How Many Unpopular Policies Can a President Pursue at One Time? Trump Is Trying to Find Out.

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

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June 24, 20251:51 PM

Welcome back to Margin of Terror, a column in which we track the reception the second Trump presidency is getting from the United States electorate.

Donald Trump has a lot going on right now!

• He’s spontaneously decided to try to broker peace between Israel and Iran after ordering the bombing of Iranian nuclear research sites.

• He’s trying to pass a budget bill that will result in an estimated 8 million people losing health coverage as the result of new “work requirements” that would be imposed on Medicaid recipients. The bill would also add $3 trillion to the federal debt in order to finance tax cuts that predominantly benefit high earners.

• He’s supervising an escalation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, particularly in Southern California, that are targeting immigrants who are actively employed and do not have criminal records.

• And he’s ultimately responsible, to the extent he is aware that it took place at all, for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s firing of an entire 17-person vaccine advisory panel.

An interesting thing that all these initiatives have in common is that the public, for the most part, hates them.

• In a YouGov poll taken after Saturday’s U.S. attack on Iran, respondents said they disapproved of the Iran bombing by a 45–36 margin. (CNN, which didn't include a "not sure" option, found disapprove beating approve 56–44.) Approval of Trump’s overall “handling” of Iran, in YouGov, was underwater 53–35.

• Recent polls have found that respondents oppose the passage of the budget bill by margins ranging from 19 points (Washington Post–Ipsos) to 29 points (KFF). In the Washington Post–Ipsos survey, the Medicaid cuts were underwater by a 63–18 margin.

• In a YouGov poll released June 17, 52 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of deportations against 42 percent who approved. His response to ICE-related protests in Los Angeles had a similar disapproval/approval split.

• In the same YouGov poll, respondents disapproved of RFK Jr.’s dismissal of the vaccine committee by a 50–29 margin. Seventy-six percent said that they believe vaccines are “very” or “somewhat” safe.

While Trump may have gotten bored of the idea of military engagement with the Iranians almost immediately after having ordered it, his administration seems intent on pursuing the other policies: passing the budget bill as-is, expanding deportation raids across the country, and continuing to undermine the vaccine testing and approval process. This could create consequences which would make those policies even less popular than they already are—the Medicaid cuts are expected to cause rural hospital closures, for example, while polls consistently find that Americans who support mass deportations in theory tend to change their mind in practice when the individuals being deported are sympathetic figures who do not have criminal records.

On the one hand, this is interesting from a political science perspective. Rarely do you see a national leader or party only try to do things that are unpopular! What effect will it have on the president and the Republican brand? On the other hand, the academic value of the experiment may be outweighed by its costs. Some of these costs will be practical: not having enough hospitals or vaccine doses, losing the contributions of otherwise law-abiding residents who work in the many jobs filled by immigrants, etc. Others could be moral or spiritual costs.

I digress, though: This is a column about what is popular, not what is right and wrong! For the past two months, the president’s overall approval rating has stayed relatively flat in the minus-5 to minus-10 range even as he has “flooded the zone,” to use a term beloved by Washington reporters, with objectionable behavior. This tracks: Trump’s political career has had the feel of an action-movie scene in which the main character improbably outruns a fireball or collapsing bridge; in his case, he is also the one responsible for the collapsing bridge. Hell, a few weeks ago his biggest donor and top collaborator quit the administration and insinuated he was involved in the sexual abuse of teenage girls, and who even remembers it now? (There is no evidence that Elon Musk’s vague claim about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is based in fact.) He is always unpopular, but never fatally unpopular.

Democrats’ failure to offer an appealing alternative may have something to do with this. Currently, the party is mainly occupied by a panicked fratricidal effort to prevent a 33-year-old self-described socialist named Zohran Mamdani from winning the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor’s race. The candidate that senior Democrats are uniting behind instead is Andrew Cuomo, a 67-year-old who resigned in disgrace from New York’s governorship four years ago, and is the first choice of only about 40 percent of party primary voters despite benefiting from a historically massive surge of outside ad spending that was financed in part by one of Trump’s top supporters, and holds a statewide favorability rating of −14. If Cuomo wins the election, which he’s probably still the favorite to do despite Mamdani’s late surge—voting ends today, although results might not be ready for a week—you can count on him getting some “presidential buzz.” Vance vs. Cuomo 2028? For the American voter, will the fun ever start?