This week’s White House Report Card could have been a bad one, considering court rulings against President Donald Trump, staffing blunders, and a lack of movement on his tariff war that is starting to scare his supporters.
First, the courts were tough on the White House. Early Saturday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the administration’s deportation flights. That came after a federal judge discussed holding the White House in contempt over those flights.
Next, Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been dumping top aides, including his chief of staff, in the inquiry of the Signal group chat scandal. And Trump has been going through IRS chiefs at a historically fast pace, five since Inauguration Day.
And there has been little evidence of success yet in the tariff war, though the president has started meeting with trading partners, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Instead the public has been fed a news diet of fear from small businesses worried they will have to shut down due to higher costs and soon-to-be retirees taking it on the chin as Wall Street reacts negatively.
But, as our conservative grader Jed Babbin writes below, the Democrats and liberal media on cue gave Trump a big win by spending the week heralding an alleged MS-13 member deported by the president. The case of El Salvador citizen Kilmar Abrego Garcia has given Trump a chance to tap into the one issue most Americans agree with him on: Deporting illegal migrants.
The New Democrat Party… pic.twitter.com/LTA5fKsgqh
— @amuse (@amuse) April 19, 2025
Democratic pollster and grader John Zogby highlighted the majority of polls showing Trump’s approval rating below his disapproval rating. Trump has rarely been anything other than upside down in polls. Gallup this week, however, noted that his rating is better than it was during his first administration.
Jed Babbin
Grade: B-
This wouldn’t have been a good week for President Donald Trump but for the fact that the Democrats have decided to stand up for an illegal immigrant who’s almost certainly an MS-13 gang member more than they stand up for the victims of migrant crime.
This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found… pic.twitter.com/31sNr2k1SK
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2025
Led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Democrats are planning to parade to an El Salvador super-max prison where the Trump team sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia and other alleged MS-13 members, past and present. He is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, who courts determined was an MS-13 gang member and was picked up by federal officials in Baltimore last month. The Democrats evidently don’t care about the victims of crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants. Their media cohort is pumping up the controversy about his return to the U.S. relentlessly.
Meanwhile, Trump exempted computers, cellphones, and other electronics from his tariffs, at least temporarily, so the impact on consumers is minimized. He’s also facing a cutoff of rare earth metals exports by China. Those metals are crucial to making computer chips, which are, in turn, essential to the manufacture of everything from phones to jet fighters. Trump’s hope of a rare earths mining deal with Ukraine is apparently not coming to fruition anytime soon.
And retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, one of Trump’s special envoys for Ukraine, said that Ukraine could be partitioned just like Berlin during the Cold War. The Ukrainians are outraged at that proposal. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that unless progress to a peace deal for Ukraine is made in the next few days, he and Trump will move on to other priorities. The problem, of course, is what they will do about aid to Ukraine if they quit the peace talks. So far, nobody — including them — seems to know.
John Zogby
Grade: F
President Donald Trump is again upside down in his overall approval rating, with an average of 46.5% approving of his performance, while 50.7% disapprove. That includes 13 out of 15 polls conducted in April. He is down by double digits on the economy, foreign policy, and inflation. All this, and it bears repeating, during the first quarter of his second term — the honeymoon.
I’m fighting to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. We will not rest until he is reunited with his family and Trump is held accountable. No president is above the law. pic.twitter.com/iprQKOKJqH
— Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (@RepDexterOR) April 15, 2025
But it is more than just the numbers. He boldly flouted his “own” Supreme Court which voted unanimously against him on a deportation issue involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He ignored and scoffed at federal judges chastizing the deportation of Garcia in an apparent administrative snafu. He laughed with the petty dictator of El Salvador, who played with semantics regarding the husband and father who was deported without due process. His White House permitted the attorney general to say that the man’s wife and child are better off without Garcia.
Whether or not this is factual, this is a denial of due process, an issue that goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and, at least, the U.S. Constitution. Sure, there are those who can say that Garcia is not a poster child for good things, but that is not the issue. Do we really live in a nation where Attorney General Pam Bondi is the ultimate arbiter of good and evil?
To top the week off, the Trump administration with all of its DOGE cuts — many on hold by federal court rulings — is on course to spend 7.4% more than President Joe Biden’s administration. I don’t like where this is all heading.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book, Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should, was just released. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.
