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President Donald Trump’s administration is finalizing its repeal of a foundational scientific determination that underpins the US government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, with an announcement expected in the coming weeks.The Environmental Protection Agency proposed reversing the 2009 Endangerment Finding last July. After a public comment period that drew more than half a million submissions, the proposed final rule was sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review on January 7, records show.Here’s what to know.- What it is -The 2009 finding concluded that six greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide and methane — endanger public health and welfare by driving climate change.That determination flowed from a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and directed the EPA to determine whether they pose a danger to public health and welfare.Although then president George W. Bush’s administration delayed acting on the ruling, the EPA under president Barack Obama concluded that six greenhouse gases met the legal threshold for regulation.While the finding initially applied only to a section of the Clean Air Act governing vehicle emissions, it was later incorporated into other regulations, including limits on carbon dioxide from power plants and methane from oil and gas operations.As a result, repealing the finding would immediately affect vehicle emissions rules, while placing a broader suite of climate regulations in legal jeopardy.”If finalized, it would be the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said Friday at Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant where he and other officials touted policies they said would lower vehicle prices. – The Trump administration’s arguments -The administration’s draft proposal rests on both legal and scientific arguments.Procedurally, it argues that greenhouse gases should not be treated as pollutants in the traditional sense because their effects on human health are indirect and global rather than local. Regulating them within US borders, it contends, cannot meaningfully resolve a worldwide problem.On the scientific front, the administration has sought to downplay the scale and impacts of human-caused climate change. It commissioned a Department of Energy working group filled with skeptics of human-caused climate change to produce a report challenging the scientific consensus.That report was widely criticized for misattribution and for misstating the conclusions of the studies it cited. Environmental groups sued the Energy Department, alleging the panel was convened behind closed doors in violation of federal rules. Energy Secretary Chris Wright later disbanded the group.- What happens next -Environmental organizations are expected to move quickly to challenge the rule in court.Challengers point out that despite the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s willingness to overturn precedent, the Endangerment Finding has survived multiple challenges and the underlying case Massachusetts v. EPA remains in effect.”Their efforts to undo the Endangerment Finding are the latest evidence that President Trump is trying to remake the Environmental Protection Agency into the Polluter Protection Agency,” Manish Bapna of the Natural Resources Defense Council said. “If the EPA follows through and tries to repeal the Endangerment Finding, we will see them in court.”

US President Donald Trump on Friday gave a key role in post-war Gaza to former British prime minister Tony Blair and appointed a US officer to lead a nascent security force.Trump named members of a board to help supervise Gaza that was dominated by Americans, as he promotes a controversial vision of economic development in a territory that lies in rubble after two-plus years of relentless Israeli bombardment.The step came after a Palestinian committee of technocrats meant to govern Gaza held its first meeting in Cairo which was attended by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who plays a key role on the Middle East.Trump has already declared himself the chair of a “Board of Peace” and on Friday announced its full membership that will include Blair as well as senior Americans — Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s business partner turned globe-trotting negotiator.Blair is a controversial figure in the Middle East because of his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Trump himself said last year that he wanted to make sure Blair was an “acceptable choice to everybody.”Blair spent years focused on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as representative of the “Middle East Quartet” — the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia — after leaving Downing Street in 2007.The White House said the Board of Peace will take on issues such as “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding and capital mobilization.”Trump, a real-estate developer, has previously mused about turning devastated Gaza into a Riviera-style area of resorts, although he has backed away from calls to forcibly displace the population.The other members of the board are World Bank President Ajay Banga, an Indian-born American businessman; billionaire US financier Marc Rowan; and Robert Gabriel, a loyal Trump aide who serves on the National Security Council.- Israel strikes -Israel’s military said Friday it had again hit the Gaza Strip in response to a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire declared in October.The strikes come despite Washington announcing that the Gaza plan had gone on to a second phrase — from implementing the ceasefire to disarming Hamas, whose October, 2023 attack on Israel prompted the massive Israeli offensive.Trump on Friday named US Major General Jasper Jeffers to head the International Stabilization Force, which will be tasked with providing security in Gaza and training a new police force to succeed Hamas.Jeffers, from special operations in US Central Command, in late 2024 was put in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, which has continued periodic strikes aimed at Hezbollah militants.The United States has been searching the world for countries to contribute to the force, with Indonesia an early volunteer.But diplomats expect challenges in seeing countries send troops so long as Hamas does not agree to disarm fully.- Committee begins work -Gaza native and former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath was earlier tapped to head the governing committee.The committee’s meeting in Cairo also included Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who was given a role of high representative liaising between the new governing body and Trump’s Board of Peace. Committee members are scheduled to meet again Saturday, one of them told AFP on condition of anonymity.”We hope to go to Gaza next week or the week after; our work is there, and we need to be there,” he said.Trump also named a second “executive board” that appears designed to have a more advisory role.Blair, Witkoff and Mladenov will serve on it as well as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.Israel has refused a Turkish role in the security force, owing to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fiery denunciations of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The board will also include senior figures from mediators Egypt and Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020.Trump also named to the board Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, despite his administration’s efforts to sideline the world body.

US President Donald Trump said Friday there was no immediate need to invoke the Insurrection Act over protests against immigration raids in Minnesota, a day after threatening to use the law.But in a move that would inflame the standoff between the White House and Minnesota, CBS News reported that the Justice Department was investigating Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey for impeding federal officers. They have both called for peaceful protests against immigration sweeps in their state. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.Amid the escalating row between Trump and Minnesota leaders this week, the president threatened the drastic measure that would have allowed him to deploy the military to police the protests.”If I needed it, I would use it. I don’t think there is any reason right now to use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the law that grants the deployment of soldiers on US soil.The Insurrection Act allows a president to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act to suppress “armed rebellion” or “domestic violence” and use the armed forces “as he considers necessary” to enforce the 19th-century law.Crowds of protesters have clashed with immigration officers across the city of Minneapolis, opposing their efforts to target undocumented migrants with some officers responding with violence.Demonstrations dramatically expanded following the killing of Renee Nicole Good, 37, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis on January 7 as the Trump administration pressed operations to catch undocumented migrants.- ‘Incitement of violence’ -Federal agents fired their weapons in two separate incidents, wounding a man from Venezuela Wednesday, and in Good’s killing last week.Federal prosecutors also charged a man with stealing a rifle from an FBI vehicle and he is due in court Friday.US Attorney Daniel Rosen claimed that local officials were responsible for the “incitement of violence against federal law enforcement… which resulted here in the theft of a firearm from an FBI vehicle.”A woman was roughly pulled from her car by officers Tuesday, an AFP correspondent saw, amid the escalating deployment of federal officers to the state.Proponents of immigration enforcement have also begun to face off with those who oppose it in the state, leading to tense encounters.The Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper reported that divisions within the anti-ICE movement were beginning to emerge over how aggressively to resist the enforcement efforts. Activists have also become increasingly wary of “far-right provocateurs trying to bait demonstrators into rioting,” the publication reported.Minnesota’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter has reported an uptick in complaints against ICE officers.Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accused federal agents of waging “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota,” in a video posted to X Wednesday night. On Wednesday, the family of Good announced that they had retained a top law firm to probe the killing ahead of launching possible legal action against the officer and the government.The lawyers demanded Thursday that federal officials — including the officer who fired the shots that killed Good — preserve records and evidence relating to the incident.

The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a bid by German chemicals giant Bayer to put an end to a wave of lawsuits over the weedkiller Roundup.Bayer has spent more than $10 billion settling litigation linked to Roundup since it acquired its producer, the US agrochemical group Monsanto, in 2018.The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers glyphosate, one of Roundup’s ingredients, a probable human carcinogen, but Bayer says scientific studies and regulatory approvals show the weedkiller is safe.The top US court agreed to hear Bayer’s appeal of a $1.25 million award to a Missouri man who claimed Roundup was responsible for his blood cancer — one of thousands of similar “failure-to-warn” lawsuits facing the company.Bayer is arguing that it should be shielded from state lawsuits since the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the sale of Roundup to consumers and farmers without any warnings.The Trump administration has backed Bayer’s stance that a federal statute on pesticide labels preempts state laws requiring warnings on products that may be carcinogenic.In a brief, Solicitor General John Sauer said the EPA had “for decades” classified glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic in humans,” arguing that the agency’s determination should preempt state rules on the matter.The Missouri case means “a jury may second-guess the agency’s science-based judgments,” Sauer said. “A manufacturer should not be left to ’50 different labeling regimes.'”Bayer CEO Bill Anderson welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case.”It is time for the US legal system to establish that companies should not be punished under state laws for complying with federal warning label requirements,” Anderson said in a statement.Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed disappointment.”It’s a sad day in America when our highest court agrees to consider depriving thousands of Roundup users suffering from cancer of their day in court,” Burd said in a statement.”Bayer keeps losing on the facts about its own product so now it’s asking the court to prevent juries from ever again hearing those facts,” she added.The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in the spring and issue a ruling by June or early July.

OpenAI announced Friday it will begin testing advertisements on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the wildly popular artificial intelligence chatbot seeks to increase revenue to cover its soaring costs.The ads will initially appear in the United States for free and lower-tier subscribers, the company said in a blog post outlining its long-anticipated move. Premium Pro and Enterprise subscribers will remain ad-free.The integration of advertising has been a key question for generative AI chatbots, with companies largely reluctant to interrupt the user experience with ads.But the exorbitant costs of running AI services may have forced OpenAI’s hand.Only a small percentage of its nearly one billion users pay for subscription services, putting pressure on the company to find new revenue sources.Since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, OpenAI’s valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds — higher than any other private company. Some expect it could go public with a trillion-dollar valuation.But the ChatGPT maker burns through cash at a furious rate, mostly on the powerful computing required to deliver its services.With its move, OpenAI brings its business model closer to tech giants Google and Meta, which have built advertising empires on the back of their free-to-use services.Unlike OpenAI, those companies have massive advertising revenue to fund AI innovation — with Amazon also building a solid ad business on its shopping and video streaming platforms.”Ads aren’t a distraction from the gen AI race; they’re how OpenAI stays in it,” said Jeremy Goldman, an analyst at Emarketer.”If ChatGPT turns on ads, OpenAI is admitting something simple and consequential: the race isn’t just about model quality anymore; it’s about monetizing attention without poisoning trust,” he added.OpenAI’s pivot comes as Google gains ground in the generative AI race, infusing services including Gmail, Maps and YouTube with AI features that—in addition to its Gemini chatbot—compete directly with ChatGPT.OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has long expressed his dislike for advertising, citing concerns that ads could create distrust about ChatGPT’s content.To address these concerns, OpenAI pledged that ads would never influence ChatGPT’s answers and that user conversations would remain private from advertisers.”Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,” the company stated. “Answers are optimized based on what’s most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.”- ‘Trust over revenue’ -The release was announced by Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, a former Meta executive who oversaw the social media giant’s advertising business before leaving for Instacart.”As we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place,” Simo said in a blog post.”That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising.”In an apparent reference to Meta, TikTok and Google’s YouTube — platforms accused of maximizing user engagement to boost ad views — OpenAI said it would “not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT.””We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue,” it added.The commitment to user well-being is a sensitive issue for OpenAI, which has faced accusations of allowing ChatGPT to privilege emotional engagement over safety, allegedly contributing to mental distress among some users.The move comes as ChatGPT Go, the company’s $8 monthly subscription tier, becomes available in the United States and all markets where the service operates.

Donald Trump on Friday warned that he could slap tariffs on countries that do not support his Greenland takeover plans, as US Congress members visited Copenhagen to give their backing for Denmark and its autonomous Arctic island.The bipartisan delegation, on a two-day trip to the Danish capital, said the US president’s long-held territorial ambitions — strongly rejected by Denmark — were not shared by the American people.Europeans have also been showing their backing for Greenland, in a military reconnaissance mission that a Danish general said Washington was invited to and which was linked to what Russia does after the war in Ukraine.Trump, again insisting the United States needed mineral-rich Greenland for its “national security”, warned that he “may put a tariff” on countries that oppose that stance.The 11 visiting US lawmakers held talks with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Jens-Frederik Nielsen, as well as Denmark’s foreign and defence ministers, parliamentarians and business leaders.Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said there was “good dialogue” and stressed it was important to “nurture” ties between the United States, Denmark and Greenland. “The vast majority” of Americans do not agree that it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, she told reporters.”Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset,” she added.- ‘One idiot’ -The visit follows a meeting in Washington on Wednesday at which Danish representatives said Copenhagen and Washington were in “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland’s future.Democratic Senator Chris Coons said the purpose of the Congress members’ visit was to “listen respectfully to our friends, our trusted allies and partners here in Denmark and from Greenland”.The lawmakers were then to return to the United States “and share those perspectives so that we can lower the temperature and have a more constructive dialogue about the best path forward”, he said.In Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, residents welcomed the show of support.”Congress would never approve of a military action in Greenland. It’s just one idiot speaking,” a 39-year-old union representative told AFP.”If he (Trump) does it, he’ll get impeached or kicked out. If people in Congress want to save their own democracy, they have to step up,” said the union rep, speaking on condition of anonymity.- Demonstrations -Trump has repeatedly criticised Denmark — a NATO ally — for, in his view, not doing enough to ensure Greenland’s security.The US president has pursued that argument, despite strategically located Greenland — as part of Denmark — being covered by NATO’s security umbrella.The head of Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command, Major General Soren Andersen, said the United States were invited to the military mission, which he said was “about Russia”.”When the war in Ukraine is over, hopefully with a good result for Ukraine, it is our expectation that Russia will move the resources they have been using in Ukraine on other theatres,… including in the Arctic,” he told AFP.”So, in order to prepare for that, we simply have to step up… train, and that is what we are doing up here.”But Andersen said he had not seen any Russian or Chinese combat ships in the area in the two and a half years he has been commander.Military personnel were more visible in Nuuk on Friday, an AFP journalist said, days after Denmark said it was beefing up its defence on the island. The White House has said Trump’s aim to take over Greenland would not be affected by the European military presence, which French armed forces minister Alice Rufo said was a sign that the continent was prepared to defend sovereignty.Britain, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have announced the deployment of small numbers of military personnel to prepare for future exercises in the Arctic. Large demonstrations are planned across Denmark and Greenland on Saturday to protest against Trump’s plan.Thousands of people have taken to social networks to say they intend to take part in the protests organised by Greenlandic associations in Nuuk and Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg and Odense.

US President Donald Trump said Friday he may slap trade tariffs on countries that don’t support his plans to take over Greenland, part of the territory of NATO ally Denmark.”I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security,” Trump said at a health roundtable at the White House.”I may do that,” added Trump.Trump compared the possible Greenland tariffs to those that he threatened on France and Germany last year over the price of pharmaceutical products.The threat is the latest pressure tactic by Republican Trump as he steps up his bid to acquire the autonomous Arctic island, a goal that he has threatened to achieve by military means if necessary.Trump claims the United States needs mineral-rich Greenland and has accused Denmark of not doing enough to ensure its security against US rivals Russia and China.The US president on Friday also appeared to question his country’s core role in NATO over Greenland, while adding that Washington was “talking to” the military alliance about the issue.”We’re going to see. NATO has been dealing with us on Greenland,” Trump later told reporters when asked if he would pull the United States out of NATO if it doesn’t help it acquire Greenland.”We need Greenland for national security very badly. If we don’t have it, we have a hole in national security, especially when it comes to what we’re doing in terms of the Golden Dome,” he added, referring to his planned missile defense system.European nations who are members of NATO have in recent days shown their support for Denmark and Greenland over Trump’s escalating threats, including by sending troops to the strategic territory.A bipartisan US Congress delegation also began a visit to Copenhagen on Friday to voice their backing for Denmark and Greenland.The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland visited the White House on Wednesday for talks to defuse the issue but said afterward that they remained in “fundamental disagreement” with Trump.But the United States, Denmark and Greenland had agreed to set up a working group to continue talks every two to three weeks, the White House said on Thursday.Britain, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have announced the deployment of small numbers of military personnel to prepare for future exercises in the Arctic. But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the European troops did not impact Trump’s “goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all.”

US President Donald Trump said Friday there was no immediate need to invoke the Insurrection Act over protests against immigration raids in Minnesota, a day after threatening to use the law.Trump had threatened the drastic measure that would have allowed him to deploy the military to the northern state for law enforcement purposes in response to protests against broad-reaching immigration raids spearheaded by his administration.”If I needed it, I would use it. I don’t think there is any reason right now to use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the law that allows the deployment of soldiers on US soil.Crowds of protesters have clashed with immigration officers across the city of Minneapolis, opposing their efforts to target undocumented migrants with some officers responding with violence.Federal agents fired their weapons in two separate incidents, wounding a man from Venezuela Wednesday and killing an American woman last week.A woman was roughly pulled from her car by officers Tuesday, an AFP correspondent saw, amid the escalating deployment of federal officers to the state.Proponents of immigration enforcement have also begun to face off with those who oppose it in the state, leading to tense encounters.Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accused federal agents of waging “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota,” in a video posted to X Wednesday night. The Insurrection Act allows a president to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act to suppress “armed rebellion” or “domestic violence” and use the armed forces “as he considers necessary” to enforce the 19th-century law.

On a sunny January morning in Florida, Donald Trump went shopping for marble and onyx for his new White House ballroom. A few hours later, he was bombing Venezuela.It was just one day in an extraordinary year since his return to office, but it summed up how Trump has reshaped the US presidency through the sheer force of his own personality.And as he enters his second year back in the White House, Trump is increasingly acting as if there are no checks on his power — either at home or abroad.”He has really personalized the presidency,” Noah Rosenblum, professor of law at New York University, told AFP.If the former reality TV star’s first term dominated news cycles because of its chaos, Trump’s second has done so because of a single-minded determination to stamp his mark on the world’s most powerful job.He began with a freewheeling Oval Office appearance on January 20, 2025, during which he pardoned hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who attacked the US Capitol four years earlier.The Republican leader has kept up the pace ever since. An unprecedented blitz of executive orders, outrageous pronouncements and directives for the persecution of his political opponents came in the following days and months.Trump has shaken the foundations of American democracy as the country prepares to mark its 250th anniversary, caused global turmoil with his tariffs and upended the global order.”There is one thing. My own morality,” Trump, who is the first convicted felon to be elected president, told The New York Times when asked if there were limits on his power.At times Trump has also cultivated what looks like a cult of personality, revamping the White House and building a $400 million ballroom, and adding his name to the famed Kennedy Center for the performing arts.And 2026 dawned with an unapologetic Trump Unbound: ordering the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, threatening Greenland and sending immigration agents on a deadly operation into Minnesota.Rosenblum said the past year had “revealed that the old system had less legitimacy and was more fragile than I had understood, than was widely understood.” – ‘Expect trouble’ -Trump has begun 2026 with a bang. Yet it could also finally show the limits of a presidency that revolves around the whims of one man who will turn 80 years old in June.The biggest inflection point could come in November’s midterm elections. While these votes for the control of Congress are always effectively a referendum on sitting presidents, this year’s will more than ever be a verdict on Trump himself.His approval numbers remain low, with the White House battling to show that his economic plans are working despite voter anger over affordability.If Republicans take a hammering, there are questions about whether Trump could seek to overturn the results, like he tried when Democrat Joe Biden beat him to the presidency in 2020.”I expect trouble,” William Galston of the Brookings Institution told AFP.”He is more actively involved in the management of the midterms than any president I’ve seen.”Galston said however that Trump was unlikely to be able to mount any meaningful challenge if Republicans lose control of the House, which would leave him a lame duck president for the remaining two years of his term.Trump faces challenges on other fronts too. The Supreme Court could clip Trump’s wings on tariffs, while his bypassing of Congress by the use of executive orders could also backfire, said Galston. “The problem with governing by fiat is that what you weave by day, your successor can unravel by night, which leads to far fewer permanent achievements,” Galston said.With Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Ukraine and Gaza on Trump’s agenda in 2026, the self-professed “America First” president also appears preoccupied by foreign policy.”That’s a problem politically because a lot of the people who voted for him didn’t vote for that, they voted for them to focus on the economy. He’s paid a significant price for that,” added Galston.

Michelle Sims hesitated when asked if she still backed Donald Trump one year into his presidency. “Yeah — to a certain extent,” she sighed as she eyed groceries in a Pennsylvania food bank.Sims, who does not work due to medical issues, went on to list her worries about the high cost of living and cuts to welfare programs — problems that she had hoped Trump would improve.The 50-year-old is one of many Americans whose support for Trump has waned since he took office last January, as opinion polls show a slump in the president’s approval rating.Sims, wearing a gray cardigan and a large hair clip, told AFP she had particularly wanted Trump to deliver on his promises to address affordability issues.But while she is happy to see gas prices down, “I don’t think everything was achieved.””My expectations were a little bit higher. I was hoping more would have been done by now,” said Sims.She lives in a suburb of Philadelphia in Bucks County, an area that politicians often target in US elections as voters “swing” between candidates, rather than consistently backing the same party.Trump won there in 2024 by a tiny margin — the first time since 1988 a Republican presidential candidate has taken Bucks County. But in a sign of shifting sentiment, a wave of Democratic candidates swept the county in 2025 local elections.”People just want government to work. They don’t want chaos,” Danny Ceisler, the newly elected Democratic sheriff of Bucks County, told AFP. Ceisler successfully lobbied against his officers partnering with ICE, the immigration enforcement agency leading Trump’s mass deportation drive — a key and contentious pillar of his presidency.- Satisfied, but Greenland plan ‘ridiculous’ -Analysts say that lukewarm support for Trump in the first place means some who voted for him have sat out of recent elections in Pennsylvania and other states, where Democrats have also enjoyed major electoral victories. “In 2024, his narrow winning margin was enabled by a fairly modest-sized cohort of voters in places like Bucks County who were dissatisfied with the direction of the country, particularly on the cost of living,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania. “That group of voters has become disillusioned with Trump, with their hopes for a more affordable life largely unrealized and their reservations about Trump’s character and leadership only enhanced.”A Gallup poll last month showed Trump’s approval rating at 36 percent, down from 47 percent when he took office. Faced with a drop in popularity ahead of crucial 2026 midterm elections, which will decide who controls Congress, the president has returned to campaign-style rallies to engage voters. Joe Kramley, a retired Navy technician who voted for Trump in 2024 mostly due to immigration worries, said he was getting fed up with the president.”I wish he’d shut up and (just) do what he’s going to do,” Kramley, 83, told AFP in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on a historic street lined with shops and cafes.”I’m satisfied with some of his programs. A lot of them aren’t working out. Inflation is still here,” he said, also calling Trump’s repeated remarks that he wants to take over Greenland “ridiculous.”Asked if he would vote for Trump again given the chance, Kramley said it “depends on who’s running” — but he sees no viable Democratic presidential candidate.At a diner on the outskirts of Doylestown, views were similarly mixed.”It’s not so much that I like Trump, I like the decisions he’s making and direction of the country,” said Gary Armstrong, an insurance salesman and self-described conservative. The 68-year-old said he is “very happy” with his vote for Trump “over what I see on the far left side.”