these law-breakers were rewarded for their behavior on the Democrats’ watch. Consider what happened when Biden came into office in 2021. He immediately issued executive orders dramatically loosening the rules for handling illegal immigrants. His party’s left wing and various immigration advocacy groups rapturously applauded this. As TheNew York TimesDavid Leonhardt summarized:

Biden tried to pause deportations. He changed the definition of asylum to include fear of gang violence. He used immigration parole—which the law says should be used “on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons”—to admit hundreds of thousands of people. The parole programs alone amounted to “the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history,” Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News wrote.

Would-be migrants, as well as the Mexican cartels that run transit networks, heard a clear message: Entering the United States had become easier. The number of people attempting to do so spiked almost immediately.

And continued to spike throughout the first three and a half years of the Biden administration until they finally took some steps to stanch the tide. But by that time the country had experienced truly mind-boggling levels of immigration. Indeed, the Biden immigration surge, driven heavily by illegals, was the largest in US history, surpassing even the immigration surges of the late 1800s and early 1900s.


Sargent: How Dems Can Resist Trump’s Power-Grab

Greg Sargent, author of An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics, has some valuable insights for Democrats in his post, “Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems: The Democrats finally started to find their legs after Trump’s spending freeze. The key lesson? Making sheer political noise about something does make a difference.” at The New Republic. Some nuggets from Sargent’s article:

Admitting failure is anathema to the authoritarian leader, who is perpetually in danger of being diminished by those who are resentful of his glory—which is why White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending….

What Miller is actually angry about is that the media covered this fiasco aggressively and fairly. Miller insists that the press glossed over the funding pause’s supposed exemption for “aid and benefit programs.” But this is rank misdirection: The funding freeze, which is likely illegal, was indeed confusingly drafted and recklessly rolled out. This is in part what prompted the national outcry over the huge swath of programs that it threatened, Medicaid benefits included—and the media coverage that angered Miller.

All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility.

….Until this crisis, the Democratic opposition has mostly been relatively tentative and divided. Democrats were not sufficiently quick, forceful, or unified in denouncing Trump’s illegal purge of inspectors general and his deranged threat to prosecute state officials who don’t comply with mass deportations. Internal party debates suggest that many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2024 victory shows voters don’t care about the dire threat he poses to democracy and constitutional governance, or that defending them against Trump must be reducible to “kitchen table” appeals.

But the funding-freeze fiasco should illustrate that this reading is highly insufficient. An understanding of the moment shaped around the idea that voters are mostly reachable only via economic concerns—however important—fails to provide guidance on how to convey to voters why things like this extraordinary Trumpian power grab actually matter.

Democrats need to think through ways to act collectively, to utilize something akin to a party-wide strategy, precisely because this sort of collective, concerted action has the capacity to alert voters in a different kind of way. It can put them on edge, signaling to them that something is deeply amiss in the threat Trump is posing to the rule of law and constitutional order.

Generally speaking, some Democrats have several objections to this kind of approach. One is that voters don’t care about anything that doesn’t directly impact them and that warnings about the Trump threat make them look unfocused on people’s material concerns. Another is that if Democrats do this too often, voters will stop believing there’s real cause for alarm.

The funding-freeze fiasco got around the first objection for Democrats because it did have vast material implications, potentially harming millions of people. But Democrats shouldn’t take the wrong lesson from this. A big reason this became a huge story was also that it represented a wildly audacious grab for quasi-dictatorial power. Democratic alarms about this dimension of the story surely helped prompt wall-to-wall coverage. Democrats can learn from that.

Sargent notes that Democratic activist Faiz Shakir has called for a quick response messaging strategy, in which Democrats regularly comment on all the ways Trump betrays “working-class values and your working-class interests.” Also,

Shakir also suggests an intriguing way for the party to act in concert. As chair, he’d aggressively encourage as many elected officials as possible to use the video-recording studio at the DNC in moments like these, getting them to record short takes on why voters should care about them, then push the content out on social media….The goal, Shakir said, would be to provide Democrats with research and recording infrastructure enabling elected officials to find their own voices and flood information spaces with civic knowledge. This also would give Democrats who want to stick to a “kitchen table” approach a way to shape their own warnings around that.

….Nobody denies that the Democratic Party is a big, sprawling, highly varied organism with elected officials facing a huge spectrum of different political imperatives. Of course there will be variation in how they approach each Trumpian abuse. But as Brian Beutler puts it, the answer to this cannot be to “lodge passing complaints about Trump’s abuses of power, but turn every conversation back to the cost of groceries.” This incoherently implies that the abuses themselves are not serious on their own terms.

Of course, it’s not all about messaging. Democrats have to make some major policy changes, as well, particularly regarding immigration and inflation and they must ditch the sillier cultural issue excesses. But Sargent’s TNR column offers a nuanced discussion of possible Democratic messaging strategies in response to Trump’s scorched-earth grand strategy. Read the whole article right here.


Revocation of Funding Freeze a Promising Sign for Democrats

I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.

This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.

Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.

Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.

Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:

“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’

“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …

“During a Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”

In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.

It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.

It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.


Political Strategy Notes

In “Trump’s grant gambit threatens to wreck the goldilocks economy he inherited,” Allison Morrow writes at CNN Politics: “A two-page memo, totaling less than a thousand words and packed with right-wing rhetoric, threw the fate of the US economy into uncertain territory late Monday as the Trump administration ordered the suspension of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants and loans….The document from the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget states explicitly that federal funds should align with Trump administration priorities and focus on “ending ‘wokeness.’”….It’s difficult to overstate the chaos that the directive, with its ambiguous wording, unleashed within organizations across broad swaths of the economy that rely on federal funds — including programs that provide essential medical services, emergency aid for farmers, cancer center support and even a program covering the cost of caskets for deceased veterans with no next of kin, my CNN colleagues Jennifer Hansler, Andy Rose and Tami Luhby reported….By Tuesday evening, a federal judge had temporarily blocked part of the freeze on federal aid….And while there were still countless questions left unanswered — a White House spokesperson initially couldn’t say whether Medicaid funding would be paused, for instance — what was clear is that any disruption to the flow of federal funds would have undeniable ripple effects throughout the US economy….The gambit is part of Trump’s stated desire to wrest control over spending from Congress, and is, according to legal experts, almost certainly illegal.” As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse put it, “Trump’s power grab was plucked directly from the Project 2025 playbook….It’s hard to tell if this is incompetence or mischief, but this funding freeze is illegal and unconstitutional, and every single American has a stake in getting it undone.”

“‘He’ll stiff you’: Senator warns federal workers Trump’s ‘buyout’ offer is bogus,” Matthew Chapman writes at The Raw Story, quoting Sen. Tim Kaine: “….Kaine issued his warning on the Senate floor on Tuesday, following reports of the buyout proposal. “The President has no authority to make that offer,” said Kaine. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work … If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.”….Trump has been accused of not paying workers what he promised, dating back to his days when private contractors said he ripped them off, and even attorneys he hired who said he stiffed them for legal services. ….The buyout offer, which reportedly extends to every worker in the entire federal civil service, does not appear to actually entitle government employees to a compensation package without work; rather, it lets them take a “deferred resignation,” where they can remain in their job for up to 8 months and be exempt from Trump’s new executive order mandating federal employees return to full-time in-office work.” As Ed Mazza notes, further, at Huffpo, via Yahoo News: “Don’t be fooled,” Kaine said. “He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign he’ll stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors.”

The big buzz continues about former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s warning about her cousin, RFK, Jr.’s nomination to head HHS as hearings begin. Aria Bendix writes at nbcnews.com: “In a letter Tuesday urging the Senate to reject Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health and human services secretary, Caroline Kennedy referred to her cousin as a “predator.”….Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador to Australia and the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, said RFK Jr. was unqualified to lead HHS, which oversees 13 federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services….Among her many criticisms in the letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Kennedy said that “siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death.”….“Bobby is addicted to attention and power,” Caroline Kennedy said, using her cousin’s nickname. “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own kids while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”….“Bobby is willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer,” Caroline Kennedy wrote….“Bobby expropriated my father’s image and distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign, and then groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” she said….“Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination and that of his own father,” she added. “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America’s life and death situations.”

It’s pretty clear now that Trump’s grand strategy for invoking his imagined imperial authority is to “flood the zone” with so many outrages that Democrats won’t have time to unite behind an effective strategy for defending democracy. As Sahil Kapur explains at nbcnews.com: “Less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a closed-door meeting with Democratic lawmakers to issue a warning and a clarion call….The new administration was going to “flood the zone,” and Democrats couldn’t afford to chase every single outrage — or nothing was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffries told them….Jeffries, D-N.Y., urged members to focus their message on the cost of living, along with border security and community safety….Burned by their failures to end the Trump era the first time, Democrats are crafting a new playbook for his second administration that departs from the noisy resistance of his first presidency. The new approach, according to more than a dozen party leaders, lawmakers and strategists, will be to zero in on pocketbook issues as they lay the groundwork for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. And they plan to focus less on his cultural taunts and issues that don’t reach the kitchen table….The strategy will test Democrats’ ability to break through in a cluttered and rapidly evolving information environment….Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who was in many ways the face of the first resistance to Trump, agreed with the approach. “I think we have to pick our fights and not chase after every crazy squirrel,” Schiff said in an interview….the stuff that really matters — the trade wars that are going to raise costs on people, the mass deportations that are going to raise food prices and cause suffering among huge numbers of families, the pardoning of criminals who beat police and now the focus on tax cuts for really rich people that will do nothing for working families. These are the big fights that we need to focus on.”….Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, a member of the Democratic leadership team, begrudgingly admitted Trump is talented at distracting his critics by making them chase shiny objects. This time, he said, the resistance needs to focus on the GOP economic agenda….“We are going to talk every day and every week about what a rip-off this whole enterprise is,” Schatz said in an interview….“One of the things that congressional Democrats have done poorly, frankly, is that we talk about one thing one week and then something else the following week,” he said. “And I think that’s especially the dynamic with Trump in charge, because he’s extraordinarily skillful at commanding attention. And so one of the things that we’re going to make a conscious effort to do is: Whatever else is going on, our message is going to be: They are ripping you off.”


Sympathy for the Devil: Why We Need Deep State Bureaucrats

With all Republicans and even many Democrats complaining about the size, cost and effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy, I offered at New York a contrarian take based on the need for some stability in an era of constantly changing party control of government.

Of all the audacious tasks the new Trump administration and its congressional allies have taken on, perhaps the most intense and far-reaching are their efforts to go after the so-called deep state of executive branch and independent agency bureaucrats. It’s a three-pronged attack at present. First, an ongoing wave of executive orders is paring back civil-service protections for federal employees. Second, the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill that congressional Republicans are slowly but surely assembling to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda will unquestionably include major reductions in federal spending that supports hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of federal employees. And third, there’s the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), operating out of the White House, that aims at a massive overhaul and reduction in federal operations. Conservatives in the judiciary have chipped in, too, notably through the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision revoking traditional deference to federal agency interpretations of congressional mandates.

Republicans have varying (but often overlapping) reasons for going after the “deep state.” Trump and his immediate circle pretty clearly just want to demolish anyone and anything that stands in the way of the immediate and complete implementation of his agenda while also providing some juicy patronage plums for MAGA loyalists. Many conservatives desperately want to reduce the size and power of the federal government based on the theory that Washington’s hirelings unduly restrict private enterprise, redistribute wealth, and pursue progressive policy goals they consider illegitimate or even evil. And all sorts of right-of-center folks want to reduce federal spending to pay for their own policy goals, including the white whale of high-end tax cuts. But as knives are sharpened to carve up the bureaucracy, we are also hearing some Democratic voices echoing the need for improvements in government efficiency and a tighter rein on agency discretion. It turns out nobody really likes faceless bureaucrats.

While there’s nothing wrong with “reinventing government” by examining how government policies are enforced and services are delivered, this may be a particularly bad time to turn the bureaucracy upside down and remake the federal public sector into a lean-and-mean instrument for the current controlling party’s governing vision and patronage needs. The “deep state” may be a crucial source of stability in an era during which the electorate keeps delivering and then denying power to one of two major political parties that agree on very little other than the wickedness of their opponents. In other countries with parliamentary systems and multiple political parties, coalition governments are a way around the problem of unstable majorities. Our winner-take-all system makes that impossible, and when someone like Trump comes along who wants to test the boundaries of power in every direction, any sense of continuity goes out the window.

In much of the 20th century, bipartisanship (along with ideological diversity within the two major parties) smoothed the rough edges of transitions in presidential and congressional power. Yes, there were major moments of single-party power, some of which arguably extended for decades, but it’s sometimes forgotten that even highly ideological regimes like Lyndon B. Johnson’s and Ronald Reagan’s relied on minority-party support and produced bipartisan policy legacies. But the 21st century has featured unusually short stretches of party power combined with deep partisan polarization, producing an ever-worsening sense of whiplash and instability in governance. A pattern has developed of partisan breakthroughs giving one party enormous power, followed quickly by gridlock and then reversal of party control. In 1992, 2000, 2008, 2016, 2020, and 2024, party control of the White House changed and the new boss enjoyed trifecta control of Congress. With the exception of George W. Bush (whose unified control ended in 2001 due to a senator switching parties), all these presidents lost their trifecta in their first midterm election, leading to sluggish periods of gridlock and then eventually defeat by the opposing party.

We’ve seen the oscillation accelerate since 2016, even as partisan divisions have deepened to an unprecedented degree. Trump took office determined to reverse Barack Obama’s policies root and branch via executive action and by two huge packages of legislation (one on taxes enacted, one on health care defeated through intraparty divisions). Then Republicans lost the House in 2018 and the ability to do big things died. Joe Biden took office in 2021 similarly determined to remake the federal government via executive orders and by two huge packages of legislation (both enacted, though the second took a long while and had to be pared back). Then Democrats lost the House in 2022 and things came to a halt. Now Trump 2.0 is in the process of more aggressively reversing its predecessor’s policies than any new administration perhaps since FDR in 1933, knowing full well that the window of legislative opportunity is due to close in 2026 when the GOP’s tiny margin of control of the House makes a Democratic flip extremely likely.

This patten of brief power followed by gridlock and then eviction from power shows no sign of ending any time soon in our closely and deeply divided country. As a result, the inherently disorderly process of changing policies and personnel in the executive branch is made even more chaotic as the power configuration changes every two years. To be sure, MAGA types purport to favor “disruption” of the status quo as an end in itself, but at some point, the federal government needs to settle into a governing groove. All the destructive thrashing around that Trump 2.0 is attempting may simply make a functional executive branch in the next (and quite possibly Democratic) administration unnecessarily difficult. And if that’s the whole nihilistic idea, anyone in either party who truly believes in government efficiency and responsiveness should be horrified.

So whether you favor or oppose the policy direction of the Trump administration, it should not be accompanied by an assault on the “deep state.” We need people to provide some semblance of continuity until such time as the electorate chooses to give elephants or donkeys management of the zoo for an extended period.


Brownstein: Revealing Data Points from the Presidential Election

At The Bulwark Tim Miller has a revealing interview with top political journalist Ronald Brownstein, who pegs the most compelling data points from the presidential election. A paywall kicks in at the end for the “full episode.” But some of Brownstein’s nuggets from the first part of the interview include:

“Trump won a substantial number of votes from people who still expressed  significant doubts abut him and his agenda. Between 1/5 and 1/6 of his voters would agree with sentiments like he was too extreme.”

“Roughly 60 percent of Americans disapproved of Biden’s job performance and 80 percent of those  disapprovers voted for Trump.”

“He won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 2024 after Dobbs, than he did in 2020 before Dobbs….More than a quarter of Latinos wo said they opposed mass deportations voted for him.”

“Among white women without a college degree – they are just crucial to how these [swing] states turn out – who supported legal abortion, broke 2 to 1 for Trump.”

“All of these data points tell me that the dissatisfaction, primarily over inflation, and to some extent the border simply outweighed at this moment voters’ hesitations and concerns about Trump.”

“A considerable majority of the country was dissatisfied with the results they got from the Biden presidency, and, in the normal hydraulics of American polling, voted for the party that was not in the White House.”

The first portion of Miller’s interview of Brownstein did not address cultural issues. But it can be safely concluded that being perceived as fully embracing cultural ‘wokeness’ did not help Harris, although she did well in light of the economic opinions cited by Brownstein.


Teixeira: Democrats Don’t Have to Perish on the Hills the Left Will Die On

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The left isn’t dead yet. But it’s getting there.

That’s a shame because the self-identified left played a leading and productive role in the 20th century. The various socialists, social democrats, and radicals that made up this loose aggregation pushed unions and government policy that benefited the working class, helped tame the excesses of capitalism and provided the shock troops for efforts to end discrimination, ensure equal treatment for all, and protect the environment. On all these fronts, the left made important contributions.

But the left came into the 21st century beaten down. From the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s to the rise of the Third Way in the 1990’s to the first Bush term and War on Terror that started the century, it didn’t seem like anyone really wanted to hear from the left any more. Political contention between the parties and within American politics generally had passed the movement by.

And then: a sort of revival, sparked initially by the backlash to the Iraq war. The revival was strengthened by the Great Recession of 2008-09 and Obama’s historic first election, gathered force through his second term with the rise of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and then was turbocharged by Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy and, of course, the norm-busting election of Donald Trump and his chaotic first term in office. Suddenly, being on the left was cool again. The moribund Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) spiked to 100,000 mostly young members from a few thousand aging veterans of the 20th century left.

And it wasn’t just the DSA. In many circles, a radical critique of American society as structurally racist, hostile to marginalized communities, and embedded in a rapacious capitalist system that will destroy the planet became a sort of conventional wisdom. In this view, opposing Trump had to be joined to a struggle against all these aspects of oppression (the “omnicause”) and to social transformation. Otherwise, the oppression would remain even if Trump himself was removed.

This view spread through sympathetic cultural milieus where it already had a considerable presence—universities, media, the arts, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations, and the infrastructure of the Democratic Party itself—redefining what it meant to be on the left. In opposing Trump, who was himself so radical, it seemed only reasonable to be radical in return.

As a result as the teens drew to close, punctuated by the COVID pandemic and the George Floyd summer of 2020, the left was both larger than it had been in a long time and very different from earlier iterations. This was a left that believed America was a white supremacist society, fully bought into climate catastrophism, prized “equity” above social order, good governance and equal opportunity and thought “no human being is illegal” was a good approach to immigration policy. And they were perfectly willing to shout you down if you didn’t believe all this stuff or even if you didn’t use the right language when referring to these issues. Not coincidentally this was also a left with almost no connection to the working class, in stark contrast to the 20th century left’s origin story.

But this left did have quite a lot of influence on Biden administration staffing and policies, down to the language officials used to describe their initiatives. To their shock, however, American voters were not delighted with the results, especially the working class, and the left’s preferred party, the Democrats, are out on their ear.


So this would be a great time for the left to recalibrate its approach, right? But are they? To paraphrase George W. Bush: “Is our leftists learning?”

Sadly, that does not appear to be the case. Neither in the evolving intraparty strategic debate after the November election nor in reactions to GOP priorities and Trump’s executive orders is there much evidence of a desire for compromise on the part of the left. Instead, there are signals that there are hills—many hills!—they are willing to die on rather than give ground. Here are three of the most important hills they are willing to die on—and probably will.

1. Immigration/border security/deportations. Outside of the economy, no issue hurt the Democrats more in 2024 than immigration. And the laxness on border security and quasi-open borders policy that resulted in massive waves of illegal immigration was very much a priority and product of the left. You’d think they’d be rushing to correct that mistake. Nah.

Take the Laken Riley Act which just passed Congress. Laken Riley was the Georgia nursing student who was murdered by illegal Venezuelan immigrant Jose Ibarra (recall that Biden, under pressure from the left, apologized for referring to illegal immigrant Ibarra as “illegal” as opposed to the approved nomenclature of “undocumented”). The legislation named after her provides for the detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, assault on a police office or acts causing death or bodily harm to an individual. Just 12 Democrats in the Senate and 46 Democrats in the House were willing to vote for the Laken Riley Act, with the left, heavily concentrated in blue states, conspicuous by its absence.

Outside of Congress, left reaction was predictable and vitriolic. Sarah Dohl, chief campaigns officer of the movement organizing group Indivisible had this to say:

Spineless. That’s the only word for the..Senate Democrats who handed MAGA Republicans a gift they didn’t deserve…The Laken Riley Act is a racist, xenophobic attack on immigrants that shreds constitutional rights and hands power to extremists like [Texas attorney general] Ken Paxton to hijack federal immigration policy. It’s not just cruel—it’s a train wreck of chaos and bad faith. And yet, Senate Democrats caved.

And that’s just the Laken Riley Act! That Act is merely the opener for a variety of Trump administration moves to drastically tighten up border security and deport many of the illegal immigrants who are currently here, focusing initially on those with criminal records. The left will oppose all these moves, with appropriately inflammatory rhetoric, despite their general popularity. Indeed, deporting those illegals with criminal records is stunningly popular; a new New York Times poll finds 87 percent overall support for deporting such illegal immigrants including overwhelming support among surprising groups like Democrats (83 percent) and Hispanics (85 percent).

The simple fact of the matter is that it is impossible to solve the illegal immigration problem without changing the incentive structure for prospective immigrants by: (a) making it much tougher to enter the U.S. illegally, and (b) making it much tougher to stay in the country once you are here illegally. The public understands this while the left evidently does not or (more plausibly) just does not want to solve the problem. They are determined to die on this hill and die they will, perhaps dragging the rest of the Democratic Party down with them.

2. Identity politics/equity/”trans rights.” The contemporary left is deeply invested in these issues and shows little sign of backing down or compromising on any of them. Take the statement of Ben Wikler, the left’s favorite candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee:

We unite our coalition by making sure everyone’s at the table.

As DNC Chair our leadership team will lift up our full coalition—Blacks, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ. Youth, Interfaith, Ethnic, Rural, Veteran and Disability representation.

This does not seem like the statement of someone even willing to entertain the idea that identity politics is past its sell-by date. Or consider that it is Trump, not anyone on the left, who ringingly called for unrestricted free speech and for a society that is “colorblind and merit-based.” That’s because all these principles have become right-coded in the last period of time and are therefore verboten for anyone on the left to endorse. That’s crazy! As Jeff Maurermemorably puts it, these statements by Trump

hurt not because I disagree, but because I can’t believe that the left has fucked things up so badly that free speech, color blindness, and meritocracy are now issues that the right feels they own. In fact, those issues are so right-coded that they made the list of Things To Throw In Democrats’ Faces At The Inauguration Speech. A little more than a decade ago, those were bedrock liberal ideals. How did we screw this up?

That wasn’t the only challenge in Trump’s inauguration speech to left shibboleths and there are even more in his spate of executive orders. The left is inclined to fight each and every one of them because they believe history is on their side. But is it? I am doubtful the median working-class voter is going to greet the demise of DEI programs in their workplace, public institutions, or community with anything but delight.

Nor will they miss the pronoun police, the insistence that trans-identified biological boys should be able to play girls sports or the easy availability of “gender-affirming care” (e.g., puberty blockers, hormones, surgery) for minors. The Times poll mentioned earlier found that 80 percent of working-class (non-college) respondents opposed transgender birth males playing in women’s sports and 75 percent opposed allowing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to be prescribed for anyone under 18.

For all that, only two (2!) House Democrats—both conservative Hispanic Democrats from Texas—could find the wherewithal to vote for The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act which would prohibit the participation of biological men and boys in women’s and girls sports. Even Massachusetts Democratic representative Seth Moulton, who had raised questions about having biological boys in girls sports, did not vote for the bill presumably because of pressure from the left (they viciously attacked him for being a “Nazi”, transphobe, etc, etc.)

The left is determined to die on this hill and is willing to call out their army of enforcers to defend it. But the clear shift in public sentiment against their agenda makes defeat far more likely than victory here. Meanwhile, Democrats’ ability to adapt and move to the center on these issues will be seriously compromised while the left is busy dying on that hill.

3. Climate catastrophism/renewables uber alles/net zero. Trump has thrown down the gauntlet to the left on climate and energy issues. In his speech and in his executive orders he has made clear his intention to untether domestic energy production from regulatory and permitting obstacles and de-emphasize Biden administration policies centered around renewables and electric vehicles. He promises energy abundance and low energy prices. The left hates this but the fact of the matter is that such an approach is far closer to what the public wants—especially what the working class wants—than the left’s quasi-religious commitment to a rapid renewables-based clean energy transition.

This can be easily seen by reviewing public opinion data on climate and energy issues. Here’s a refresher:

A recent YouGov survey designed by myself and Roger Pielke found that, by 74 percent to 26 percent, working-class voters prefer an energy approach that uses a mix of energy sources including oil, coal, and natural gas along with renewables to an approach that seeks to phase out the use of oil, coal, and natural gas completely.

In terms of the energy they consume, cost and reliability are way, way more important to working-class voters than possible effects on the climate. Given four choices, 41 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them and 35 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Just 17 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important and 6 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security.

In terms of proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change, getting to “net zero” as quickly as possible is relatively unimportant to working-class voters. Asked to consider proposals to reduce the effects of global climate change, these voters were least likely to say “getting the U.S. to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible” was very important to them personally (26 percent), fewer than said “limiting the burden of regulations on business” was very important (33 percent). Working-class voters were most likely by far to say keeping consumer costs low (66 percent) and increasing jobs and economic growth (60 percent) were very important aspects of climate mitigation proposals.

Consistent with many other surveys, the YouGov survey found that climate change as an issue has very low salience to working-class voters. Voters were asked to evaluate a list of 18 issue areas and rate their priority for the president and Congress to address in the coming year. As a “top priority,” dealing with global climate change ranked 16th out of these 18 areas among working-class voters, well behind strengthening the national economy, fighting inflation, defending the country from terrorist attacks, and keeping Social Security financially sound—and also behind reducing health care costs, dealing with immigration, improving the educational system, keeping energy costs low, reducing the budget deficit, reducing crime, improving how the political system works, improving the job situation, strengthening the military, dealing with the problems of poor people, and dealing with drug addiction. The climate issue only ranked above global trade and issues around race.

Finally, by 30 points (59 to 29 percent) working-class voters flat-out favor more domestic production of fossil fuels like oil and gas. But only 15 percent of these voters are aware that the Biden administration increased oil production on federal lands. However, when informed that the U.S. has, in fact, increased domestic production of oil and gas in the last several years, they are delighted. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of working-class voters said “this is a positive development, which brings good jobs for U.S. workers, ensures our energy supply and helps the U.S. support our allies who need similar resources” compared to 27 percent who thought “this is a negative development, which brings more pollution, climate change, and continued reliance on fossil fuels.”

In short, Trump is likely to shore up his base, rather than lose support, with his energy proposals. Meanwhile, the usual suspects on the left have already denounced his moves as undercutting the sacred quest to stop climate change, lining the pockets of evil fossil fuel companies and even (somehow) raising grocery prices. This hill, too, is evidently one they are willing to die on rather than compromise in any way on what is likely to be an extremely popular quest for energy abundance. And here too the left is likely to be decisively defeated as they expend vast amounts of money and effort defending the indefensible and kneecapping the ability of their party to come up with an alternative that can actually compete with Trump and his party.

Such is the nature of today’s left—divorced from the working class but intimately connected to the leftist strongholds of the professional class. The latter connection has kept them blissfully unaware of how far outside of the public opinion mainstream their current commitments are and therefore how quickly the hills they are defending could be overrun. That’s happening right now but the left seems determined to fight on to the bitter end.

So be it. Perhaps out of the ashes of this left, a better 21st century left may arise that channels the best aspects and universal principles of the 20th century left. But in the meantime, Democrats would be well-advised to craft an approach that ignores the left as much as possible. Just because the left is willing to die on all their various hills doesn’t mean Democrats have to as well.


Political Strategy Notes

Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakich, Tia Yang, and Cooper Burton write in “What do Americans think of Trump’s executive actions?They support Trump’s immigration policies, but not much else” at 538/abcnews: “Before this week, the modern record for most executive orders signed on a president’s first day was nine (set by Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden). And Trump is moving much faster to enact his agenda than he did in his first term:….But how will these sweeping policy changes sit with the American people? We dug up recent polling on 15 of the policies Trump has already issued. While Americans as a whole support some of them, particularly the ones cracking down on immigration, most of the other executive actions he took on Monday are unpopular among the public….In a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research/Fox News poll from January, 59 percent of registered voters said they would favor not just detaining but deporting “illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes” while allowing law-abiding immigrants to “remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship.” Another 30 percent said they would support deporting all illegal immigrants in the country…..Building a wall at the southern border: Popular….In the latest poll for The Wall Street Journal from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO, voters….”strongly favor” building a wall….After the recent surge in migration, Americans’ opinions have evolved on this issue, which used to be quite unpopular. For example, just after Trump’s first election win in 2016, a Politico/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health pollshowed only 35 percent of Americans said they supported building the wall, while 62 percent opposed it.”

Further, the authors note: “Using the military to secure the border: Popular….Citing the national emergency, Trump also issued an executive order directing the military to help stop “unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking” at the border. According to a December poll by Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies for CNBC, 60 percent of Americans thought deploying the military to the border to stop illegal drugs and human trafficking should be a top priority for the Trump administration. Only 24 percent opposed it….Ending birthright citizenship: Unpopular….However, at least one of Trump’s executive orders on immigration may not meet with such a warm reception from Americans: his order attempting to end birthright citizenship for people whose parents are in the U.S. illegally. (This action will likely get blocked in court, as the Constitution states that people born in the U.S. are automatically citizens.) An Ipsos/New York Times poll from Jan. 2-10 found that Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants who are here illegally, 55 percent to 41 percent….Reducing costs: Popular….One of the actions that Trump signed with great pomp and circumstance during his inaugural parade was a memorandum ordering all executive departments and agencies to “deliver emergency price relief … to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.” Trump probably did this because he knows it’s exactly what Americans want: Per a Cygnal poll earlier this month, 85 percent of likely 2026 voters said reducing inflation and lowering the cost of living was extremely or very important to them, making it far and away their top policy priority.”

In addition, the authors write: “Jan. 6 pardons: Unpopular….Trump also issued a blanket pardon Monday for anyone convicted of offenses surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That includes more than 1,500 individuals who have been arrested since the attack, over 80 percent of whom had already been convicted. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to do this, but it’s not likely to play well with the public. In a recent Marist College survey for NPR and PBS News, 62 percent of Americans said they disapproved of Trump taking such an action, and a similar share (57 percent) were opposed in the latest Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO poll for The Wall Street Journal. The pardons are almost certain to please Trump’s base, though: 64 percent of Republicans in the Marist/NPR/PBS News poll approved of them….Withdrawing from the Paris accord: Unpopular….In another hit to sustainable energy, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Americans may not be too happy about this move, as the AP/NORC poll found 52 percent opposed to the withdrawal and only 21 percent in favor (with 26 percent undecided or neutral). That does leave a lot of room for convincing, especially among Republicans, who continue to believe policies to mitigate climate change hurt the U.S. economy….But opinions on this issue have actually remained pretty consistently in favor of the Paris agreement since its inception: 62 percent of Americans were opposed when Trump withdrew from it for the first time back in 2017, and the same share supported Biden’s decision to rejoin in 2021.”

Also, “Ending DEI programs in the federal government: Mixed….Trump issued an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government that were primarily begun under the Biden administration, including, among other things, environmental justice programs and equity-related employment practices and initiatives….But polls are mixed on whether Americans support such a move, and the result seems to depend quite a bit on the question wording: In a Harvard/Harris poll from January, for example, voters supported “ending hiring for government jobs on the basis of race and returning to merit hiring of government employees,” 59 percent to 41 percent. But in a Pew Research poll conducted in October, a majority of voters (52 percent) said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work” is “mainly a good thing,” while just 21 percent said it’s “mainly a bad thing.”….Declaring there are only two sexes: Popular….Another culture-war-oriented executive order declared that it is now U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes: male and female. The order also bans the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care for inmates and urges the protection of single-sex spaces and facilities, including the assignment of transgender people to prisons that match their sex “at conception.”….This one is likely to go down well with a majority of Americans: According to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2023, 65 percent of Americans believed there were only two gender identities, and only 34 percent said there were more than two. And a May 2024 survey from McLaughlin & Associates/America’s New Majority Project found that registered voters supported a law that “forbids taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for gender reassignment surgery,” 59 percent to 30 percent. (However, because America’s New Majority Project is a Republican sponsor, it’s possible those numbers are too favorable for the conservative side.)”