When President Trump's approval rating dropped to 35 percent in Gallup's tracking poll last week, it appeared to be something of an outlier — in other polls, Trump's approval was at 38 percent to 45 percent. But while Trump has risen back up to 38 percent in Gallup, a new poll from Investor's Business Daily and TIPP released Monday pegged his approval at 34 percent, an 11-point drop from the IBD/TIPP poll last month; 56 percent disapprove of Trump's performance. Only 49 percent of white men and 41 percent of rural Americans approve of the president. And that's just the tip of the bad-news spear in the poll, conducted March 24-30.

For example, just 37 percent of respondents rate Trump's handling of the economy as "good" or "excellent," down from 43 percent, and the GOP health-care bill he is trying to revive got a thumbs-up from only 25 percent of respondents who are paying attention, with a bare 52 percent of Republicans saying it would improve America's health-care system. Perhaps most galling for Trump, 49 percent of respondents said he is providing weak leadership for the U.S., versus 35 percent who say he's a strong leader.

[IBD/TIPP]

Raghavan Mayur, the head of the polling firm that conducted the survey, TechnoMetrica, blames Trump's sagging fortunes on his "ambitious agenda" running into "some obstacles in Congress," especially the failed health-care bill, plus the negative press from the Russia investigation. The poll reached 904 people and has a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points. In the RealClearPolitics average, Trump's approval rating hovers at 40 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. Peter Weber

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and one of the conservative columnists at The Washington Post, wasn't a big fan of President Trump during the presidential campaign. But on Monday night, he published an op-ed in The Post that took aim at even riskier subjects for a conservative pundit: Fox News, its top star, and its anti-feminist culture. "Reading the accumulated sexual harassment accusations against Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and former network executive Roger Ailes is like a quick dip in a sewage treatment pond," he writes. "After even a brief exposure, the stench stays with you for days."

The dozens of accusations against O'Reilly and Ailes "could be a grand, elaborate calumny," Gerson acknowledges, though "it is hard to dismiss the women, as the accused have done, as unbalanced, dishonest, or disgruntled." He had praise for some Fox News personalities — Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Dana Perino — and the network's history as "an alternative to leftward-slanting media, and a place where the worst sorts of political correctness have been exposed." But he also hit Fox News where it hurts:

Can it really be a coincidence that feminism is often dismissed on Fox News as so much political correctness? Can a news organization deal adequately with women's issues when you would never allow your own daughter to work there?... I bet that Fox would not feature my next argument: Sometimes conservatives need liberals. (Sometimes liberals need conservatives as well, which is the topic for another day.) For more than 40 years, liberals have talked about sexual harassment and the need for equal treatment in the workplace. They have organized, argued, and sued. And they were exactly right. The routine sexism of a previous generation was wrong and oppressive. [Gerson, The Washington Post]

And "the crusty leftovers of workplace sexism remain," Gerson says, notably at Fox News, a network "preaching traditional values" while its stars allegedly treat women "as sex objects and employment benefits." Read the entire op-ed at The Washington Post. Peter Weber

Boeing announced Tuesday that it has agreed to sell up to 60 airplanes, valued at $6 billion, to an Iranian airline, even as the Trump administration has expressed its animosity toward Tehran, The Wall Street Journal reports. Boeing said it has nevertheless received early permission from the U.S. government to move ahead with the sale, although it still needs to be approved by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

In March 2016, Trump stated: "My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran." He was referring to the Obama administration's agreement over a year ago to remove sanctions on Iran in return for the country voluntarily curbing its nuclear programs. As part of the deal, Boeing and Airbus won billion-dollar deals to sell planes to Iran Air. Tuesday's sale is to the privately-owned Iran Aseman Airlines.

Boeing said Tuesday that based on government data, "an aerospace sale of this magnitude creates or sustains approximately 18,000 jobs." It remains to be seen if Trump will indicate support for the deal, perhaps simply by not criticizing it on Twitter. Jeva Lange

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Tuesday that at least 58 people were killed in a chemical attack on a rebel-held town in northwest Syria. There are other reports, albeit unconfirmed, that an aircraft then returned to fire rockets at the clinics where survivors were being treated, BBC reports.

"I am speaking to my team and they are doing fine, but the situation over there is very bad and most of those who are suffering are children," said Mohammed Rasoul, who leads an ambulance charity in the nearby city of Idlib.

The Syrian government or Russian jets are being blamed for the suspected nerve-agent attack, which, if confirmed, would be the deadliest chemical strike since the Syrian civil war began six years ago. The Syrian government has long denied the use of chemical weapons, although they are accused of killing over 300 people in Damascus in 2013 by firing rockets filled with sarin.

Other monitors put Tuesday's death toll as high as 100, with 11 children among the dead. Jeva Lange

Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney met behind closed doors with members of the House Freedom Caucus on Monday night, after meeting with more moderate House GOP members earlier in the day, in the latest sign that President Trump hasn't given up on House Speaker Paul Ryan's health-care bill. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the Freedom Caucus leader, told The Associated Press that the White House made an informal offer but "there is no deal in principle" yet and his group is waiting to see details, in writing, before committing support.

The changes, Meadows said, center on allowing governors to apply for waivers to some big ObamaCare requirements, including that all health-care plans offer a set of essential health benefits and that insurers have to charge the same prices to everybody in the same age group, a mechanism called community rating. Scrapping both requirements, but especially community rating, would effectively negate ObamaCare's ban on discriminating against sick people and those with pre-existing conditions, Margot Sanger-Katz explains at The New York Times:

A patient with cancer might, for example, still be allowed to buy a plan, but it wouldn't do her much good if that plan was not required to cover chemotherapy drugs.... Technically, the deal would still prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with a history of illness. But without community rating, health plans would be free to charge those patients as much as they wanted. If both of the ObamaCare provisions went away, the hypothetical cancer patient might be able to buy only a plan, without chemotherapy coverage, that costs many times more than a similar plan costs a healthy customer. Only cancer patients with extraordinary financial resources and little interest in the fine print would sign up. [The New York Times]

Trump ally Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) told Politico that the moderates said they would tentatively be fine with the changes if the Freedom Caucus signed on, and White House legislative liaison Marc Short reportedly told attendees at Ryan's donor retreat late last week that outside conservative groups that opposed the AHCA have indicated a willingness to negotiate. Ryan pulled the deeply unpopular bill two weeks ago when it became clear it wouldn't pass, and it still faces long odds in the Senate if it manages to pass in the House. Peter Weber

On Tuesday, Russia and Kyrgyzstan's security services identified a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen as a suspect in Monday's deadly bombing of a train car in the St. Petersburg metro. The death toll from the attack rose to 14 on Tuesday, as three people died in the hospital; more than 40 other people were wounded. Kyrgyzstan's security service said they got the information about Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, 21 or 22, from Russian authorities. St. Petersburg is home to a large diaspora from Central Asia.

St. Petersburg officials declared three days of mourning, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a St. Petersburg native, laid flowers at a makeshift memorial on Monday night. World leaders also extended their condolences, with U.S. President Trump calling to offer his "full support," the White House said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the attack a "barbaric act." Russian authorities have not yet said if they believe the attack was a suicide bombing or if the suspect is at large, or if there is more than one suspect. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Peter Weber

This week's confirmation vote on President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, could forever change the Senate. "Democrats aren't going to let Gorsuch get confirmed without a fight — sure, it's a fight they're going to lose, but those are the kind of fights Democrats love," Stephen Colbert explained on Monday's Late Show, looking a bit confused when the audience clapped loudly. Democrats now have enough no votes to filibuster Gorsuch, but if they do, Senate Republicans have threatened to use the "nuclear option," he explained, "which would upset Donald Trump, because he wants to be the first to use the nuclear option, possibly against North Korea, maybe Jake Tapper."

Some people argue that the Senate shouldn't confirm any of Trump's nominees until the end of the investigations into his team's possible collusion with Russia, Colbert said, pivoting fairly seamlessly to new developments on Trump and Russia. "It turns out the most effective thing that Russia did was change public opinion through targeted social media," using 1,000 trolls spreading "fake news" to Americans in key states, Colbert said. "Now, when I say 'fake news,' this is real fake news, not fake fake news that is real news that Donald Trump just doesn't like."

He explained how the army of Russian trolls and their bots apparently worked: "If enough people say something is popular, I might trust that it's good. It's like how if one person tells me Transformers is a good movie, I might not see it, but if everyone on Facebook is raving about it, I'll go. And by the time I realize I was lied to, Megatron is president."

Colbert ran through other news from Trumpworld, including Michael Flynn's request for immunity from prosecution ("So the question is, what does he know about Donald Trump? And: How could it be worse than what we know about Donald Trump?"), Trump walking out of an executive order signing ceremony without signing any executive orders ("That's the entire reason you're there! It's like going out to dinner and then ordering just the check") and Jared Kushner being sent to Iraq ("He wanted to go somewhere with less sectarian violence than the White House"). Watch below for all that and Colbert's imitation of Sean Spicer, landlord. Peter Weber

On Monday, Fox News, citing "multiple sources," reported that Susan Rice, national security adviser to former President Barack Obama, had asked intelligence agencies to "unmask" the names of Trump transition officials caught up in foreign surveillance, then sent the unmasked names to a handful of top intelligence officials. Monday night, CBS News reported that "a former national security official" partially confirmed the report, saying Rice did sometimes ask that certain names be unmasked when crucial to understanding the context of a report, but did not ask for the unmasked names to be disseminated broadly. Rice's alleged actions would appear to be legal.

Names of U.S. citizens are "masked" when they are caught up incidentally in surveillance of foreign officials, and National Security Council officials can request the unmasking of names. Such requests have to be approved by the head of the agency that provided the intelligence. The CBS News source said Rice's requests were not specially related to the Trump transition team, though the former official did not dispute that Rice has requested the unmasking of Trump-related names.

An unidentified "person close to Rice" told CNN Monday night that Rice never "improperly sought the identity of Americans," adding: "There is nothing unusual about making these requests when serving as a senior national security official, whether Democrat or Republican." CNN's Jim Sciutto said that not only is "unmasking" names legal under "protocols that have been put in place since 9/11 to allow this to happen," but "I'm told that it is very meticulously logged — someone said to me, described it's like Catholic baptismal records, it's so well logged. You can't do this in secret, and you have to do it with the approval of the intelligence community."

Back at Fox News, Shepard Smith noted the Rice allegations on Monday afternoon and more or less accused the White House of focusing on unmasking to distract from the real story. Wall Street Journal associate editor John Bussey said his newspaper had not yet confirmed Rice's involvement, but even if it does, "it will be a factor in the discussion, I can't imagine it's going to change the core narrative here, which is who in the Trump campaign was communicating with the Russians, what were those conversations about, did they in any way affect the U.S. electoral process?" Watch below. Peter Weber