By Aaron Blake · The Washington Post (c) 2025
For all the talk about President Donald Trump’s rapid decline in polls as he nears his 100th day in office, Trump remains in good stead overall with one crucial group: Republicans. And as his first term showed, he maintains a significant degree of political power as long as he keeps the devotion of his base.
But a batch of new polling tells a more nuanced tale about Trump and the GOP.
While Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (hereafter known as Republican-leaning voters) still overwhelmingly back him – and few express regret for their votes – many of them say Trump is going too far. And that might actually undersell how many truly feel this way.
It hasn’t registered any kind of large-scale GOP backlash. But it’s clear that Trump is testing the patience even of his fellow partisans with his myriad power grabs and brazen actions.
The biggest findings, to me, come from a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. It showed that at least one-quarter of Republican-leaning voters say a trio of things that point to Trump going too far:
– 26 percent agree that Trump has “gone beyond his authority as president.”
– 27 percent say his administration “does not respect the rule of law.”
– 34 percent say Trump is “going too far” in “trying to expand the power of the presidency.”
These are far from majorities of Trump’s party, meaning those who hold such views are still very much outnumbered. But these are large percentages of people who are inclined to back Trump and his party but who nonetheless seem to be throwing up caution flags about overreach.
The findings have been similar in other new polls released in recent days. A Pew Research Center poll, for instance, showed that 21 percent of Republican-leaning voters said Trump was doing “too much” by executive order. In a New York Times-Siena College poll, meanwhile, 16 percent of Republicans said Trump was “exceeding the powers available to him as president.”
(A likely reason that last poll number is smaller than the others is it’s among the smaller subgroup of Republicans only – i.e. not including Republican-leaning independents. That suggests a group that is more loyal to Trump.)
From there, the question is what, specifically, Trump is doing in his second term that is “going too far,” even for those on his side.
Among the most significant ones in the Post-ABC-Ipsos poll: closing federal agencies (23 percent of Republican-leaning voters say he’s going too far), taking actions against his political opponents (22 percent), laying off government workers (22 percent) and deporting undocumented immigrants (15 percent).
The Times-Siena poll found the biggest examples – again, among the smaller group of Republicans only – were his tariffs (17 percent) and his federal cuts (16 percent).
These are significant numbers. If recent history shows us anything, it’s that it takes a lot to get people to criticize their side in our polarized age.
That doesn’t mean Trump is at imminent risk of losing his base or anything close to it. Part of that recent history is that, even at his low points, Republicans were deathly afraid of alienating his base and possibly drawing primary challengers because of it.
But the other big lesson from these new polls is that these numbers might actually undersell Trump’s overreach problem. These are just the people who are willing to admit it, after all. And when you take Trump out of the equation, he’s doing things that many members of his party say he shouldn’t be able to.
The Times-Siena poll tested this in an interesting way. It asked people to set aside their approval or disapproval of Trump’s actions, and then it asked them whether a president should be able to do certain things (things that Trump just happens to be doing).
The numbers were even larger. For example, 33 percent of Republicans said a president should not be able to impose tariffs without authorization by Congress. (Trump has not only imposed them without Congress, but he has also imposed large tariffs that are threatening severe economic pain.) In addition, 26 percent of Republicans said a president shouldn’t be able to eliminate government programs that are enacted by Congress (which Trump and the U.S. DOGE Service have done). And 40 percent said a president shouldn’t be able to deport legal migrants who criticize Israel (which, again, Trump has done).
Which brings us to what happens next. While these assertions of power seem to rub even many Trump-aligned voters the wrong way, they’re not even the biggest looming clash when it comes to potential Trump overreach. That one deals with Trump’s feuds with the courts and whether he is violating or will violate court orders – a situation that many fear could lead to a constitutional crisis. The administration is clearly flouting court orders related to its deportations, at the very least.
The polling is clear that even a large portion of Trump’s base says – at least for now – that this would not be okay:
– 61 percent of Republicans said a president shouldn’t be able to ignore Supreme Court rulings (Times-Siena).
– 65 percent of Republican-leaners said the Trump administration needs to follow federal court rulings that say it’s breaking the law. And 82 percent say it needs to follow Supreme Court rulings to that effect (Pew).
– 62 percent of Republicans said a president must follow Supreme Court rulings even if he believes it would prevent him from thwarting a terrorist attack (Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania).
Whether any of those numbers hold up if Trump does violate court rulings is an open question. People tend to have selective views about presidential power depending upon which side is holding it – and that’s especially true of the Trump-era GOP. And perhaps these Republican-leaning voters would convince themselves that Trump’s actions would be warranted.
But a large number of them are already raising red flags as Trump reaches for extraordinary amounts of power.
That undercuts the Trump team’s claims of victimization at the hands of the courts that have stood in their way, and it should give them caution about their next big power grab. Because once that base is depressed, he will be in much bigger trouble than he is now.