Column: More than half of women don’t like Trump this time around, poll finds

Hello and happy Thursday. The whirlwind continues.

On Wednesday, the White House further backed away from its sweeping and potentially devastating freeze on federal funding for just about everything, rescinding a Monday memo that lead to a Tuesday court injunction after dozens of states sued. Are you lost yet?

But also, just after rescinding that memo, the White House said it wasn’t really stopping the freeze, just maybe trying to sidle around the court’s injunction.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented,” Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, said on formerly-Twitter.

Which is basically, “We’re going to do it, just not tell you we’re doing it, even though we did tell you, but now we’ve untold you — so you can’t stop us.”

To which courts replied, “That’s not how that works,” and put a restraining order on the whole mess.

So here we are, 10 days in, with a president who apparently really wants to save a few dollars by slashing Meals on Wheels, domestic violence shelters, low-cost childcare and maybe even Medicaid.

That doesn’t even touch on his other actions, including:

• An internment camp for undocumented folks at Guantanamo Bay, which Trump announced Wednesday
• The signing of the Laken Riley Act, also Wednesday, which allows undocumented people to be detained for simply being charged — not convicted — of crimes such as shoplifting
• The first day of confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., where Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out that if Kennedy is no longer anti-vax, maybe his old organization should stop selling anti-vax onesies for $26 a pop
• Elon Musk storming into the Office of Personnel Management (basically HR for the government) and seemingly taking over, and, Twitter-style, attempting to get rid of a large chunk of employees. Remind me what office we elected him to?
• Two executive orders restricting rights and care for transgender people, one trying to end gender-affirming care for minors and one banning transgender people from openly serving in the military
• And literally, before I could finish typing this, another order demanding “patriotic education” in public schools, and seeking to wipe civil rights from our history books by banning “discriminatory equity ideology”

I have my opinions on all this, and you have yours. But what does America think?

Supporters hold “Women for Trump” signs at a November campaign rally for Donald Trump.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Women and Trump

Unsurprisingly, Republicans are loving this stuff, and Democrats are hating it. In a new survey of the president’s first few days in office, a Quinnipiac University Poll found that 85% of Republicans approve of the way Trump is handling things, while 86% of Democrats do not.

Anyone who thinks there is a middle ground left in America is delusional. But I have to wonder if that split hasn’t seeped into our households more than we think. The political division Quinnipiac found didn’t interest me as much as the gender divide.

Women do not like Trump. They do not like him in a house. They do not like him with a mouse, even one blended up by RFK Jr.

The poll found that the majority of women — across party lines — don’t approve of Trump or that litany of actions. While 55% of male registered voters (across parties) said they approve of the way Trump is handling his job, 53% of female registered voters do not.

That same tilt was found when men and women were asked if their opinion of Trump was favorable or unfavorable. There, 57% of men held a favorable view, while 55% percent of women held an unfavorable impression of him.

Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy told me there was a similar gender split during Trump’s first term.

But still, enough women — especially young women — voted for Trump to put him back in office. In fact, women supported Biden in 2020 more than they did Kamala Harris in 2024.

An analysis of voting data from Navigator Research found “women voted for Harris by 6 points (51% Harris to 45% Trump), a 4-point swing from 2020, when Biden won these voters by 10 points.”

Which — although Trump can’t (yet) legally run for a third term — means women’s votes do matter.

Women and family

Since Democrats seem entirely incapable of messaging anything coherent to voters these days, the political future of America is largely left not to whom they can pull away from Republicans, but whom Republicans alienate so badly that there’s no going back.

Which brings us back to that laundry list of Trump policies. Malloy, the analyst, said that those policies may be hurting Trump when it comes to women’s opinions — because a lot of them hit on issues of family.

For example, 55% of women Quinnipiac talked to disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration (57% of men approved). The J6 pardons? A full 67% of women disapproved. On birthright citizenship, 65% of women said we should keep it.

Birthright citizenship in particular, Malloy said, “has great resonance with women.”

And if women dislike Trump, they like even less some of the other men he’s surrounding himself with. Take Mr. Musk.

“Elon Musk is deeply unpopular with women,” Malloy said. Tell it to his baby mamas. When it comes to the tech titan turned government slayer, 64% of women in the poll didn’t approve of him playing such a prominent role in the White House.

“Nobody else has gotten that low in number,” Malloy said. “Well, we haven’t done all the Cabinet members yet, but that’s a bad number.”

Trump has come into office doing exactly what he’s promised to do, which has made his party, and apparently the majority of male voters, happy.

But for women wondering if their elderly parent will be able to go to the doctor this month, or if their Head Start program is about to close, that bright, shiny object is looking a bit tarnished.

Democrats spent a lot of time during the election cycle worrying about men, the young in particular, and if they were meeting their expectations. Now, it seems as if Democrats might want to start speaking to women.

Because disrupters may seem great when they’re crushing things you don’t like, but it’s entirely different when they take a club to things you need.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Defying legal limits, Trump firings set up tests that could expand his power
The what happened: Trump went for shock and awe. Now he’s mopping up.
The L.A. Times special: Column: No one polices men’s bodies the way we police women’s bodies
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Apropos of nothing, this once-classified field manual on how to sabotage fascism is apparently going viral, according to 404 Media.

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