According to Gallup, the President’s approval rating continued its decline on Thursday, reaching a fresh low of 37% among U.S. adults during his second term, as he steadily loses backing from independent voters. Independents gave him the lowest scores for his management of the budget, Ukraine, and foreign trade.
Trump’s position among partisans has not changed. Gallup reported that his support from has remained stable at around 89%, and his approval from Democrats stayed in the single digits, dropping slightly to 2% in July.
Gallup’s pollsters conducted interviews with voters in the two weeks following Trump’s enactment of his flagship spending bill—the . This legislation included tax cuts and increased funding for immigration enforcement, the military, and U.S. fossil fuel production. It also featured funding reductions for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Among independents, Trump’s lowest approval marks were for his handling of the federal budget, at 19%, and the , at 24%. Twenty-seven percent of independents approved of his handling of international trade and the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. His management of the economy received 29% approval among independents. Trump’s overall approval among independent voters decreased to 29% from 46% when he assumed office six months prior.
During his first term, Trump’s Gallup approval rating peaked at 49% in May 2020 and fell to its lowest point at 34% in January 2021, during his final weeks in office. The latest approval rating comes as Trump deals with concerns from Republican supporters regarding his administration’s refusal to release additional files from the sex trafficking investigation.
On Wednesday, three House Republicans on the House Oversight Committee with GOP leaders and agreed with Democrats to subpoena Justice Department records from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation. The committee also decided to issue a subpoena for a deposition from Ghislaine Maxwell, who was for her part in a sex trafficking conspiracy with Epstein, and requested testimony from high-profile figures including President Bill Clinton, and former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.
Trump has attempted to shift the focus for several days, but with little success. On Tuesday in the Oval Office, he revived a long-standing complaint against former President Barack Obama, asserting, without proof, that Obama committed treason for his handling of investigations into Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election, which Trump won. On Sunday night, Trump unleashed a flurry of online posts on Truth Social calling for the Cleveland Guardians and Washington Commanders football teams to revert to their former names, shared videos of people performing risky stunts, and disseminated a fabricated AI-generated video of Obama being apprehended in the Oval Office.