Six months into his second term, President Trump and Republicans are in better shape than eight years ago.

Unquestionably, President Trump remains a divisive political figure. However, he has expanded his base and continues to hold it. In contrast, Democrats have been unable to capitalize on Trump’s political vulnerabilities and have lost ground compared to 2017.

With the House’s passage of his rescission package, Trump scored another major win. He has had many, both at home and abroad: a successful strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, enactment of the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, a multitude of favorable Supreme Court decisions, DOGE’s cuts, closing the border and deportations.

Trump is doing what he promised. His base should be pleased. It is a striking contrast from 2017 when he had a much more mixed record: enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act but an Obamacare fiasco.

However, while today’s accomplishments play well to his base, how is Trump doing overall? 

The answer is important because Republicans took a beating in 2018’s midterm elections, Democrats gaining 41 seats in the House and the majority. Trump’s ability to pass legislation was derailed, his administration was continually dogged by House investigations and he was impeached twice. 

Trump remains divisive. That hasn’t changed and clearly never will. Six months after his inauguration, according to the July 20 RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump’s net job approval rating was minus-6.6 percentage points.

His average approval rating of 45.5 percent is 4.4 percentage points below his share of the 2024 popular vote.

However, Trump is well ahead of where he was at roughly the same point in his first term. On July 19, 2017, Trump was at minus-16 percentage points in his job approval: 39.7-55.7 percent.  

Further, Trump’s current job approval-disapproval rating is 50 to 48 percent in Real Clear Politics’ only poll (Rasmussen) of likely voters — which is tied with his share of 2024’s popular vote. 

Trump’s comparatively favorable showing is carrying over to congressional Republicans. In the July 22 RealClearPolitics average of national generic congressional vote polling, Democrats lead by 3 percentage points. To put this into historical context, we can look back at the earliest generic vote polls in July of the even years before each of the last six congressional elections, Democrats led in all six, yet the subsequent elections were a different story. Democrats lost either House or Senate seats in five of those elections.

Looking more closely at today, the Democrats’ average lead in likely voter generic polls (Rasmussen and Cygnal) — again the ones who matter most — Democrats’ average lead is just 2.5 percentage points.

A lot has changed in eight years. back in 2017, Trump’s 2016 presidential victory was still being dismissed by some — including some Republicans — as a fluke, a factor of Hillary Clinton’s weakness more than his strength. Not so much this time. Trump’s 2024 victory was decisive and even quite impressive, considering the obstacles he faced — including but not limited to Democrats’ lawfare, two assassination attempts and a concertedly negative establishment media.

In office, Trump looked less in control, especially early on. Congressional Republicans reflected this and appeared to be in disarray, as exemplified by their failed efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. The results reflected this — particularly their loss of 42 House seats in 2018.

Of course, there are caveats about projecting too much from such an early look ahead to 2026.

Today’s generic numbers come from a much more greater number of polls than had been taken in some of those six previous elections. Republicans’ numbers could yet slide. But they could also improve. Trump’s approval ratings could slide too. But the same upside potential applies here as well.

Invariably, there will be more polling of likely voters as the 2026 election nears — again, the ones that count (or rather, vote) — among whom Trump has historically outperformed among them.

Many new issues will arise in the year and a half before 2026’s midterms. Yet none may be larger than the negative one on Democrats’ horizon: Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s nomination as their candidate for mayor of New York City.  

Should Mamdani win, he will draw attention away from Trump and onto a set of controversial policies and positions that many Americans view as extreme. He will also exacerbate fissures among Democrats.

Although Trump is divisive, he is not dividing his base. And Trump’s base is far bigger than it was eight years ago. Democrats are not capitalizing on Trump’s divisiveness. They remain leaderless and look more divided than Republicans.  

J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left” from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he spoke of the “unending search for justice.” Decades later, the agency is weaponizing obscure rules, ignoring common sense, and withholding critical information from the public. An unbelievable case out of California demonstrates why a course correction is urgently needed.

In 2017, Aaron Steed and his company, Meathead Movers, was hit with a $15 million fine from the EEOC on a flimsy claim of “age discrimination.” When Steed dared to speak out about this, the federal government tried to silence him with a gag order — threatening legal consequences if he told the public his side of the story.

Meathead Movers, founded in 1997 as a small, family-run business, is now California’s largest independently owned moving company, employing more than 300 people. The company is built on a culture of personal responsibility and excellence, symbolized by its signature practice of having employees jog to and from the truck when not carrying furniture. Its workplace has helped young people develop job skills and discipline that last a lifetime. The only standard that matters is whether someone can do the job.

But that hasn’t stopped the federal government from launching an all-out assault.

Apparently unable to find actual victims with complaints, the EEOC has resorted to punishing a company for promoting a culture of energy, hard work, and physical fitness. And now it also wants to hide its actions from public scrutiny.

“The EEOC is demanding that we pay an amount that we simply can’t afford for something that we absolutely did not do wrong,” Steed said. “There’s no one that stood up and said, ‘Meathead Movers discriminated against me.”

Steed is a victim of the agency’s entrenched machinery, staffed by bureaucrats who have been there since the Obama administration.

Appointed by President Trump and recently re-nominated to serve as the EEOC’s acting chair, Andrea Lucas has publicly rejected the radical expansion of so-called “equity enforcement.” But while Lucas’s public statements represent a return to sanity at the top, the EEOC still continues to target law-abiding employers like Meathead Movers, twisting antidiscrimination laws for ideological ends while hiding behind closed doors when confronted with calls for transparency.

In Steed’s ongoing case, he is racking up legal fees, all because he hired workers to do physically demanding work. The case against Steed does not appear to be based on employees or members of the public filing a complaint. After an eight-year investigation — launched under the Obama administration — the EEOC is instead pursuing an extremely rare “agency-initiated” lawsuit. Of the thousands of cases the EEOC handles each year, only a handful are brought this way.

That raises serious questions. If no one complained, and if the company is hiring workers based on the real, physical demands of the job, what is this case really about?

In March, the Goldwater Institute filed a public records request demanding answers: Were any complaints filed? Has the EEOC taken similar action against other companies? The agency refused to hand over any of that basic information, citing privacy concerns. But privacy is for individuals — transparency is for the government. And the Goldwater Institute is not seeking any information that involves personal privacy. Because the EEOC has refused to release the information as required by law, Goldwater has sued it in federal court.

The government should not be allowed to operate in secrecy while destroying a model small business. Americans deserve to know why unelected federal bureaucrats targeted a model company in California. And Aaron Steed — who built a business the right way — has every right to speak freely in his own defense.

The EEOC won’t tell the American public what it is up to. We will see them in court to compel the transparency the law demands.

Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute.

The Trump administration appears to be drastically reducing the federal funds it offers to help states head off future natural disasters, a decision that could come under fire as the White House faces scrutiny over its response to Texas’s deadly flooding.

The administration has responded to criticism of its handling of the Texas floods with claims that it is “remaking” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to better help states.

But after the deadly Independence Day floods, the administration declined to provide Texas with access to a tranche of FEMA funds aimed at heading off the next disaster — money intended to pay for things such as warning systems, tornado shelters and anti-flood measures.

A review of federal documents by The Hill shows that the administration denied such “hazard mitigation” funds to states after 16 out of 18 flood disasters during the Trump presidency, with both of the approvals coming before mid-March.

In May, children in a Missouri elementary school sheltered from a tornado that shattered windows and ripped gutters off the building inside a safe room purchased with hazard mitigation money issued after the deadly 2011 Joplin tornado. 

Though the Trump administration approved Missouri’s disaster declaration, it refused the hazard mitigation funds the state requested to buy generators and more outdoor warning sirens, state officials told The Hill. Missouri is appealing that decision.

In neighboring Oklahoma, the Biden administration had in November approved hazard mitigation funding for wildfires and straight-line winds.

But even as those funds went out, more wildfires, driven by straight-line winds, were raging across the Sooner State. President Trump issued a disaster declaration on the last day of the weeklong emergency — but denied hazard mitigation funding.

It was the first time in at least 15 years that Oklahoma wasn’t approved for requested hazard mitigation, according to state emergency management officials.

This pivot — which breaks longstanding federal precedent — comes amid steep Trump cuts to FEMA, which he has also talked about eliminating entirely, as well as cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the federal forecasting and research apparatus.

Veterans of these agencies told The Hill there has been appetite for reform and arguments made for shifting more responsibility to the states.

“But this is like, ‘You need an appendectomy? Well, let’s get the garden shears,’” said Candace Valenzuela, former HUD director for the region that includes Texas.

Experts say cutting off hazard mitigation funds after floods marks a major shift in federal priorities.

FEMA has traditionally given states 15 to 20 percent of the disaster response budget to help prevent future catastrophes — spending the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found pays for itself by at least $2 saved for every $1 invested.

That return is even greater for flood mitigation, where the CBO found every dollar spent yields $5 to $8 in avoided damages.

And that benefit is growing. Over the past decade, floods have cost the U.S. an average of $46 billion a year — or $135 annually per American — a figure expected to rise to as much as $60 billion by midcentury as the atmosphere warms and holds more moisture.

A wetter atmosphere, in turn, means more extreme rainfall such as the deluge that hit Central Texas earlier this month.

Former meteorologist and National Weather Service (NWS) union legislative director John Sokich said he’s seen more such downpours “in the last 10 years than I saw in my 35 years before that.”

Those worsening events make proactive spending even more effective, said Chad Berginnis, head of the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM).

“If you have more and more extreme events in the area you’ve mitigated, your benefits come faster,” Berginnis said.

The administration has also frozen a major flood mitigation program and clawed back funds from flood control projects nationwide that were already underway.

Last week, a coalition of 20 blue and purple states sued the federal government over the clawback of funding for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which began under the first Trump administration.

Money pulled from BRIC included funds that would have paid for an Oklahoma flood warning system, a North Texas flood control dam and $1 billion in flood control projects across the Chesapeake Bay.

“The impact of the shutdown has been devastating,” the states wrote in their suit. “Communities across the country are being forced to delay, scale back, or cancel hundreds of mitigation projects,” many of which had cost millions and had taken years to plan and permit.

“In the meantime, Americans across the country face a higher risk of harm from natural disasters,” the suit added.

The states also argued the pullback was illegal since Congress made forward-looking mitigation one of FEMA’s core responsibilities in 1997.

The administration did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the shift in FEMA strategy.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has said the administration is “leading a historic, first-of-its-kind approach to disaster funding.”

That approach, she said, means “providing upfront recovery support — moving money faster than ever and jump starting recovery,” while pivoting away from “bloated, D.C.-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force” that shifts responsibility to the states.

But emergency managers say the administration is cutting off vital resources that states and municipalities need to avoid financial ruin from worsening disasters.

“Mitigation is a lifeline,” Berginnis said. “It’s a way out of a really bad cycle of disaster, damage, repair, damage that a lot of folks of modest means really can’t escape.”

As a state emergency manager in Ohio, he said he saw FEMA hazard mitigation funding change lives by allowing the state to buy out flood-prone properties.

By contrast, FEMA’s “individual assistance” programs, which the administration continues to offer, only cover structural repairs, often for homes likely to flood again.

“When I presented a check to buy out his property, the owner said, ‘This is the only chance for me and my family to get our lives back to normal,’” Berginnis recalled.

In addition to dramatically cutting back funds to help states and municipalities prepare for the next flood, the administration also quietly changed FEMA standards to make it easier to build in floodplains.

One thing amplifying flood danger in the United States is that the nation’s builders, insurers and emergency managers often don’t even know how bad the flood risk is because it has never been assessed for most of the country’s creeks and streams.

The deadly July 4 flooding that swept away more than two dozen children and counselors from Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, for example, came when Cypress Creek burst its banks. That risk was obscured, Berginnis noted, because like two-thirds of similar waterways around the country, its floodways have never been mapped. 

ASFPM has estimated that a complete re-mapping project would cost about $3 billion to $12 billion — just 3 to 25 percent the annual cost of flood repair, which they say that mapping would reduce. Once that project was done, they estimated, keeping it up to date would cost $100 million to $500 million per year, or between 0.2 and 1 percent of current annual spending on flood damages.

This is not money that the current administration seems eager to spend, however. Instead, it is moving away from spending on forecasting or research — including into how to best warn communities when deadly threats are coming their way.

DOGE cuts have disrupted a NWS reorganization meant to centralize operations so field offices could spend more time helping local emergency managers interpret often-ambiguous forecasts, agency veterans said.

That program had aimed to address the challenge that emergencies like the one in Kerr County are low-likelihood but high-impact, which can breed complacency until it’s too late.

Rather than pivot, NWS is “trying to keep its head above water,” said Alan Gerard, a former NOAA warnings expert who took a buyout this year. He warned that other cuts threaten research to understand the novel weather patterns of a hotter planet — research that could one day give communities like Kerr County six hours’ warning before fast-moving storms.

“That stuff is still years away — both from the physical science aspect, and the social science of helping people understand it,” he said. If the Trump cuts go through, he said, “that would all stop.”