How young Trump voters are viewing his presidency: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman report on the findings from our latest focus groups with young voters who backed President Donald Trump in 2024. Plus, Kristen Welker outlines the dynamics that could determine how long the shutdown lasts. And Sahil Kapur answers this week’s reader question on the government shutdown process.
Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.
— Adam Wollner
How young Trump voters are viewing his presidency
By Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman
President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory was fueled in part by improved numbers among young voters. But new focus groups reveal why some members of the cohort are beginning to sour on his administration’s approach to immigration and the economy.
“I believe my trust in the administration has completely nosedived because of how he’s mishandled things,” said Anthony H., a 22-year-old Republican from Nevada, pointing to immigration and foreign affairs.
Anthony was one of 14 swing-state Trump voters under age 30 who participated in recent focus groups observed by NBC News as part of the 2025 “Deciders” series, produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago.
These voters were a key part of Trump’s coalition in last year’s presidential election. He was favored by 43% of voters ages 18-29, after winning 36% of them in 2020, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. The exit poll also showed Trump winning 49% of young men in 2024, compared to 48% for Kamala Harris, while Trump trailed among young women, winning 38% of that group.
Of the 14 young Trump voters who participated in the recent focus groups, nine said they disapproved of Trump’s overall job performance so far, while five approved. The group was made of eight self-identified independents and six Republicans.
Polling has shown that young Trump supporters, while largely still backing him, do disapprove of his presidency at higher rates than older Trump voters. But sizable majorities of Trump voters across age groups continue to back the president.
“Young Trump voters who disapprove of the president’s job performance lament how he goes too far or not far enough,” said Rich Thau, president of Engagious, who moderated the sessions.
“For them, either the president greatly exceeds his mandate — like on immigration and tariffs — or he fails to stop overseas wars, or be transparent on Jeffrey Epstein,” said Thau, referring to the financier who died by suicide while facing sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
Read more from the focus groups →
Potential pressure points to watch as the government shutdown stretches on
Analysis by Kristen Welker
It’s Day 3 of the government shutdown, and Democrats and Republicans I’ve been talking with throughout the week have made one thing clear: There’s no end in sight.
Both sides are completely dug in, and there are no real negotiations happening behind the scenes to find a path forward. So, what could actually pressure both sides to come to the table?
One dynamic to watch is how Americans are processing the shutdown and who they’re blaming for the impasse. Some recent polling, taken shortly before the shutdown or right as it began, has shown around a quarter of respondents don’t know who to blame, or haven’t heard enough about the shutdown to decide who is responsible. If they pick a side, the party being blamed for the shutdown could face more calls to make a concession.
Delays in federal services could be another potential pressure point, with 750,000 federal workers furloughed due to the shutdown and others working without pay. Could food assistance programs be delayed as a result, and could we start to see longer lines at food banks? Could there be delays at airports as employees work without pay?
Remember, during the 2018-2019 shutdown, many TSA employees who were working without pay started calling out sick, causing travel delays. Those tangible impacts helped move President Donald Trump and Republicans to back off of their calls for funding for a wall on the southern border, and brought an end to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The economic impact and market response will also be key to watch in the days, or potentially weeks, ahead. Trump has responded to market pressures, notably pulling back on sweeping tariffs earlier this year after his advisers presented him with concerning data from the bond markets. As NBC News’ Steve Kopack points out, past shutdowns have had limited economic impacts, but the funding lapse could threaten the U.S. credit rating. And the Trump administration’s threats to fire more federal workers could affect the labor market.
We’ll discuss the latest on the government shutdown on “Meet the Press” this Sunday with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The latest on the shutdown:
Government shutdown to drag into at least next week, with House out til Oct. 14, by Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur
Trump administration pauses $2.1 billion for Chicago infrastructure projects amid shutdown, by Rebecca Shabad
Shutdown delays key monthly jobs report at a pivotal moment for the U.S. economy, by Steve Kopack
AOC says Schumer and Jeffries are leading the Democrats’ shutdown fight, by Ryan Nobles
A majority of Trump supporters back extending Obamacare subsidies, poll finds, by Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
Follow live updates →
We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the government shutdown, whether you’re a federal employee who can’t work right now or someone who is feeling the effects of shuttered services in your everyday life. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.
✉️ Mailbag: Why do we fund the government this way?
Thanks to everyone who emailed us! Here is this week’s reader question:
“Why can’t the government pass its funding for longer than a few weeks or months at a time?”
To answer that, we turned to one of our resident Capitol Hill experts, Sahil Kapur. Here’s his response:
How much time do you have? 😂
The short answer: It takes bipartisan agreement to fund the government (because of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold) and the two parties frequently disagree on how to do it. So when that happens the only options are either a shutdown or a short-term extension of funding at existing levels — for a few days, weeks or months. Most of the time we get the short-term bills. Now, we have a shutdown because the two parties couldn’t even agree on a short-term solution.
The longer answer: The so-called appropriation process for funding the government has broken down, as we covered here in detail.* Let’s count the reasons.
First, the disagreements between the two sides have grown more significant over the last few decades as Democrats and Republicans move further apart ideologically. That includes everything from overall spending levels to how to allocate it to policy “riders” or add-ons to funding bills, which are fairly common.
Second, the appropriations committees in Congress have gotten weaker over time (much like other committees) and the centralized leadership in both parties has gotten stronger. So the people who are supposed to be in charge of cutting these deals to fund the government no longer have the juice to do so and carry the votes.
Third, the trend toward “four corners” negotiations — where the House speaker, House minority leader, Senate majority leader and Senate minority leader cut a deal that can pass both chambers and gain a presidential signature — has come under fire, primarily from House conservatives, who call it swampy, back-room dealmaking. So the fallback solution that had often worked to cut government funding deals has also been undermined, and we now have a dynamic where the people who are supposed to be in charge aren’t empowered, and the people who are empowered refuse to take charge.
Fourth, in the current context, this has put enormous pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to refuse to negotiate with Democrats directly on funding bills. As a result, they are refusing to negotiate with their counterparts on how to reopen the government. Democratic leaders say they won’t be a cheap date and give away their votes for nothing, even on a short-term bill; they want health care funding in exchange.
As Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a member of the Appropriations Committee, put it to me recently: “We don’t have an appropriations process. It’s broken. It’s been broken for a while.”
(*Not that it was ever in terrific shape: Since the dawn of the modern budget process dating back to 1976, the only four times Congress has passed all appropriations bills on time through the regular process were in 1977, 1989, 1995 and 1997.)
Have a question of your own? Send it to politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com and we may answer it in a future edition of the newsletter.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com