Joyce Kenney is even happier with Donald Trump today than when she voted for him in 2024. "I would gladly vote for him any time,” said the 74-year-old retiree in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
As Trump heads into the second year of his presidency, Kenney hopes he continues his crusade against government waste and fraud, cuts costs for senior citizens, and deports more criminal immigrants - but also makes it easier for law-abiding immigrants to stay in the US, even those who entered illegally.
"He needs to find a gentler way on the illegal aliens, not to just say everything's black or white, because there is a lot of grey in everything,” she said. "We need to show a lot more humanity to people that are not Americans as well.”
With Trump confronting nationwide protests against his immigration policies, mounting cost-of-living complaints, and tensions with countries from Denmark to Colombia, Kenney and 19 other Trump voters spoke to Reuters about what they want him to accomplish in the year ahead. Almost all of them praised his first-year performance. They backed policies that polls show have alarmed many Americans - surging immigration enforcement in US cities, tariffs on trading partners, deep cuts to the federal workforce and capturing Venezuela’s president.
The voters - whom Reuters has spoken with monthly for the past year - said they hoped the president would deliver further change in the months ahead, as pressure builds to help his fellow Republicans keep control of Congress in November's midterm elections.
Six of the voters had virtually no criticism of Trump's presidency to date, while three were highly dissatisfied with his performance last year. The remaining 11 voters were more mixed in their appraisals, though none of them said they regretted their vote.
The most common objectives the voters wanted Trump to pursue were immigration reform and a sharper focus on domestic issues - healthcare reform, cutting fraud in public programmes and lowering the national debt - over foreign policy.
Fourteen said they were disappointed by the president’s recent rhetoric about annexing foreign countries and his tendency to inflame divisions through social media posts.
"I would like him to really focus way more on America,” said Robert Billups, 34, an unemployed accountant in Washington state.
Billups voted for Trump hoping for cheaper healthcare and more transparent government spending. Although he sees little improvement on those fronts, Billups maintains Trump was still "probably the best option” in the 2024 election.
Asked for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement: "The Trump administration remains laser-focused on continuing to cool inflation, accelerate economic growth, secure our border, and mass deport criminal illegal aliens.”
Trump’s tariffs, disdain for US judges and officials with whom he disagrees, and recent "saber-rattling” about taking over Greenland and other countries - earned the president a "failing grade” from Steve Egan, 65, a promotional product distributor in Tampa.
Egan said his main hope for 2026 was that Trump would "stay in his lane” and not trigger a constitutional crisis.
"When Trump's out of office, I'm sorry, I can't vote Democratic generally, but if there's a Democrat that talks more sense than Trump's doing, then I'll probably vote for him,” said Egan.
The voters' top ask for this year was a clearer pathway to legal status for law-abiding immigrants who are already contributing to the US economy. Trump backed some such measures in his first term, but has not done so since retaking office. Last spring, 14 of the voters said they wanted Trump to ease legalisation for deserving foreigners. In January, eight of the voters said immigration reform should be a second-year priority.
Juan Rivera, a 26-year-old content creator near San Diego who has some relatives seeking legal residency in the US and others who work for Border Patrol, said he was "a little disappointed” that Trump had not pursued it.
Rivera, who does Latino outreach for California’s Republican Party, said prioritising immigration reform would help the party in November’s midterm elections.
"Latino voters, Asian-American voters who voted for the president, they voted because they wanted to see immigration reform,” Rivera said. "I don't think all Republicans realise that the president would not have won if it wasn't for those voters.”
Across the country, Pennsylvania state corrections worker and former National Guardsman Brandon Neumeister, 36, also wants the president to focus on immigration reform this year.
"If they've been here, they've been productive, they’ve stayed out of trouble, I feel like those are the type of people we would want,” Neumeister said.
Rather than deporting immigrants "after they've been a fixture in communities for decades,” he added, the administration should create "a more streamlined method for them to attain citizenship.”
Like Rivera and Neumeister, Lesa Sandberg of St. George, Utah, said she approved of Trump’s efforts to secure the US border but would "love to see the same emphasis on making it legal to be here as there is on getting rid of the criminals.”
Of roughly 60,000 people currently detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of late January, about 44 per cent had no pending criminal charge or prior conviction, according to agency statistics.
As with most of the voters, Sandberg hoped Trump would continue his signature economic policies this year. Sandberg, 58, who runs an accounting business, rents properties and works for a Republican political action committee, said last year's deregulatory moves and tax cuts left her "satisfied” and "hopeful.” She said her grocery and gas bills had fallen, although the US Consumer Price Index in January showed food prices were up while gas prices were down across the country. But Sandberg is unsure how Trump plans to pay for hiking the military budget by two thirds over what Congress approved, and wants to know where the savings went after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed the federal workforce.
Trump’s top priority in 2026 should be "to balance a freaking budget and stop the progression of the debt,” Sandberg said.
Terry Alberta, 65, a pilot in Michigan, agreed that while "in my world, the economy is doing great,” he hoped Trump would do more this year to curb government waste.
"I had high hopes with DOGE and all that, and I thought we were really gonna get a handle on it, but you're just taking a big wad of cash from one group and giving it to another group,” said Alberta. "I don't see the deficit actually going down.”
Alberta also vented frustration with Trump’s penchant for lashing out at critics. "Stop making the people that disagree with you get all lathered up. Just chill,” he said.
Julia Harte
The writer is National Affairs Correspondent at Reuters News
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