Amid his travels to hurricane-battered Florida, President Trump was repeatedly asked to explain what steps he hopes to take on the DACA program.

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Amid his travels to hurricane-battered Florida, President Trump was repeatedly asked to explain what steps he hopes to take on the DACA program.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

After learning that President Trump is working with Democratic congressional leaders on codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, furious Trump supporters burned their Make America Great Again hats. Fox News’ Sean Hannity tweeted that “@POTUS needs to stay the course and keep his promises or it’s over.” And in response to a Trump tweet about allowing DREAMers to stay in the country, conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted, “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached?”

All of this is to be expected — Trump was elected in part because of his strongly anti-immigration views. Indeed, a recent poll shows that Trump’s base was happy that he rescinded DACA. Among people who “strongly approve” of Trump, 71 percent told Morning Consult that rescinding DACA was the “right thing to do.” (The rest were evenly split between “wrong thing” and “don’t know/no opinion.”)

Compare that with the 35 percent of all registered voters in the same poll who believed rescinding DACA was the “right thing.” It was even more intense than the 57 percent of Republicans in that poll who believed it was the “right thing.”

So the people who love Trump were happy he did this. But when Trump canceled the Obama-era policy, he did so with a cushion, giving Congress six months to figure out what to do next on the policy. And when it comes to what exactly his supporters want, things are more complicated.

Republicans — even Trump’s base — are divided

Multiple polls suggest that after Trump announced he was rescinding DACA, Republicans were happy with the decision. However, polling also indicates that Republicans aren’t certain what should happen to the program’s beneficiaries now.

First, to zoom out: Republicans overall tend to be less hard-line when it comes to DACA recipients than they do on other immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Thirty-seven percent recently told Morning Consult that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported. But fewer — 24 percent — said DREAMers should be deported. (DACA beneficiaries are often called DREAMers after a long-proposed-but-never-passed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.)

And while multiple polls show Republicans opposed to DACA, there is more division on what should happen to DREAMers once the program expires. According to an early September poll from YouGov and HuffPost, 83 percent of Republicans thought Trump “made the right decision” on ending DACA. But as for whether Congress should pass a law to allow DREAMers to stay in the country, opinions were mixed: 42 percent said no, 31 percent said yes and 26 percent were unsure.

Likewise, there was that poll mentioned above, from Politico and Morning Consult, that found that 57 percent of Republicans thought ending DACA was the “right thing” — much higher than the nation as a whole.

But it doesn’t appear that they’re opposed to the concerns that originally animated DACA in the first place. Fully 46 percent of Republicans in that poll said they wanted Congress to pass a law that allows DREAMers to get citizenship. Another 24 percent said DREAMers should get legal status. Only 20 percent said they wanted legislation that removes or deports DREAMers.

This divided Republican attitude toward DREAMers isn’t anything new, either. While 3 out of 4 Republicans said they would prefer a presidential candidate who would get rid of DACA, according to a May 2015 AP-GfK poll, just over half of said they would prefer or “could imagine” voting for someone who was OK with keeping the policy in place. And around 4 in 10 were in favor of allowing DREAMers to stay in the country.

It’s a little tougher to take the temperature of Trump’s staunchest supporters — many polls don’t get down to that kind of granularity. But recent data from Morning Consult (which does dig into small subgroups of voters) suggests that while they oppose DACA more intensely than other Republicans, Trump’s strongest supporters likewise are divided on what to do next.

It’s true that Trump’s die-hard supporters have always not only been more opposed to immigration than everyone else, but they also see it as more of a priority, as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote Thursday.

While 71 percent of strong Trump approvers told Morning Consult that rescinding DACA was “the right thing to do,” only 27 percent of people who strongly approve of Trump said they wanted Congress to pass a law that “removes or deports DREAMers.” In comparison, 38 percent said they wanted a law that created a path to citizenship and 23 percent wanted a path to legal status.

Is the policy’s substance the problem or just the fact that it exists?

One caveat here — issue polling is notoriously difficult to parse. The numbers here are a little all over the map — in one poll mentioned above, 83 percent of Republicans said ending DACA was the “right thing to do.” In another, 57 percent did. In still another, taken before Trump announced he was ending the program, 49 percent said so — a clear plurality, but not a majority.

Question wording, question order and the numbers of choices that respondents have to pick from can all create wide variation in issue poll results. (For example, some polls simply ask whether people oppose or support a policy — others ask whether people “strongly” or “somewhat” support or oppose a policy.) So there is always reason to not take issue polling numbers as gospel; rather, an array of polls can provide a sense of patterns.

And here, there seems to be a (very) broad pattern: Republicans — and Trump’s base on its own — tend to oppose DACA far more than they support it, but they’re divided on what to do about it. The existence of the policy seems to bother them more than the substance.

Brenda Ramirez, 18, speaks to reporters about the opportunities she receives via the DACA program during a protest earlier this month in downtown Jackson, Miss.

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Brenda Ramirez, 18, speaks to reporters about the opportunities she receives via the DACA program during a protest earlier this month in downtown Jackson, Miss.

Rogelio V. Solis/AP

One explanation here may be how the policy came into existence: Many on the right saw the creation of DACA as executive overreach on President Barack Obama’s part because he created it as an administrative program and not through Congress. Still others may simply be happy Trump is undoing an Obama-era policy.

There is evidence that Obama’s name made his immigration actions less popular. One 2015 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that when Obama’s name was attached to a program that allowed parents of legal residents to stay in the country, people supported it much less — particularly Republicans. Two-thirds of Republicans supported the related Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents when a question about it didn’t mention Obama, but only half supported it when Obama’s name was included in the question.

Trump’s base may well be angry that he seems to be softening on what to do about DACA. But up until now, they have stuck with him — fully 98 percent of Trump’s primary voters from 2016 still approve of the job he is doing, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Around 80 percent of Republicans approve of him as well, according to Gallup.

And Trump has supported policies that haven’t been popular among Republicans. He rolled back the Obama administration’s opening of relations with Cuba, while a poll indicated a majority of Republicans were opposed to the idea. Likewise, he celebrated the passage earlier this year of the House’s health care overhaul bill, despite polls indicating that Republicans nationwide didn’t like it.

Trump’s supporters may well punish him if they perceive he is going too easy on DACA recipients. On the other hand, people who approve of Trump tend to care about his “approach/personality” far more than his policies, according to an August poll from the Pew Research Center. Whatever ends up happening with DACA then, some of his supporters may stick with him anyway, so long as he is upending political conventions in the process.

Kevin Gill, an employee for the band and host of a Juggalo podcast, gave the opening remarks, calling the rally, “The most important day in Juggalo history.” This protest was “some monumental shit,” he added, before ripping into a denunciation of the FBI for categorizing Juggalos as a gang. In response, the crowd broke into a raucous chant about the much-hated FBI, “They fucked up! They fucked up!”

Democrats in the California Legislature, still smarting from the election of President Trump, embraced a pair of proposed laws early Saturday that they hope would reshape the 2020 presidential contest in the image of America’s most populous state.

The two measures taken together are perhaps the strongest effort in years by state lawmakers seeking to erase California’s long status as an electoral afterthought.

“It’s time for Californians to have a louder voice about who is going to lead our country,” state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), said during a legislative hearing on his bill to move the state’s 2020 presidential primary from June 2 to March 3.

The hope, supporters said, is that presidential candidates will spend significant time campaigning in the Golden State to try to win the state’s sizable share of the total delegates needed to secure the nomination of either the Democratic or Republican parties.

Senate Bill 149, that could ban Trump from appearing on California’s primary ballot if he doesn’t provide a copy of his income tax returns to state elections officials. While the mandate would apply to all presidential hopefuls, its authors admit the idea came to them after Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns in 2016.

“Making your tax returns public is a pretty low-threshold to meet,” state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said in a statement before adjournment. “The American people shouldn’t be in the dark about their president’s financial entanglements.”

Both bills now head to Gov. Jerry Brown, who hasn’t commented on either proposal. Neither of them may be a slam dunk, either in practice or in principle.

Critics of SB 149 have argued for months that imposing a new threshold for presidential candidates to access the California primary ballot might not pass legal muster. They’ve cited court cases related to state laws governing congressional candidate requirements in other states as an ominous precedent, though the rulings may not be applicable to presidential contenders. Supporters cited their own litany of cases they claim will allow California to set the new rules regarding tax returns.

North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear tests are leaving the United States and international community scrambling for a plan to stop leader Kim Jong Un’s seeming unrelenting march to becoming a nuclear power.

Friday’s test launch, the second to fly over Japan, clearly proves the U.S. territory of Guam is within North Korea’s striking distance, experts said.

It followed this month’s nuclear test, which U.S. officials have publicly all but confirmed was a hydrogen bomb far more powerful than the atomic bombs it previously tested.

“I‘m assuming it was a hydrogen bomb,” Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told reporters Thursday during Defense Secretary James MattisJames Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Senate votes down Paul’s bid to repeal war authorizations| Mattis wants to keep all three parts of nuclear triad | Boeing wins Air Force One design contract Mattis: US must keep all three legs of nuclear triad Senate votes down Paul’s bid to revoke war authorizations MORE’s visit to his base.

“I‘m not a nuclear scientist, so I can’t tell you this is how it worked, this is what the bomb was … But I can tell you the size that we observed and saw tends to me to indicate that it was a hydrogen bomb and I have to figure out what the right response is with our allies as to that kind of event.”

Early Friday morning local time, North Korea launched what U.S. Pacific Command said was an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRMB).

The missile flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the Pacific Ocean. The missile is said to have flown about 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of 770 kilometers (480 miles).

That trajectory puts Guam, 3,400 kilometers from North Korea, squarely in the rouge state’s range, physicist David Wright wrote in a blog for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The range of this test was significant since North Korea demonstrated that it could reach Guam with this missile, although the payload the missile was carrying is not known,” wrote Wright, director of the group’s Global Security Program.

Still, the missile is likely unable to destroy Guam’s Anderson Air Force Base as Kim has stated he wants to do, Wright continued.

“This missile very likely has low enough accuracy that it could be difficult for North Korea to use it to destroy this base, even if the missile was carrying a high-yield warhead,” he wrote. “I estimate the inaccuracy of the Hwasong-12 flown to this range to be likely 5 to 10 km, although possibly larger.”

Friday’s test follows North Korea’s Sept. 3 nuclear test, its sixth and most powerful to date.

This week, analysts at prominent North Korea monitor 38 North estimated the yield of the test was 250 kilotons, based on the strength of seismic activity. That’s consistent with Pyongyang’s claim of having tested a hydrogen bomb.

By comparison, the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released about 15 kilotons of energy.

Despite the progress, Hyten said North Korea still has work to do before being able to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.

“They haven’t put everything together yet,” Hyten said. “It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

But the rapid pace of North Korea’s quest for a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICMB) has left officials racing to curb the program.

“We’re out of time,” National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said at the White House press briefing Friday. “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

This week, the United Nations Security Council passed its strongest sanctions yet against North Korea. The sanctions banned North Korean textile exports and capped its imports of crude oil.

But to get the support of Russia and China, which have veto power in the council, the sanctions were watered down from the Trump administration’s original goal of banning all oil imports and freezing international assets of the North Korean government and its leader, Kim Jong Un.

Whether the latest sanctions have an effect depends on whether Russia and China enforce them. At a House hearing this week, administration officials called out Beijing and Moscow for helping North Korea evade sanctions, and Secretary of State Rex TillersonRex Wayne TillersonUS limiting visas in four countries for refusing deportations Senate votes down Paul’s bid to revoke war authorizations ‘Game of Thrones’ polling company takes on White House shakeups MORE responded to the missile test by saying Russia and China “must indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own.”

Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, said the United States needs to “take the gloves off when it comes to China.” That means sanctioning Chinese banks and could also include stepping up so-called freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea and arming the Taiwanese.

Short of starting a trade war by sanctioning China, retired Col. Richard Klass said he doesn’t think there’s a way to pressure China to support the type of blockade that would have an effect on North Korea.

“He knows we’re not going to launch a conventional attack, and unless we can do a blockade and get the Russians and Chinese to agree to it, I don’t think he’s going to stop doing what he’s doing,” Klass, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation board member, said of Kim. “This is a conundrum, and if anybody had a solution, it’d be taken up already.”

Kazianis said North Korea’s recent progress means the United States is likely to have to live with Pyongyang as a nuclear power.

“We are probably going to have to live with it,” he said. “What I think we can do is mitigate and shrink how big that program has to be. We can shrink it to 50 ICMBs, rather than 200 ICMBs. I’d rather live with a North Korea with 50 ICMBs than 200. It’s the difference between millions of lives or hundreds of millions.”