By STEVE PEOPLES and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans may be willing to stick with President Donald Trump through almost anything, but his recent push to seize control of Greenland has turned off many in his own party, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the issue of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. That’s higher than the share who dislike how he’s handling foreign policy generally, suggesting that Trump’s Greenland approach has created a weak spot for the administration.

Even Republicans aren’t thrilled. About half disapprove of his attempt to turn the icebound landmass into American territory, something that Trump has insisted is critical for national security in the Arctic, while about half approve.

The poll was conducted Feb. 5-8, which is after Trump had made the decision to scrap tariffs designed to pressure European countries into supporting U.S. control of Greenland, but after his weeks-long push for American intervention over the island.

About half of Republicans disapprove of Trump on Greenland

Trump’s base is normally unwavering behind him, so Greenland stands out as an exception.

FILE – A Danish serviceman walks in front of Joint Arctic Command center in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

The marks represent Trump’s lowest ratings among Republicans on a list of key issues in the poll, including the economy and immigration — where about 8 in 10 approve — and foreign policy generally. About 7 in 10 Republicans approve of his overall foreign policy approach.

Trump has argued that the U.S. needs Greenland to counter threats from Russia and China in the Arctic region, despite America already having a military presence there.

Other recent polls, including a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January, found that Republicans were largely divided on whether the U.S. should take over Greenland, while Americans overall were opposed.

Ayman Amir, a 46-year-old Trump supporter from Houston, Texas, said he agrees that Greenland holds strategic importance for the United States’ military. But that doesn’t mean he thinks Trump should claim it.

“We can’t take it by force. We don’t have a right to do that,” Amir said. “You can’t blame Russia for what they do in Ukraine and then do the same thing. You can’t do this.”

Trump’s overall foreign policy approval remains steady

The president dropped his threats to seize the territory by force late last month after saying a framework for a deal over access to Greenland was reached with help from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

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The clash represents just one of the moves Trump has made to strain relationships with key allies over the last year. Western leaders are focusing on trans-Atlantic tensions this week at the Munich Security Conference.

On Greenland, Trump has few vocal supporters at home or abroad.

Even as Trump made significant moves to obtain control of Greenland, his overall approval on the issue of foreign policy has remained steady. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to foreign policy, a measure that’s been unchanged in recent months.

Young Republicans especially disapprove of Greenland approach

Younger Republicans are especially likely to disapprove of how Trump is handling the situation.

About 6 in 10 Republicans under 45 say they disapprove of his leadership on Greenland, compared to about 4 in 10 older Republicans.

That 4 in 10 who approve of Trump’s Greenland actions is much lower than young Republicans’ approval on issues of foreign policy, the economy, or immigration.

Independent voter Aaron Gunnoe, 29, an engineer from Marion, Ohio, was baffled by Trump’s aggressive posture on the NATO ally.

“It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “It’s owned by somebody else. That should be the end of it.”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,156 adults was conducted Feb. 5-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for Republicans overall is plus or minus 6.1 percentage points.

Republicans who minimize President Donald Trump’s sliding job approval ratings typically emphasize that his agenda contains many popular policies. Those arguments misunderstand what makes for successful political leadership.

Even though some White House policies are popular, policy is but one leg of the three-legged stool of political leadership. Rhetoric also matters. So, too, does implementation, especially at the executive level. Without its full complement of limbs, this three-legged stool is prone to tip over and shatter.

“Communication about public policy is as important as the public policy itself,” Jeffrey Brauer, a political scientist at Keystone College, near Scranton, Pennsylvania, told me. “This is something many political leaders in the U.S. on both sides of the aisle often forget or often don’t realize in the first place.” How a policy is carried out, Brauer added, impacts voters’ “perception of policy success.”

“This explains the wide gap between the initial, extensive support of the administration’s immigration policy and the current major downturn in the polls,” he said. “Most Americans don’t agree with the implementation, particularly with the tactics being used.”

About that. Trump’s most potent political asset has almost always been immigration. During the 2016 campaign, the president vowed to secure the Mexican border. He delivered. After illegal immigration spiked under President Joe Biden, voters turned to Trump (again) to address the problem. Aside from their frustration with inflation, voters picked the 45th president over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president, and made him the 47th president, because they saw border security as a serious problem and trusted him to stem illegal immigration and deport criminal aliens.

In the year since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has overseen a dramatic drop in illegal border crossings from Mexico and undertaken a massive deportation program to repatriate criminal aliens. And yet as of this week, Trump’s job approval rating on immigration is 8 percentage points underwater in the RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys (44.4% positive, 52.4% negative). What happened? Rhetoric and tactics; that’s what happened. That’s what’s still happening.

The polling shows voters have soured on Trump’s immigration agenda, broadly speaking, because of the aggressive tactics wielded by the Department of Homeland Security. One example: American citizens who are Hispanic (and haven’t committed any crime, not that that should matter) have been forced to “ show their papers ” — in other words: produce proof of citizenship or risk arrest and detention by federal authorities. Another example: The constitutionally questionable and violently belligerent behavior of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, to say nothing of the shooting deaths of Twin Cities protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Then there’s the third leg of the stool: rhetoric.

Although the president belatedly called the Good and Pretti killings tragic and has now said so more than once, he continues to step on that message by denigrating these two dead Americans and subtly suggesting the shootings, though unfortunate, were understandable, if not justified. “He was not an angel, and she was not an angel,” Trump told NBC News in an interview. It’s this attitude that now has voters who supported the president’s immigration enforcement agenda reevaluating.

And to be clear: When Trump’s job approval ratings on immigration flip upside down in the course of a year, from plus-8 points in January of 2025 to negative-8 points today, that’s evidence of voters doing some major reevaluating.

Which is why it doesn’t really matter that, as Republicans point out, a majority of voters “ prefer Trump’s immigration policies over Biden’s.” Voters aren’t comparing Trump to Biden. The 2024 election is long since over. They’re judging the current president on his policy, his implementation and his rhetoric — and find him lacking on two out of three.

“A majority of Americans want to deport undocumented criminals, and they want to deport undocumented people who came here during the Biden years. But not if that means murdering American citizens; scenes that look like kidnappings, stories about children ripped away from parents; cars left running in the street as people are snatched away,” said Brian Rosenwald, a scholar in residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “The cost is too high and flips public opinion on the issue.”

Trump and the Republicans are hardly alone in failing to understand the importance of the three-legged leadership stool. Recall President Barack Obama saying all of the right things after Russia forcibly annexed Crimea in what amounted to the first phase of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, yet declining to provide Kyiv weapons and ammunition to guard against further aggression from Moscow. It’s an interesting case of a politician getting the rhetoric right but blowing the policy. (Guess who did greenlight U.S. weapons for Ukraine. Trump, during his first presidency.)

Republicans can soothe themselves all they want with issue polling that shows voters would choose Trump over Biden (and Harris) on a given policy, be it immigration, the economy or anything else. It’s unlikely to matter one whit unless they get Trump and his lieutenants in the administration to make necessary adjustments to tactics and rhetoric.

But Democrats beware, particularly those eyeing a 2028 White House bid: Getting the rhetoric right won’t trick voters into backing a candidate whose policies they find unacceptable or insufficient. Oh, and there’s no such thing as getting the tactics right if the policy is wrong.

David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”

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Today is Friday, Feb. 13, the 44th day of 2026. There are 321 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79.

Also on this date:

In 1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey, found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was executed the following year.)

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In 1945, Allied forces in World War II began a three-day bombing raid on Dresden, Germany, killing as many as 25,000 people and triggering a firestorm that swept through the city center.

In 1965, during the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.

In 1980, the 13th Winter Olympics opened in Lake Placid, New York.

In 1996, the rock musical “Rent,” by Jonathan Larson, premiered off-Broadway less than three weeks after Larson’s death.

In 2002, John Walker Lindh, who was captured by U.S. forces as an enemy combatant in 2001, pleaded not guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations. (Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.)

In 2017, President Donald Trump’s embattled national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned following reports he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia.

In 2018, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, said he had paid $130,000 out of his own pocket to Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels), a porn actor who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump.

In 2021, Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate at his second impeachment trial -– the first to involve a former president -– in which he was accused of inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict, less than the two-thirds threshold required.

Today’s birthdays:

Actor Kim Novak is 93.
Actor Stockard Channing is 82.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is 80.
Basketball Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski is 79.
Musician Peter Gabriel is 76. Musician Peter Hook is 70.
Singer-writer Henry Rollins is 65.
Hockey Hall of Famer Mats Sundin is 55.
Singer Robbie Williams is 52.
Football Hall of Famer Randy Moss is 49.
Actor Mena Suvari (MEE’-nuh soo-VAHR’-ee) is 47.
Actor Sophia Lillis is 24.

Up by 19 points at the half, the Gopher women’s basketball team’s third-quarter woes allowed Nebraska to get within eight points starting the fourth.

It was gut check time.

The maroon and gold scored the first seven points of the final frame to reestablish some extra breathing room, and, after the Cornhuskers got within six, Minnesota ended the game on a 13-2 run for an 84-67 win.

“I thought our young ladies showed a great deal of toughness. I thought they showed a great deal of resilience and a great deal of composure,” coach Dawn Plitzuweit said.

“At the end we came together and made those winning plays,” said Amaya Battle, who led five Gophers in double figures with 21 points.

It was the team’s seventh straight win, all in Big Ten action, and best since a 11-game stretch of conference wins from February 2003 to January 2004.

That success doesn’t surprise Plitzuweit.

“They’ve faced the highs and they faced the lows of not coming out on top in this type of an environment or a battle. Their desire is really, really high. Everybody has a desire, but then you have to put in the time. And this is a group that invests a lot of time. They invest a lot of time on the court on their own, they invest time watching film. They really lock in, they ask really intelligent questions in film and they have a lot of fun doing it.”

Mara Braun had 15 points for her third straight double-digit scoring effort, Sophie Hart 14, Grace Grocholski 12 and Tori McKinney 11 to go with a team-high five assists.

One of those helpers was a pass inside to Hart to start an eventual 3-point play that pushed the Minnesota lead to nine with 3:33 to play.

Surrounded by multiple Cornhuskers, Grocholski scored on a layup next time down the floor and Hart found Battle on a backdoor cut for a 78-65 lead.

“Those plays separate you from other teams, and especially down the line when we have to make plays. We talk about finishing the play, just finding the way, all the time, every single day, and we practice it. We’re expected to do it,” Braun said.

Unranked in either top 25 poll, Minnesota (19-6 overall, 10-4 Big Ten) entered the game 10th and Nebraska 25th in the NET rankings, the primary sorting tool for evaluating teams for the NCAA tournament. The Gophers last made the tournament in 2018.

Chalk this one up to the latest learning experience for when the calendar turns to March.

“Just cleaning up things and just knowing what that feels like to be able to bring that into a whole game,” Braun said.

A strong inside-outside game quickly led to a double-digit lead.

Ten of the first 15 points came in the paint — Minnesota outscored Nebraska 52-22 there in the game — and back-to-back 3-pointers by Braun gave Minnesota a 26-11 lead late in the first quarter.

Back-to-back 3-point plays by Battle made it 40-19 midway through the second quarter. Minnesota’s lead was 49-30 at the break.

Nebraska outscored Minnesota 22-11 in the third quarter.

“We made rush decisions … We passed on the run a couple different times. We threw it to kids that weren’t open,” Plitzuweit said.

“That was AI; it wasn’t us,” Battle said as she and Braun broke into laughter.

Britt Prince led Nebraska with 15 points and Jessica Petrie added 14, but the Cornhuskers (16-9, 5-9) lost for the seventh time in nine games.

With the win, the Gophers remained in fifth place in the Big Ten standings, one-half game behind Iowa in conference play. Next up for Minnesota is a trip across the border to face Wisconsin in Madison at 5 p.m. Sunday.

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