June 28, 2025 | View In Browser

Politics

By Eli Yokley | Twitter Email

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THE AGENDA

1. Musk’s popularity hits record low
2. Foreign aid cuts fall down voters’ priority list
3. America’s tanking global reputation under Trump
4. What we’re tracking
5. What we’re reading

1. MUSK’S POPULARITY HITS RECORD LOW

Politico reported yesterday that President Donald Trump has told those close to him “that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role” leading the Department of Government Efficiency. Whatever the timeline, the chatter “comes as the tech mogul increasingly looks like a political liability” in Trump world, Rachael Bade wrote, underlined by the Wisconsin Supreme Court race where Democrats made the billionaire White House adviser the star of the show.

We can’t be sure that the Democrats’ double-digit victory in Wisconsin had much to do with his involvement. (After all, the state’s similar off-year Supreme Court race in 2023 brought a similar outcome.) But what is clear is why elected Republicans would like to see the billionaire White House adviser opt for a lower-profile approach: Musk is more unpopular than ever, and even more toxic than Trump.

Elon Musk’s favorability rating among voters

According to our latest survey, 54% of voters view Musk unfavorably, up from 45% in a survey conducted immediately after the November election. That includes double-digit increases to his unfavorability rating among Democrats (from 71% to 83%) and independent voters (48% to 59%), along with a modest uptick among Republican voters.

Musk also now elicits about as strong of a negative reaction (“very unfavorable”) from Democrats and independents as Trump, and is garnering presidential-level news attention from voters.

The longer Musk remains dominant in America’s political conversation, the greater the risks for Trump and the GOP. And for Musk, there are plenty of self-interested business reasons to step back from such a high-profile role.

Read more from me here.

2. FOREIGN AID CUTS FALL DOWN VOTERS’ PRIORITY LIST

Share of voters who say reducing foreign aid …

The push by Trump and Musk to slash the amount of U.S. aid given to foreign countries as part of their “DOGE” project has never been top of mind for voters, but over the past month, it’s fallen even lower down their list of priorities.

Just 29% said cutting foreign aid should be a “top priority” for the Trump administration, down from 35% at the beginning of Trump’s term. There have been notable declines in interest among Democrats and independent voters, but the biggest shift came among Republicans (from 57% in January to 46% now).

Despite these declines in voters’ interest in the matter, the share who see Trump as making foreign aid cuts a top priority has remained relatively level, sans a bit of a bump in mid-March amid news surrounding his administration’s cuts to USAID and the State Department.

The Trump administration doesn’t appear poised to stop. Just this week, The New York Times reported that the “United States is ending its financial support for family planning programs in developing countries, cutting nearly 50 million women off from access to contraception.” It follows the paper’s report last week that the administration was ending funding to an organization “that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries “ and would “significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria.”

Just this week, “rescue teams from India, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand and other countries have already arrived in Myanmar” in response to a massive earthquake, but a “U.S. team has yet to appear at the scene,” per NBC News.

Domestically, the direct political impact could be minimal in the near term. As my colleagues on our geopolitical team have noted, few voters list prevention of pandemics or global economic crises or protecting human rights should be a top foreign policy priority.

But such actions further paint the picture of a U.S. retreat from the world stage, leaving longer-term implications for the country to grapple with as other actors look to fill in the gaps.

See more on how Americans think about the world in our U.S. Foreign Policy Tracker.

A MESSAGE FROM MORNING CONSULT

Tracking Public Opinion of Trump's Washington

Morning Consult is tracking what voters across the country think about how President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are governing the United States ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Each week, we’ll update this page with fresh and timely data on all of the major questions facing Washington. See the data here.

3. AMERICA’S TANKING GLOBAL REPUTATION UNDER TRUMP

Regional average net favorability toward the U.S.

America’s global reputation has fallen off a cliff this year since Trump took office, my colleague Jason McMann writes in a look at our ongoing tracking of sentiment about the United States in 42 global markets.

As he put it, America's reputation by the end of March “declined in all regions we examine, sustained by plummeting favorability in the Americas, alongside smaller but still noteworthy declines in Asia, Europe and the Middle East,” the latter of which seemed to grow more optimistic following Trump’s November victory.

We expect this to get worse, especially after yesterday’s news that Trump is imposing a blanket 10% tariff for all imports to the United States on top of stricter levies against specific nations.

On the business front, that’s bad news for domestic brands given the role that country affinity plays in global consumers’ perceptions and purchasing consideration of products from American corporations. And in turn on the political front, pain for these American businesses can mean pain for American workers and American consumers, threatening to further worsen the decline in confidence in the Republican Party to handle the economy.

Read more from Jason here.

4. WHAT WE’RE TRACKING

Reconciliation

Senate Republicans could start floor action on a compromise budget blueprint meant to advance the GOP’s signature legislative goals as soon as tomorrow night or Saturday with a marathon amendment “vote-a-rama.” The budget measure, which allows for more than $5 trillion in tax cuts, per Roll Call, also seeks to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by a similar amount.

Tariff reaction

Trump’s 25% tariffs on auto imports took effect at midnight following the president’s “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs that, as The Associated Press put it, “range from 10% to 49%” on foreign imports. According to The New York Times, “European officials are discussing imposing barriers on imports of U.S. services with a trade weapon that could allow the bloc to place restrictions on Big Tech and Wall Street.”

Global markets are reeling from the news.

As we noted this week, there appears to be political room for Republican lawmakers who are vulnerable in next year’s midterms to push back on sweeping tariffs. But so far, the intraparty dissent remains marginal. Only four Senate Republicans joined Democrats in a vote yesterday to undo Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian imports, including just one — Susan Collins of Maine — who is likely to face a competitive Democratic challenger should she run again next year.

TikTok sale?

Ahead of a Saturday deadline for TikTok to decouple itself from its Chinese parent company or be banned in the United States, the Financial Times reported that the White House "is close to endorsing a deal” that would allow “outside investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone, Silver Lake and other large private capital firms” to own about half of TikTok’s American business. Per the British paper, one source said “the groups would have three to four months to complete the spin-off process” and save the social video app’s presence here.

5. WORTH A CLICK

Influence

Zuckerberg Lobbies Trump to Avoid Meta Antitrust Trial (The Wall Street Journal)

The Mystery Buyer of That $23 Million DC Mansion? Mark Zuckerberg. (Politico)

Musk to keep spending on politics despite Wisconsin loss, GOP doubts (The Washington Post)

The Trump administration

High-stakes hearing set for Trump administration to argue that it didn’t violate a judge’s order with deportation flights (CNN)

Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal group chats for crises across the world (Politico)

‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs: See Which Countries Have the Highest Rates (The New York Times)

Congress

Pappas launches campaign for U.S. Senate (NHPR)

House proxy-voting mess threatens to jam up the GOP agenda (Politico)