Latest news with #AmericanPresidencyProject
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
US presidents ranked by their approval ratings when they left office
For the past 70 years, Gallup has measured US presidents' approval ratings. Bill Clinton had the highest approval ratings at the time he left the Oval Office. Donald Trump's first-term rating is tied for eighth place with George W. Bush's and Jimmy Carter's. President Donald Trump is seeking to rewrite US immigration policies, has reshaped how world leaders use social media, and has made historic changes to the federal workforce. But in his first term, he made history in a way he may wish to forget: He was the first president since Gallup began tracking presidential job approval in the 1930s to fail to exceed a 50% approval rating at any point during his term. In Gallup's latest poll, conducted during the first half of May, 43% of respondents said they approved of Trump's performance, down from 47% in polling conducted during the first six days of his second term in January. In the recent poll, 53% said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. This number has held steady since March, a month rocked by leaked Signal chats and the economic shake-up of tariff policies. (A handful of people in each poll said they had no opinion of Trump's job performance.) For nearly a century, the polls have been used to measure the public's perception of US presidents' performance, with Gallup asking Americans: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way [the current president] is handling his job as president?" The American Presidency Project from the University of California, Santa Barbara, compiled the final Gallup ratings of each president's term from the past 70 years, signaling how popular each leader was when they left the Oval Office. See how US presidents from Harry Truman to Joe Biden rank in this end-of-term polling. We've ordered them from the lowest approval rating to the highest. Richard Nixon Approval rating: 24% Even though Nixon won the 1972 election in a historic landslide, the end of his presidency was tainted by the Watergate scandal that led him to resign on August 9, 1974, when faced with the threat of an impeachment and removal. Surveyed August 2 to 5, 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment against the president but before he resigned, 66% of respondents to the Gallup poll said they disapproved of Nixon's presidency, the highest of any president on the list. Harry S. Truman Approval rating: 32% Assuming the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, Truman served two terms covering the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, including the Korean War, which was widely unpopular and contributed to Truman's low approval rating by the end of his second term in 1953. When asked December 11 to 16, 1952, 56% of poll respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Jimmy Carter Approval rating: 34% Carter had high approval ratings — and a disapproval rating in the single digits — during the early days of his term, but his handling of international affairs, such as the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, along with a struggling economy, ultimately made him unpopular by the end of his term. He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan and faced a disapproval rating of 55% in polling conducted December 5 to 8, when he was readying to leave the White House. George W. Bush Approval rating: 34% Despite uniting the nation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush saw his public approval fade during his second term. His approval rating spiked after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, and the capture of Saddam Hussein. After his reelection, his popularity began to decline as the Iraq War extended. His handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the onset of the 2008 financial crisis also contributed to his growing unpopularity. From January 9 to 11, 2009, as Bush prepared to hand over the presidency to Barack Obama, 61% of poll respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Donald Trump Approval rating: 34% Trump's presidency was divisive from the start, as he entered the White House with an approval rating below 50%. He's the first president in modern history to never exceed 50% approval on the Gallup polls during his presidency. While his approval ratings dwindled over the course of his four years in office, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular came under scrutiny ahead of his loss in the 2020 election. His lowest approval ratings in office came during the final Gallup poll, conducted January 4 to 15, 2021. Most of that polling period took place immediately after the Capitol insurrection on January 6, and Trump faced a disapproval rating of 62%, the worst after Richard Nixon's at the time he left the office. Joe Biden Approval rating: 40% While Biden saw continuous approval ratings over 50% during his first six months in office, rises in inflation and illegal immigration, as well as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, contributed to lowering approval ratings. His lowest-ranking Gallup poll, in which 36% of respondents said they approved of his handling of the role, came in July 2024, a month after his debate performance against Trump shifted focus toward his age and fitness for office. As he left office, in polls collected January 2 to 16, 2025, Biden received a disapproval rating of 54%. Lyndon B. Johnson Approval rating: 49% After assuming the presidency because of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Johnson won the 1964 election in a historic landslide, but he faced decreasing approval ratings over his handling of the Vietnam War. Low approval ratings, along with a divided party, led Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race in 1968. At the time of his withdrawal, 36% of poll respondents said they approved of his handling of the presidency. By the time he left the office, however, his ratings had gone up to 49% approval. In polling conducted January 1 to 6, 1969, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the role, and 14% said they had no opinion, one of the higher percentages among the listed presidents. Gerald Ford Approval rating: 53% Assuming the presidency at the time of Nixon's resignation, Ford served as US president from August 1974 until January 1977, after he lost the election to Jimmy Carter. During his presidency, Ford faced mixed reviews, with his approval dropping after he pardoned Nixon and introduced conditional amnesty for draft dodgers in September 1974. Polled December 10 to 13, 1976, after he had lost the reelection to Jimmy Carter, 32% of respondents said they disapproved of Ford's handling of the presidency, and 15% said they had no opinion on it, the highest percentage of the listed presidents. George H. W. Bush Approval rating: 56% Though the elder Bush lost his reelection bid in the 1992 presidential election against Bill Clinton, the public opinion of him was positive by the end of his term. In the weeks before his nomination as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1992, however, he had only a 29% approval rating, the lowest of his presidency. A recession and a reversal of his tax policy contributed to his drop in popularity. In polling conducted January 8 to 11, 1993, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency, while 56% said they approved. Barack Obama Approval rating: 59% Since the beginning of his presidency in 2009, Obama had a high approval rating for a modern-day president; he averaged nearly 47% approval over eight years. At his lowest point, in polling conducted September 8 to 11, 2011, 37% of poll respondents said they approved of his presidency, the decline most likely influenced by the president's healthcare policies and his handling of the 2008 economic crisis and the following rise in unemployment rates. In polls conducted January 17 to 19, 2017, when Obama was leaving office, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the role, with 59% saying they approved. Dwight D. Eisenhower Approval rating: 59% After winning the 1952 election in a landslide, Eisenhower saw high approval ratings throughout his presidency, never dropping below the disapproval rating. Holding office during critical Cold War years, Eisenhower saw his stay positive throughout the end of his second term, with only 28% of respondents polled December 8 to 13, 1960, saying they disapproved of his handling of the presidency, the lowest of the presidents listed. Ronald Reagan Approval rating: 63% Reagan's strong leadership toward ending the Cold War and implementing his economic policies contributed to consistently positive ratings during his presidency and the subsequent election of his vice president, George H. W. Bush, as his successor to the presidency. By the time he left office, 29% of respondents in a Gallup poll conducted December 27 to 29, 1988, said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Bill Clinton Approval rating: 66% After winning the 1992 elections against the incumbent George H. W. Bush, Clinton saw high approval ratings throughout his presidency, though he faced mixed opinions at times during his first term because of his domestic agenda, including tax policy and social issues. Despite being impeached in 1998 by the House of Representatives over his testimony describing the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton continued to see positive approval ratings during his second term. Near the time he left the White House, he had an approval rating of 66%, the highest of all the presidents on this list. In the poll conducted January 10 to 14, 2001, 29% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
a day ago
- Politics
- Business Insider
US presidents ranked by their approval ratings when they left office
President Donald Trump is seeking to rewrite US immigration policies, has reshaped how world leaders use social media, and has made historic changes to the federal workforce. But in his first term, he made history in a way he may wish to forget: He was the first president since Gallup began tracking presidential job approval in the 1930s to fail to exceed a 50% approval rating at any point during his term. In Gallup's latest poll, conducted during the first half of May, 43% of respondents said they approved of Trump's performance, down from 47% in polling conducted during the first six days of his second term in January. In the recent poll, 53% said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. This number has held steady since March, a month rocked by leaked Signal chats and the economic shake-up of tariff policies. (A handful of people in each poll said they had no opinion of Trump's job performance.) For nearly a century, the polls have been used to measure the public's perception of US presidents' performance, with Gallup asking Americans: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way [the current president] is handling his job as president?" The American Presidency Project from the University of California, Santa Barbara, compiled the final Gallup ratings of each president's term from the past 70 years, signaling how popular each leader was when they left the Oval Office. See how US presidents from Harry Truman to Joe Biden rank in this end-of-term polling. We've ordered them from the lowest approval rating to the highest. Richard Nixon Approval rating: 24% Even though Nixon won the 1972 election in a historic landslide, the end of his presidency was tainted by the Watergate scandal that led him to resign on August 9, 1974, when faced with the threat of an impeachment and removal. Surveyed August 2 to 5, 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment against the president but before he resigned, 66% of respondents to the Gallup poll said they disapproved of Nixon's presidency, the highest of any president on the list. Harry S. Truman Approval rating: 32% Assuming the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, Truman served two terms covering the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, including the Korean War, which was widely unpopular and contributed to Truman's low approval rating by the end of his second term in 1953. When asked December 11 to 16, 1952, 56% of poll respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Jimmy Carter Approval rating: 34% Carter had high approval ratings — and a disapproval rating in the single digits — during the early days of his term, but his handling of international affairs, such as the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, along with a struggling economy, ultimately made him unpopular by the end of his term. He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan and faced a disapproval rating of 55% in polling conducted December 5 to 8, when he was readying to leave the White House. George W. Bush Approval rating: 34% Despite uniting the nation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush saw his public approval fade during his second term. His approval rating spiked after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, and the capture of Saddam Hussein. After his reelection, his popularity began to decline as the Iraq War extended. His handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the onset of the 2008 financial crisis also contributed to his growing unpopularity. From January 9 to 11, 2009, as Bush prepared to hand over the presidency to Barack Obama, 61% of poll respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Donald Trump Approval rating: 34% Trump's presidency was divisive from the start, as he entered the White House with an approval rating below 50%. He's the first president in modern history to never exceed 50% approval on the Gallup polls during his presidency. While his approval ratings dwindled over the course of his four years in office, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular came under scrutiny ahead of his loss in the 2020 election. His lowest approval ratings in office came during the final Gallup poll, conducted January 4 to 15, 2021. Most of that polling period took place immediately after the Capitol insurrection on January 6, and Trump faced a disapproval rating of 62%, the worst after Richard Nixon's at the time he left the office. Joe Biden Approval rating: 40% While Biden saw continuous approval ratings over 50% during his first six months in office, rises in inflation and illegal immigration, as well as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, contributed to lowering approval ratings. His lowest-ranking Gallup poll, in which 36% of respondents said they approved of his handling of the role, came in July 2024, a month after his debate performance against Trump shifted focus toward his age and fitness for office. As he left office, in polls collected January 2 to 16, 2025, Biden received a disapproval rating of 54%. Lyndon B. Johnson Approval rating: 49% After assuming the presidency because of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Johnson won the 1964 election in a historic landslide, but he faced decreasing approval ratings over his handling of the Vietnam War. Low approval ratings, along with a divided party, led Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race in 1968. At the time of his withdrawal, 36% of poll respondents said they approved of his handling of the presidency. By the time he left the office, however, his ratings had gone up to 49% approval. In polling conducted January 1 to 6, 1969, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the role, and 14% said they had no opinion, one of the higher percentages among the listed presidents. Gerald Ford Approval rating: 53% Assuming the presidency at the time of Nixon's resignation, Ford served as US president from August 1974 until January 1977, after he lost the election to Jimmy Carter. During his presidency, Ford faced mixed reviews, with his approval dropping after he pardoned Nixon and introduced conditional amnesty for draft dodgers in September 1974. Polled December 10 to 13, 1976, after he had lost the reelection to Jimmy Carter, 32% of respondents said they disapproved of Ford's handling of the presidency, and 15% said they had no opinion on it, the highest percentage of the listed presidents. George H. W. Bush Approval rating: 56% Though the elder Bush lost his reelection bid in the 1992 presidential election against Bill Clinton, the public opinion of him was positive by the end of his term. In the weeks before his nomination as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1992, however, he had only a 29% approval rating, the lowest of his presidency. A recession and a reversal of his tax policy contributed to his drop in popularity. In polling conducted January 8 to 11, 1993, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency, while 56% said they approved. Barack Obama Approval rating: 59% Since the beginning of his presidency in 2009, Obama had a high approval rating for a modern-day president; he averaged nearly 47% approval over eight years. At his lowest point, in polling conducted September 8 to 11, 2011, 37% of poll respondents said they approved of his presidency, the decline most likely influenced by the president's healthcare policies and his handling of the 2008 economic crisis and the following rise in unemployment rates. In polls conducted January 17 to 19, 2017, when Obama was leaving office, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the role, with 59% saying they approved. Dwight D. Eisenhower Approval rating: 59% After winning the 1952 election in a landslide, Eisenhower saw high approval ratings throughout his presidency, never dropping below the disapproval rating. Holding office during critical Cold War years, Eisenhower saw his stay positive throughout the end of his second term, with only 28% of respondents polled December 8 to 13, 1960, saying they disapproved of his handling of the presidency, the lowest of the presidents listed. Ronald Reagan Approval rating: 63% Reagan's strong leadership toward ending the Cold War and implementing his economic policies contributed to consistently positive ratings during his presidency and the subsequent election of his vice president, George H. W. Bush, as his successor to the presidency. By the time he left office, 29% of respondents in a Gallup poll conducted December 27 to 29, 1988, said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency. Bill Clinton Approval rating: 66% After winning the 1992 elections against the incumbent George H. W. Bush, Clinton saw high approval ratings throughout his presidency, though he faced mixed opinions at times during his first term because of his domestic agenda, including tax policy and social issues. Despite being impeached in 1998 by the House of Representatives over his testimony describing the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton continued to see positive approval ratings during his second term. Near the time he left the White House, he had an approval rating of 66%, the highest of all the presidents on this list. In the poll conducted January 10 to 14, 2001, 29% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Did you know Memorial Day may have originated in Pennsylvania?
(WHTM) — Although Waterloo, New York, is officially recognized as the origin of Memorial Day, a city in Pennsylvania claims to be the birthplace of the historic holiday. Many communities have made this claim; however, according to the Pennsylvania Center for the Book (PCB), two have merit: Waterloo, New York, and a small village in Centre County, Pennsylvania called Boalsburg. The PCB says the village of Boalsburg claims to be the site of the earliest observation of Memorial Day, then known as Decoration Day. According to the PCB, the Men of Boalsburg, an abolitionist community led by Professor James Patterson, answered President Abraham Lincoln's call for Union Army volunteers, leaving their wives, sisters, and daughters behind. The PCB says the women of Boalsburg organized daily meetings, prepared packages and uniforms, and arranged concerts to raise funds for their wounded husbands, sons, and fathers. On September 19, 1864, five men of Boalsburg, including Dr. Reuben Hunter, were killed during the Civil War, which inspired three women to visit the fallen soldiers' graves. The PCB says Emma Hunter, Dr. Hunter's daughter, Elizabeth Meyer, whose son, Amos Meyer, was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, and Sophie Keller shared a bouquet of flowers to decorate the graves of their fallen family members and friends. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now According to the three women made a pact to return to the gravesite the next year to honor their loved ones again, as well as others who may not have loved ones to mourn them. They met on July 4, 1865, where they turned the event into a community service and decorated every grave in the cemetery. The event became known as 'Decoration Day,' and then General John A. Logan decreed that 'The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion…[and] will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades.' The holiday was recognized until it was changed to Memorial Day in 1967 and moved to the last Monday of May in 1971 to create the three-day weekend, per the PCG. Memorial Day's true origins are disputed, as Boalsburg's timeline has raised some concerns, and other cities claim they are the origins of the holiday, including Columbus, Georgia, and Columbus, Mississippi. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson designated Waterloo, New York, as the official birthplace of Memorial Day on May 26, 1966, according to the American Presidency Project. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Time Magazine
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
As White House Purges Public Records, These Independent Databases Are Keeping Their Own Trump Archives
President Donald Trump has promised Americans 'radical transparency'—but his government has taken a number of steps that observers say make it anything but the self-described ' most transparent Administration in history! ' In his first term, which the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation described as ' allergic to transparency,' the White House stopped releasing visitor logs, censored or rejected a record percentage of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and refused to release his tax returns. So far, the second-term Trump Administration has scrubbed federal websites, limited reporters' access, and used disappearing-message apps for high-level communications that typically should be retained for posterity. The Associated Press reported last week that ' Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous U.S. President,' and the Freedom of the Press Foundation said the Trump Administration ' is eroding the information environment in ways this country has never seen.' Most recently, this week the White House removed official transcripts of the President's remarks, which are now only available as videos—a departure from a common practice across Democratic and Republican administrations over decades. The only transcript that is now available on the White House website is Trump's inaugural address. 'You must be truly f-cking stupid if you think we're not transparent,' White House communications director Steven Cheung told HuffPost when asked about the latest move. In the void of official archives, a number of independent record-keepers have taken matters into their own hands, offering the public a cache of data and documentation to sift and search through without fear of sudden removal. Still, these mostly collect only previously-made public records, and transparency advocates remain concerned about those that the public may never see. Here are some of the databases available. American Presidency Project What started out in 1999 as a project by then-graduate student Gerhard Peters and professor John Woolley at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for students of political science has since turned into a valuable comprehensive digital repository of presidential public documents dating back to George Washington. The nonprofit, nonpartisan American Presidency Project hosts copies of Trump's speeches and executive orders, social media posts, press pool reports, media interviews, and more—from both his terms as well as his campaigns and transition periods. Archive Harvard Law School's Library Innovation Lab, which developed the web-archiving tool, released in February a new archive of more than 300,000 data sets from the U.S. government's repository of open data. 'We've built this project on our long-standing commitment to preserving government records and making public information available to everyone,' the lab said in announcing the project. Data Rescue Project The Data Rescue Project is a collaboration between organizations like IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network. The project, which started out in February on a Google Doc, aims to 'serve as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts and data access points' for public U.S. governmental data that it deems 'currently at risk.' Data it harvests, including from government agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Education, is maintained in the searchable archive DataLumos, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research's crowd-sourced repository hosted by the University of Michigan. Started in 2017 by Virginia husband and wife Bill Frischling and Jennifer Canty to empower the public to factcheck Trump's statements for themselves, collects videos of Trump's speeches, as well as press gaggles and other appearances. 'How could you argue something is not true if you could see not only what this person said but the entire context around it?' Frischling told BuzzFeed News. The database was acquired by FiscalNote and is now hosted by FiscalNote's policy news site Roll Call. It also has a collection of Trump's tweets and social media posts, going as far back as 2009, as well as the President's public schedule and emailed press releases from the White House. Federal Environmental Web Tracker by EDGI Formed in 2016 to document changes to 'vulnerable' federal environmental data, the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) is a research collaboration of professionals advocating for environmental awareness. Its website-monitoring team created a tracker for changes to environment-related federal pages. Since returning to office, the Trump Administration has purged information or text related to the climate crisis on many government websites. Internet Archive The Internet Archive is a nonprofit that provides users free access to its expansive digital library. Since beginning in 1996, the archive has a collection of more than 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings, 10.6 million videos, 4.8 million images, and a million software programs. 'Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge,' it says on its site. In 2017, it launched the Trump Archive, which collects 'TV news shows containing debates, speeches, interviews, rallies, and other reporting related to Donald Trump, before his first presidency and throughout subsequent years.' But anybody can contribute. Described by the New Yorker as 'a tech-support professional' in Kansas, a man identified only as Andrew—who uses the moniker Grumpy—began downloading videos from federal agencies on February 1 in response to takedowns by the Trump Administration. The videos are available on his Internet Archive account, Grumpy System. The Internet Archive also operates the Wayback Machine, a tool that preserves timestamped snapshots of websites. Like the Internet Archive's other databases, individuals can contribute to the Wayback Machine, too. Its director told NPR that six weeks into Trump's second term, some 73,000 government web pages (and counting) were cataloged before being expunged, including reportedly the only copy of the House Jan. 6 Committee's interactive timeline of the 2021 Capitol Riot. The Wayback Machine has also hosted since 2008 the End of Term Web Archive, which 'collects, preserves, and makes accessible United States Government websites at the end of presidential administrations.' Rev AI-powered speech-to-text company Rev hosts a free Transcript Library that includes searchable transcripts of Trump's public appearances going back years. Trump's Truth Trump's Truth, a project by the Never-Trump-Republican founded nonprofit group Defending Democracy Together, archives all of Trump's posts on his platform TRUTH Social. While Trump's TRUTH Social posts are publicly available, the Trump's Truth site warns that the President's posts on his own platform 'may be deleted at any time.' The archive checks for new posts 'every few minutes' and includes video transcription and image descriptions to enable greater search ability. 'We believe this is an essential part of the historical record, and that it must be preserved for its educational, journalistic and research value,' the site says.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's executive actions could be felt for years to come
President Trump has since taking office leaned heavily on executive actions, the impacts of which are likely to be felt for years to come and will be harder to reverse for future administrations than those implemented by past presidents. Within the first 100 days alone, Trump has already nearly surpassed the total number of orders that former President Biden signed throughout his entire term. These in theory should be the easiest for a successor to overturn, as they would only need to sign a new order to reverse them, unlike laws that Congress passes. But with thousands of government employees being laid off and funding for certain federal agencies and programs being zeroed out, experts say Trump's early actions could be longer-lasting than those of most of his predecessors. 'Most of his executive actions can be reversed in the letter of them,' said Hans Noel, an associate professor in the department of government at Georgetown University. 'But if you created an agency in an organization and you've been building it up … and then that goes away, then the expertise and all the building needs to start over again.' Trump already seems on track to have among the highest number of executive orders signed if he keeps up his pace, with 147 orders signed as of Monday, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. That's almost more than the 162 that Biden signed in four years in office and more than two-thirds of Trump's total from his first term. Other presidents from earlier in the 20th century still have considerably more, with Franklin Roosevelt holding the record with more than 3,700 across 12 years in office. But Trump is currently on track for the fastest yearly pace since then. Many executive orders that presidents sign are often symbolic, like Trump's order in February declaring English as the national language. Others simply repeal orders from past presidents. 'It's very easy to undo executive orders,' Noel said. 'That's a lot of what Trump's executive orders have been, undoing past orders or making changes to things. And if anything, he's showing that you can change things that have been pretty established.' But perhaps Trump's most notable executive action has been his remaking of the federal workforce and the executive branch, laying off or placing on leave thousands of workers and calling for eliminating funding for agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Institute for Peace and U.S. Agency for Global Media. In response to Trump's executive orders to make cuts, federal departments and agencies have been rolling out announcements of buyouts, early retirements and pending layoffs since Trump took office in January. While Trump's directives and the Department of Government Efficiency's work to cut into the federal workforce and agencies haven't been formalized in congressional budget appropriations, they could still have lasting effects even if they're eventually withdrawn. One issue is the logistical difficulty of hiring back so many people who lost their jobs and need to find a new job quickly while living in the high-cost Washington, D.C., metro area, said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He said this becomes less realistic the longer workers are out of work or in limbo about the status of their roles. Courts have stepped in by at least temporarily blocking or allowing some of Trump's moves while larger battles play out. Most recently, a federal judge on Tuesday blocked Trump from dismantling three federal agencies that support libraries, museums, minority businesses and mediation services. 'If we have in a month or two a bunch of court cases which definitively say certain employees were inappropriately separated from service and need to be given their jobs back with back pay, that's one thing,' Kosar said. 'It's another thing if this drags on for months and months and months. These folks then will just move on, probably in most cases, and go on to different futures.' Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said presuming the cuts go through Congress, reappropriating the money to restore the federal workforce to its level before Trump wouldn't be difficult as long as the money is available to spend. But hiring workers to fill those roles will take time, as the federal government has been 'notoriously slow' at hiring, she added. Kosar said the process is laden with procedures and protections to ensure no favoritism or discrimination takes place. He pointed to the Presidential Management Fellowship Program, which the Trump administration eliminated earlier this year, as a possible way to 'fast-track' hiring. The program, which was first implemented in the 1970s, takes in those who recently completed law or graduate school for a fellowship before hiring them to a position in the government. He said the amount of time can vary based on the agency, but hiring for any open federal position could take at least four months. As Trump's blitz continues, eyes will turn to Congress with the White House having unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 on Friday. The administration's proposals would institute deep cuts to nondefense programs, including billions of dollars in reductions for departments such as Energy and Housing and Urban Development and agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Eric Yellin, an associate professor of history at the University of Richmond, said what happens next and the longevity of Trump's actions will be up to a test of the relationship between the president and Congress and reaction from the public. He said past presidents who have wanted to shrink the size of the government have faced obstacles from Congress. 'Even in Nixon's administration, even with Ronald Reagan, efforts to stall or limit the size of the federal government ran up against Congress,' he said, adding that former President Clinton was successful in reducing the size of the government through 'deep working' with Congress. Beyond just hiring more people, Kamarck said Trump's moves could cause a more long-lasting loss of expertise that federal agencies rely on. She pointed to the Agriculture Department scrambling to rehire fired employees who were working to address avian flu in February and trying to fill spots of employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer. 'A lot of the stuff in the federal government is specialized,' she said, pointing to concerns that cuts to NIH could set back cancer research. 'That's not easy to find people who know a lot about [cancer]. They're pretty much in demand. They're losing a lot of expertise.' Noel said 'soft power' that agencies like USAID wield in other countries could be significantly disrupted, as it is based on development over time. Soft power is the ability of a country to influence other countries through persuasion and cooperation rather than military or economic force. The development programs facing cuts are considered prime examples of exerting U.S. soft power internationally. 'That takes time and effort and maybe doesn't even work,' Noel said. 'I think there's people who would argue that it's not worth it, but if it does matter, then you have to start over from scratch.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
