THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

The past two months have been some of the worst for Donald Trump’s approval rating—ever. Polling aggregators have his net approval in the low 40s, with 34 percent approval on the economy and 30 percent on cost of living. In individual polls, his overall approval dips down into the mid 30s. The last time Trump’s numbers looked this bad was right after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. George W. Bush exited the White House with similar ratings.The slippage is especially drastic with young voters. In the 2024 election, a majority of 18-to-29-year-olds voted for Kamala Harris, but compared with 2020, young voters swung hard toward Trump. According to the Cook Political Report, on March 1, 2025, Trump’s net approval rating with these voters was minus 7. Yet by February 1 of this year, it was an astonishing minus 31.8. Now young people are abandoning Trump faster than… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Since Alex Pretti’s killing three weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been trying to distance herself from Minneapolis—politically and geographically. Last week, Noem went to southern Arizona to give a speech about border-wall construction. Yesterday, she was at a warehouse along the border in California, straining to tout the Trump administration’s drug-seizure data above the clamor of protesters outside. Noem returned to Arizona today to promote President Trump’s proposed election legislation, describing voting in the swing state as “an absolute disaster.”Trump made clear that Noem’s approach to carrying out mass deportations had become a liability when he sent Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” to take over in Minnesota. Homan’s job was to defuse anger and remediate the political debacle that Noem and her team created when federal agents killed two U.S. citizens, detained young children, and triggered daily scenes of mayhem, corroding Trump’s approval ratings on… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

In February 2016, after exchanging email pleasantries with the left-wing public intellectual Noam Chomsky and extending an invitation to his private island, Jeffrey Epstein recommended an article. “On a different note, you have encouraged me to look at data, no holds barred,” Epstein wrote before linking to “Race and IQ: Genes That Predict Racial Intelligence Differences” from the Right Stuff, an openly white-supremacist website and a pioneer of the online alt-right. The article argued that different races have differing levels of intelligence and that there is a genetic basis for the disparity.The exchange was included in the Department of Justice’s latest public release of the Epstein files and is one of the clearest examples of the disgraced financier’s interest in “race science,” the pseudoscientific practice of ascribing racial inequities to genetics. It is a way of thinking that has been refuted on multiple levels. IQ is a complex trait that… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

On New Year’s Day, Zohran Mamdani completed his inauguration festivities and departed for Brooklyn. In the working-class neighborhood of East Flatbush, the new mayor stepped into the lobby of an old apartment building on Clarkson Avenue and met with tenants on rent strike. Their grievances were many: The building has 201 outstanding housing-code violations, including leaks, roach infestations, black mold, and that most perilous of winter derelictions, a lack of consistent heat and hot water.The young democratic-socialist mayor had championed working-class tenants throughout his campaign, promising to freeze rents in rent-stabilized apartments for four years and even to seize control of buildings owned by slumlords. This trip could be seen as a down payment on his intent.Mamdani faced reporters and photographers in the lobby. “Landlords have been allowed to mistreat their tenants with impunity,” he declared. “That ends today.” Cea Weaver, the new director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Ken Martin has one of those resting dread faces, as if he’s bracing for someone to dump a bucket of rocks on his head. His nervous eyes make him look chronically unsettled—which is probably appropriate for someone trying to run the Democratic National Committee these days.“The political equivalent of being a fire hydrant” is how Martin describes his job, and then helpfully explains the image to anyone not grasping it: “You get pissed on by everyone.” This is a favorite line and recurring theme: the put-upon chairman, always being hassled by his easily triggered constituencies.The first time he said this to me, the week before Thanksgiving, the triggered included Martin’s own employees. He had been dealing with a staff revolt following his November 12 announcement that the DNC would be ending its generous work-from-home guidelines. Everyone would be expected to return to headquarters full-time, Martin told his staff, starting in… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.