US President Donald Trump’s public approval rating has edged down to its lowest level since his return to the White House, as Americans show signs of wariness over his efforts to broaden his power.

Some 42 per cent of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday approved of Trump’s performance as president, down from 43 per cent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted three weeks earlier, and from 47 per cent in the hours after his January 20 inauguration.

The start of Trump’s term has left his political opponents stunned as he has signed dozens of executive orders expanding his influence over both government departments and over private institutions such as universities and law firms.

While Trump’s approval rating remains higher than the ratings seen during most of his Democratic predecessor’s presidency, the results of the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggest many Americans are uncomfortable with his moves to punish universities he sees as too liberal and to install himself as the board chair of the Kennedy Center, a major theatre and cultural institution in Washington.

Some 83 per cent of the 4306 respondents said the president must obey federal court rulings even if he doesn’t want to. Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for violating a federal judge’s order halting deportations of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who had no chance to challenge their removals.

Fifty-seven per cent – including one-third of Republicans – disagreed with the statement that “It’s okay for a US president to withhold funding from universities if the president doesn’t agree with how the university is run”.

Trump, who has argued universities are failing to fight antisemitism on campus, has frozen vast sums of federal money budgeted for US universities, including more than $US2 billion ($A3.1 billion) for Harvard University alone.

A similar share of respondents – 66 per cent – said they did not think the president should be in control of premier cultural institutions such as national museums and theatres. Trump in March ordered the Smithsonian Institution, the vast museum and research complex that is a premier exhibition space for US history and culture, to remove “improper” ideology.

On a range of issues, from inflation and immigration to taxation and rule of law, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Americans who disapproved of Trump’s performance outnumbered those who approved on every issue in the poll. On immigration, his strongest area of support, 45 per cent of respondents approved of Trump’s performance but 46 per cent disapproved.

The poll had a margin of error of about two percentage points.

Some 59 per cent of respondents – including one-third of Republicans – said America was losing credibility on the global stage.

Three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not run for a third term in office, a path Trump has said he would like to pursue, though the US Constitution bars him from doing so.

A majority of Republican respondents – 53 per cent – said Trump should not seek a third term.

Jason Lange
(Australian Associated Press)