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lisa murkowksi
Trump Economic Approval Hits All-Time Low as White House Official Insists ‘Nothing Bad Is Happening’
“Trump’s claims about inflation are false, and you can go to the grocery store and see it yourself,” said one economist.
Dec 11, 2025
A new poll shows US voters' approval of President Donald Trump's handling of the economy has hit an all-time low, even as the president and his officials insist the economy is the best in the world.
The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump's handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of the economy was "poor."
What's more, Trump's approval rating on the economy among Republican voters now stands at just 69%, a strikingly low figure for a president who has consistently commanded loyalty from the GOP base.
Despite the grim numbers, the president and his administration have continued to say that the US is now in the middle of an economic boom.
During a Thursday morning interview on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US now has "the greatest $30 trillion economy in the world."
"We are doing great," Lutnick said. "Nothing bad is happening. Greatness is happening. We grew at 4% GDP! Come on!"
Lutnick: "Jay Powell is too afraid to lead the greatest $30t economy in the world. We should be leading with our front foot. Instead we are always leaning back as if something bad is happening. We are doing great. Nothing bad is happening. Greatness is happening. We're growing 4%… pic.twitter.com/uWqrlwpllE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 11, 2025
Lutnick's message echoes the one Trump delivered earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania, where he said that voters' concerns about being able to afford basics such as groceries, electricity, and healthcare were a "hoax" concocted by Democrats.
"Prices are coming down very substantially," Trump falsely claimed during his speech. "But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability."
Trump on the US economy: “I said it the other day. And a lot of people misinterpreted it. They said ‘Oh he doesn’t realize prices are high.’ Prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.” pic.twitter.com/JkErFnkT1D
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) December 10, 2025
As NPR reported on Thursday, data shows that the prices of groceries and electricity have continued to rise throughout Trump's second term, directly contradicting his claims that prices are "coming down."
University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson told NPR that Trump is playing with fire by making false claims about prices when US consumers can see costs persistently going up.
"Trump's claims about inflation are false, and you can go to the grocery store and see it yourself," Stevenson said.
Even some members of Trump's own party are growing wary of him insisting that America is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom when voters feel otherwise.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told The Hill that Trump's insistence on making happy talk about the economy would not fly with voters.
"You can’t call it a hoax and suggest that people are going to believe it," she said. "What you say matters."
An anonymous Republican senator also told The Hill that they were concerned about the optics of Trump building a massive luxury ballroom in the White House at a time when Americans say they are struggling financially.
"The cost of living just makes life very difficult on people," the senator stressed.
And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) gently pushed back on Trump's messaging by telling CNN that "a lot of people are still having trouble making ends meet" in her state.
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GOP Still Lacks Votes to Pass Budget Bill 'Because It's a Moral Monstrosity,' Says Senate Democrat
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 01, 2025
Even after an all-night session of amendment votes and wrangling behind closed doors, Senate Republicans still did not have enough support to pass their reconciliation package as of Tuesday morning, leaving party leaders scrambling to placate GOP holdovers who are purportedly nervous about the legislation's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) argued in a social media post that the reason for the GOP's inability to quickly rally its own members around the legislation is straightforward: "Because it's a moral monstrosity."
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," Murphy wrote at roughly 5:30 am ET, as the marathon "vote-a-rama" continued with no end in sight.
With Democrats unanimously opposed to the bill, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three GOP votes if they are to send the measure back to the House for final approval. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have said they will vote against the bill in its current form, and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are undecided. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also suggested he's on the fence.
Republican leaders have been working to bring Murkowski into the yes column with a proposal that would temporarily exempt Alaska and other states from the bill's massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, ripped the proposal as "absurd" and said it would reward the states with the highest SNAP error rates.
"Insanity reigns," Klobuchar wrote on social media.
Senate Republicans' margins became more difficult after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his opposition to the legislation over the weekend, pointing to the Senate version's devastating cuts to Medicaid.
"What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore?" Tillis asked in a floor speech on Sunday, citing an estimate of the number of people in North Carolina who could lose health insurance under the Republican bill.
Throughout the country, nearly 12 million people would lose coverage under the Senate reconciliation bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"Kicking millions off healthcare, blowing up the national debt by trillions, and devastating generational economic harms—all being written into law on the fly," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said early Tuesday morning after hours of debate and amendment votes.
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Wildlife Defenders Slam Senate Dems' Bill for Not Protecting Refuge in Alaska
"We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities," vowed the Gwich'in Steering Committee's executive director.
Aug 08, 2022
Amid widespread applause Sunday for U.S. Senate Democrats' long-awaited passage of a budget reconciliation package, Indigenous and conservationist leaders declared that they were "deeply disappointed" in lawmakers' refusal to restore protections to a key region of Alaska.
"Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life."
Unlike the Build Back Better Act approved by House Democrats last year, the deal negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn't shield the incredibly biodiverse Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from fossil fuel activity--which the Wilderness Society called "a grievous attack on the rights, culture, and sacred lands of the Gwich'in and Inupiat peoples."
After the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate on Sunday, Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee--an Indigenous group that has long fought to safeguard ANWR's Coastal Plain--blasted the exclusion.
"In the Arctic, we're experiencing a warming climate at four times the rate as the rest of the world, yet Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life by failing to stop this destructive and failed oil and gas program," she said. "We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities."
After Manchin joined with Senate Republicans in 2017 to thwart efforts by other Democrats and conservationists to protect ANWR, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed forcing the U.S. Interior Department to hold two lease sales for ANWR--legislation that was included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
When signing what critics called the GOP tax scam into law in December 2017, then-President Donald Trump said that "corporations are literally going wild over this." Murkowski, meanwhile, framed the passage of her ANWR measure as "a watershed moment for Alaska and all of America" that would "give us renewed hope for growth and prosperity."
While the first of the two required lease sales was held just before Trump left office in 2021, the event failed to attract fossil fuel giants.
In fact, as the Gwich'in Steering Committee pointed out Sunday, as global banks and insurance companies have pledged to not be involved with exploiting ANWR, the three companies with leases--Regenerate Alaska, the only oil firm that bid in the 2021 sale, along with Chevron and Hilcorp, which both held decades-old leases--have backed out.
Peter Winsor, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in June that Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, "canceling its lease interest on the heels of Chevron and Hilcorp divesting themselves of their own Arctic refuge holdings is the clearest sign yet that there is zero interest out there in industrializing the wildest place left in America."
"We have long known that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic refuge, the Gwich'in people don't want it, and we now have further proof that the oil industry doesn't want it either," he added.
Following the Senate's vote Sunday, Winsor joined Demientieff, the Gwich'in leader, in expressing disappointment about the package's exclusion of ANWR safeguards while also highlighting handouts to fossil fuel giants included in the legislation.
"The United States just took a big leap forward to address climate change," he said. "However, today's progress left out public lands as part of the solution, and in fact parts of the bill increased oil and gas extraction on our nation's lands and waters, including in Alaska's Cook Inlet."
"We are... doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."
The Biden administration in May canceled three fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, citing a lack of industry interest--a move welcomed by climate campaigners, who continue to call on President Joe Biden to end all offshore drilling.
Discussing Manchin and Schumer's compromise, Nicole Whittington-Evans, state director at Defenders of Wildlife, told the Anchorage Daily News in late July that "I think the Alaska provisions will really greatly reduce our achievements, in terms of climate, with this deal."
The federal government would have to make at least 60 million acres of waters available for fossil fuel leases to hold a sale for offshore wind energy projects, which Whittington-Evans said "is very significant" and "does not seem like a great trade-off for Alaska."
Winsor on Sunday pledged to keep fighting for regional protections, saying that "while we too celebrate a win today for our climate as a whole, we are also doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."
"Tomorrow we'll be back at work," he said, "seeking to restore congressional protections for the Arctic refuge, and urging President Biden to do everything in his power to make sure the Arctic refuge is a climate solution, and not an oilfield."
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