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Ten laws impacting LGBTQ+ rights set to take effect today

Ten laws restricting how LGBTQ+ people – particularly LGBTQ+ youth – are able to participate in school sports or spoken about in the classroom will take effect today.

Alabama House Bill 322

In April, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law a bill preventing transgender students from using facilities like restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. An amendment to the law also bars kindergarten through fifth grade educators from engaging in classroom instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity in a manner that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”

Florida House Bill 1557

One of the most highly publicized measures of the year, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law – dubbed by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law –  will prevent public primary school teachers from engaging in classroom instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

Public school educators through high school will be prohibited from addressing either topic with their students in a manner that is not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Parents will also be given greater authority to take legal action against school districts they believe to be in violation of the law.

Florida House Bill 7

Florida’s Individual Freedom Act prevents workplaces and schools in the state from requiring training or instruction that may make some people feel they bear “personal responsibility” for historic wrongdoings because of their “race, color, sex or national origin.”

The measure has also been called the “Stop WOKE Act” by the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, where woke is used as an acronym for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.”

Indiana House Bill 1041

The now-law prevents transgender women and girls through high school from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, in March vetoed the measure, writing in a letter that he believes the bill does not solve a problem that exists in Indiana. The state legislature later voted to override the governor’s veto.

South Dakota Senate Bill 46

In February, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed into law the year’s first transgender athlete ban.

Under the law, transgender women and girls through high school are barred from playing on sports teams that match with their gender identity. Students and schools that “suffer any direct or indirect harm” from the law being violated are permitted to take legal action.

South Dakota House Bill 1012

Much like Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” this new South Dakota law was designed to “protect students and employees at institutions of higher education from divisive concepts” related to race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity or national origin.

Under the measure, colleges and universities are not restricted in their ability to teach certain courses or subject matter, but “forced” or “compelled” speech in college orientations or trainings is prohibited.

Tennessee House Bill 1895

In April, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law a measure to pull funding from state schools that allow transgender students to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, doubling down on an existing Tennessee law which already bars transgender athletes from playing on sports teams inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth.

The new law requires Tennessee’s education commissioner to “withhold a portion of the state education finance funds” from local school districts that fail or refuse to determine a student-athlete’s gender using the student’s “original” birth certificate.

Tennessee Senate Bill 2153

In May, Lee signed an additional law prohibiting “males from participating in public higher education sports that are designated for females.” The legislation requires Tennessee colleges to determine a student-athlete’s gender using the student’s “original” birth certificate.

Under the law, any government entity, organization or athletic association is barred from taking “an adverse action” against a school that complies with the law or a student who reports a violation. 

If evidence of a violation is found which “deprives a student of an athletic opportunity or causes direct or indirect harm to the student,” the affected student will have a private cause of action for injunctive relief, damages and “any other relief available under law.”

Tennessee House Bill 2454

This law expands an existing requirement that internet vendors block “obscenity and pornography” on school computers. Previously, an exception to the law was education material. That is no longer the case.

LGBTQ+ advocates worry the law will be used to restrict access to resources about LGBTQ+ issues and identities, which Tennessee lawmakers have made clear they believe are inappropriate for children.

Utah House Bill 11

The new Utah law bars transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

Gov. Spencer Cox (R) vetoed the measure, which requires school sports teams be determined by the players’ sex assigned at birth, in March.

“Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live,” Cox wrote in a veto letter at the time. “And all the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly.”

Cox’s veto was later overridden by the legislature.

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Army says National Guard, reserve forces must be vaccinated to participate in drills

The Army on Friday announced members of its National Guard and Reserve components must be in compliance with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate to participate in drills.

In a statement, the service said members who have refused to be vaccinated without an approved or pending exemption cannot participate in federally funded training and will not receive pay or retirement credit.

The deadline for members of the Army National Guard or Reserve to be vaccinated passed on Thursday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated vaccinations for the military in August 2021 but allowed each service to implement its own deadlines.

The deadline for active-component Army personnel to be in compliance was Dec. 15, but reservists and Army National Guard members had until June 30 to be vaccinated.

The service allows soldiers to request exemptions for medical or religious reasons, which are approved on a case-by-case basis.

Eighty-nine percent of the Army National Guard has received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Army’s statement, while 87 percent are fully inoculated.

Similarly, 89 percent of the Army Reserve has received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 88 percent are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, 97 percent of the Army’s active-duty component are fully vaccinated. The Army began separating unvaccinated active-duty soldiers in February and has separated 1,148 soldiers.

In its statement, the Army said soldiers who refuse the order without an approved or pending exemption are subject to “adverse administrative actions,” like bars to service and official reprimands.  

Moving forward, soldiers who continue to refuse vaccination without an exemption may face additional adverse action, including separation.

Unit commanders will be able to activate and pay soldiers for limited purposes like getting vaccinated, processing their exemptions or conducting separations.

Source: TEST FEED1

Don’t bother me with the facts — I have ‘the truth’

What do actor Jussie Smollett and Donald Trump have in common? They agree with President Biden. During the 2019 campaign, then-candidate Biden said at the Iowa State Fair, “We choose truth over facts.” It turns out he was onto something. 

Smollett, who’s making a round of media appearances professing that he was wrongly convicted of reporting a fake hate crime, and former President Trump, who is protesting the hearings of the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021 at the Capitol, are leading exemplars of the demise of late-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous comment, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” 

Turns out, like many insightful observations, a number of people have said similar things, some predating Moynihan, but the point is clear. Anyway, it’s now obsolete and that’s proving to be dangerous.

Smollett’s protestations about his December 2021 conviction and Trump’s continued citations of disproved allegations about a “stolen election” in 2020 stand out because of their boldness — because they are undeniably wrong and incredibly well publicized; because they put a stamp of approval on the concept of personal truth, no matter what the facts; and because their passionate believers cause tremendous dissension in the body politic.

Quickly recapping the claims: Smollett told police that two MAGA hat-wearing men jumped him at 2 a.m. on a sub-zero Chicago night in January 2019, threw a caustic liquid on him, put a rope around his neck, and yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him. After a wave of sympathetic media coverage, he was finally arrested, tried and convicted of lying when the two men, caught on surveillance cameras with him, testified he had paid them and staged the episode. 

Trump has continued to claim that President Biden’s election was characterized by stolen, lost or fraudulently collected ballots, cyber-hacked voting machines, and corrupt officials. One can correctly criticize the House committee for its one-sided grandstanding, but it has provided to the public a series of sworn statements from people such as former Attorney General Bill Barr disputing the contention that the alleged problems were widespread enough to invalidate the election. News accounts have quoted Republican officials saying the former president or his representatives urged them to manufacture examples of fraud and promised “evidence” that was never provided. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the panel under oath that “the numbers don’t lie.” 

Severing facts from “truth” is dangerous because it removes any way to arrive at a shared conclusion, and it’s contaminating our society. The damage to everyday life was highlighted for me by a 2018 incident at my alma mater, Smith College. A Black student working over the summer took her lunch into an unoccupied building that was supposed to be closed. College cafeteria and janitorial personnel saw someone going into the building and, as directed, alerted campus security. An unarmed security officer checked out the report and had a conversation with the student. 

Later that day, the student posted an emotional tirade online, claiming she was targeted for “eating while Black.” A furor erupted. The cafeteria and janitorial staff were identified publicly, excoriated and put on leave. Smith’s president apologized to the student and mandated college-wide training. But wait, the story’s not over. Smith hired a law firm to investigate, and the resulting report exonerated the staff. The initial incident garnered national attention, but the key observation is from a New York Times report months later: “The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and the facts that are at odds with it.” This sentence presents the real story. The student, like Jussie Smollett and Donald Trump, was wedded to her version of the “truth,” which turned out to be wrong.      

Some might protest that what we call “truth” is just our preferred conclusion based on the lens through which we see the world. One also can point to current examples of propagation of a narrative clearly designed to obfuscate and mislead, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim to have invaded Ukraine to go after Nazis.

Companies and individuals need to convey a narrative that satisfies both the demands of truth and facts, and we all should be concerned when a body of opinion gathers enough drama and strength to persist, despite “the facts that are at odds with it.”

The authors of the children’s series, The Berenstain Bears, have a character, Professor Actual Factual, whose job, predictably enough, is to teach small and large bears about the facts — particularly when their initial perceptions aren’t correct. Both Jussie Smollett and Donald Trump could make a major contribution to our country if they would just look more deeply inside themselves and engage Professor Factual.

Merrie Spaeth, a Dallas communications consultant, was President Reagan’s director of media relations. Follow her on Twitter @SpaethCom.

Source: TEST FEED1

California bill would require mental health warnings on marijuana products

As more states across the country legalize recreational marijuana, some doctors and lawmakers are raising alarms about the risks of certain mental health conditions associated with the product’s use.

In California, Senate Bill 1097, the Cannabis Right to Know Act, would mandate mental health warnings be included on existing cannabis labels, similar to the health risks currently seen on tobacco products. Under the bill, an assessment of the labels’ efficacy would be conducted every five years. 

Similar measures have been proposed in Oregon, Colorado and New York.

Although cannabis use has been linked with the development of mental health disorders like schizophrenia, it is unclear to what extent the substance actually causes conditions. According to the National Institutes of Health, “the strongest evidence to date concerns links between marijuana use and psychiatric disorders in those with a preexisting genetic or other vulnerability.”

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After California legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, emergency department visits and hospital admissions related to cannabis use increased by 89 percent by 2019. 

But frequency of ingestion, potency of the substance and the age at which individuals consume cannabis can all factor into risk profiles.

Severe cannabis use disorder is more common among adolescent users than adult users, and is more common among those with poor mental health. Frequent use of high potency marijuana has also been linked to poor memory, psychosis, and suicidal ideation. 

One study published in the journal Molecular Psychology found global rates of schizophrenia could decrease by nearly 10 percent if adolescents did not use marijuana. 

Advocates are also pushing for dispensaries to distribute information to first-time users warning of the heightened risks posed by high concentrations of THC. Efforts would also target those at a greater risk of adverse effects like drivers and pregnant individuals. 

Convincing patients that a legal substance can be dangerous is challenging for some providers, and heavy marketing directed at youths compounds this hurdle. However, those opposed to the bill say it imposes unnecessary burdens on dispensaries, as advertising is already prohibited for children and the legal age to buy cannabis in California is 21.

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Republican governor calls Hutchinson testimony ‘very compelling’

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Friday said the testimony former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave this week before the House Jan. 6 select committee was “very compelling.”

Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked as a special assistant to former President Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified before the Jan. 6 select committee on Tuesday, delivering a fly-on-the-wall account of what the president and top White House officials were doing before, during and after the Capitol riot.

A number of Republicans and ex-Trump officials have since sought to dismiss the former aide’s testimony, describing her as a low-level employee and seizing on a second-hand account she relayed to the committee about a car ride Trump took on Jan. 6  that has since come under scrutiny.

Asked about her testimony on Friday, the Arkansas governor, who is a frequent critic of Trump, said the ex-aide “clearly demonstrated her concern and love for our country.”

“Very compelling. I mean, anyone who appreciates the difficulty of someone being 25 and thrust into that incredible closeness to history and what even in her young age understood to be fundamentally wrong, and she testified to it,” Gov. Hutchinson told “CBS Mornings.”

“So my heart goes out to those that really stood firm during that time, and I think she clearly demonstrated her concern and love for our country,” he added.

Pressed on if he believes what she told the committee, the governor said, “I did.”

“She came across with a great deal of credibility,” he added, before criticizing the committee for not allowing cross examination, which is a frequent point brought up by Republicans.

The governor’s office confirmed that he is not related to Cassidy Hutchinson.

The ex-aide testified before the Jan. 6 panel on Tuesday, after speaking with committee investigators four times behind closed doors.

She told the committee that Trump knew the crowd at his Ellipse speech was armed but still directed them to the Capitol. Additionally, she testified that she was told that Trump, angry he was not allowed to go to the Capitol after his speech, lunged at the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle he was riding in.

She also said that Robert Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail, grasped the president’s arm and told him to take his hand off the steering wheel.

“Trump then used his free hand to lunge at Bobby Engel,” she testified.

She said she heard about the story from Tony Ornato, then deputy White House chief of staff. Engel was in the room when Ornato told her the story and did not refute any of the details, according to the ex-aide.

Trump denied lunging at the Secret Service on Thursday, and multiple outlets have reported that Engel and the driver of the vehicle are prepared to testify that Trump did not attack or assault them or move towards the steering wheel.

Gov. Hutchinson on Friday also told CBS that he will not support Trump if he runs for president again in 2024, arguing that “he acted irresponsibly during that time” and that he was a “risk to the nation.”

Additionally, the governor said he has not made a “commitment” on whether or not to run for president in 2024, adding, “I’m laying the foundation for that if that is something that’s gonna be helpful to our country,” which he has said in the past.

“So we’re looking at it, but no decision will be made till after this election in 2022,” he added on Friday.

Source: TEST FEED1

The world’s in no rush for the global tax deal — the US shouldn’t be either

In July 2021, over 130 countries agreed to an outline for international tax reform. With proponents championing it as a way to make corporations “pay their fair share,” the deal would change where some large multinational companies pay taxes and institute a global minimum tax.

At the time, the agreement spelled dramatic changes for tax policy. But a year later, the project seems stalled, with countries cautiously waiting for others to make the first move. The U.S. should take this as a warning before making tax changes of their own.

The push toward a global minimum tax deal, in many ways, began in 2017 with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which introduced a first-of-its-kind minimum tax on the foreign earnings of U.S. companies along with strong incentives for investment in the U.S.

These changes came with mixed results: While the 2017 rules under the Trump administration drove more investment and profitable assets to our shores, they made the tax code more opaque and more difficult to administer.

Those policies, along with other changes brought about by foreign jurisdictions, have successfully reversed the trend of U.S. companies keeping profits from some of their most valuable assets and activities outside the reach of the IRS.

Prior to 2017, headlines regularly announced U.S. companies shifting their headquarters to other jurisdictions. It was common for companies to ensure that software, patents, or other intellectual property (IP) landed in the lowest tax location possible.

Much of that intellectual property has now moved back to the U.S. This has expanded the U.S. tax base and helps to justify keeping high-value research and development activities here.

This shift can also be seen in trade data. Rather than U.S. companies providing services from offshore jurisdictions with no corporate taxes, they are now providing many of those services from the U.S.

But the 2017 tax law was far from perfect. A stated goal of the TCJA was to create a simpler tax code. But researchers ranked the complexity of the U.S. corporate tax system 50th out of 69 countries in 2020.

Complexity strains aside, with the Trump-era tax rules in place, other countries wanted a piece of the pie. Unfortunately, the global minimum tax deal negotiated by the Biden administration might give it to them, reversing the 2017 law’s positive trends while magnifying its weaknesses.

To begin, the approach taken by Congress to implement these new rules was premature. The House-passed Build Back Better Act (BBBA) was developed before model guidelines for the global minimum tax were released last December.

Compared to the model rules, the BBBA approach is more burdensome. The U.S. foreign tax credit rules require a mind-numbing amount of calculations across every jurisdiction where a U.S. company has operations. Those regulations recently became more difficult to deal with even in the absence of the BBBA passing the Senate. Rather than pivoting to a purer application of the global minimum tax rules or simplifying any of the U.S. international tax rules, Democrats have continued to double down on the worst parts of our international tax system.

The Biden plan would move the U.S. from having the second bite at the apple for the foreign earnings of U.S. companies to further back in line. The global minimum tax employs several tools, and if a country has a goal of raising revenue or protecting its existing tax base, the correct tools need to be deployed at the right time. The U.S. currently taxes foreign income immediately after a foreign government exercises its right to tax (or, in some cases, does not exercise that right). The BBBA approach exposes domestic profits of U.S. companies to tax liability elsewhere.

This would directly undermine the incentives that have supported increased research investment in the U.S. and led to the reshoring of valuable IP.

The TCJA started a conversation about a different way to tax multinationals, but a year since the landmark global agreement, it is time to reassess if we are heeding TCJA’s lessons.

Adopting the international tax proposals in the BBBA would make a challenging situation worse. The goals of simplicity and competitiveness have, unfortunately, been shoved aside, resulting in increasing the tax and administrative burden on U.S. multinationals and ensuring the U.S. is a less attractive place to invest.

Daniel Bunn, a global tax policy expert, is executive vice president of the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C.

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Pat Cipollone can aid or impede Jan. 6 Committee’s search for truth

On June 29, the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed former Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to testify. Cipollone faces what should be an easy choice: He can honor the oath that he took as a lawyer and public servant and share what he saw, said and heard during the events surrounding the criminal assault on the Capitol. Or he can serve as “Tom Hagen” to Donald Trump’s “Don Corleone,” acting as a consiglieri shielding “the boss” at all costs.

Cipollone would be on shaky legal grounds should he refuse to comply with the subpoena.

As White House Counsel, his role was as attorney for the office of the presidency, not for Donald Trump personally. Trump, in planning for the infamous rally on the Mall, the march to the Capitol and all of the other sordid activities that the Jan. 6 committee has illuminated, Trump was acting as a candidate — a disappointed but repudiated candidate — for reelection, not in his capacity as president.

President Ronald Reagan’s White House Counsel emphasized the importance of recognizing “the difference between the role of a lawyer for a private individual, as opposed to the lawyer for the institution of the presidency … Perhaps, one way to think about this is that the president is a person who is the temporary occupant of a governmental office.” 

Indeed, Trump was relying on his own separate, personal counsel to orchestrate his illicit quest to cling to power, the discredited lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

Because Cipollone’s role was not to represent Trump, no attorney-client privilege attaches to any of the communications between Cipollone and Trump in which the committee is interested. Fortunately for Cipollone and for the country, Trump cannot treat Cipollone as his lawyer for any of the events being investigated.

The District of Columbia’s rules of professional ethics expressly release a lawyer from any obligation of confidentiality when a client “has used . . . a lawyer’s services to further a crime or fraud.” A federal district court stated in March that it is more likely than not that Trump was engaged in both.

That statement came in the context of a federal court ruling that the “crime-fraud” exception applied to the dealings between Trump and Eastman — rejecting Eastman’s attempt to block the Jan. 6 Committee from getting access to materials that otherwise would have been privileged. It would be foolish for Cipollone to step anywhere close to inviting a similar adjudication of his own complicity, if any. 

He would be well-advised, personally and professionally, to acknowledge that he had — and has — no obligation to shield Trump in this matter. Instead, he should honor the oath he took as White House Counsel to support and defend the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Only full, truthful testimony will allow the country to know whether Donald Trump falls in that latter category.

Any concerns about “executive privilege” are equally weak as an excuse for refusing to tell the truth. As the Supreme Court made clear in the Nixon Tapes case, which one of us (Lacovara) successfully argued, the privilege is a limited one that applies only to official communications relating to performance of the president’s official, constitutional functions. It has no bearing at all on the activities of a political candidate challenging the results of an election, even if he happens to be president at the moment.

Moreover, as with the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege, the Supreme Court also made clear that executive privilege does not shield complicity in any criminal activity. 

Further, in Trump v. Thompson, the federal court of appeals in Washington ruled recently that the Jan. 6 committee’s need for access to information relating to Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol outweighed any executive privilege that Trump, as a former president, otherwise might have had standing to assert. The Supreme Court — with a dissent from only Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife was reportedly an active participant in Trump’s schemes — upheld the decision to disallow Trump’s claim of executive privilege.

In the face of these well-established principles, it would be difficult to imagine any reason why an honorable lawyer and public servant, as Cipollone is said to be, would defy a subpoena to come forward and tell the truth. 

His testimony matters, because no one, including Cassidy Hutchinson, has testified to any statement about what Cipollone told Trump about the potential criminality in Trump’s plans. Testimony establishing his disregard for Cipollone’s warnings would close a key loop on Trump’s corrupt action and intent.

One may infer that Cipollone told Trump, as he allegedly told Ms. Hutchinson, that “going to the Capitol … would be legally, a terrible idea,” and would open him to charges of “every crime imaginable.” The committee wants not mere inference, however, but rather proof — Cipollone’s testimony — of any warnings Trump received before allegedly attempting to go to the Capitol over the Secret Service’s unwillingness to take him there.  

If Cipollone, in an excess of caution, required any assurance that he is entitled to heed the subpoena and testify, he could arrange with the committee to obtain a prompt declaration from the federal court confirming the points that we are making.

But the one course that is not legitimately open to him is to remain defiant.

Stalling would reasonably be perceived as an attempt to run out the clock in order to promote Trump’s personal interests at the expense of the public’s. As an earnest conservative, Cipollone should heed the cautionary appeal of the political philosopher John Stuart Mill on whose work the founders heavily relied: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

Phillip Allen Lacovara was deputy solicitor general of the United States, counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor, and the winning advocate in United States v. Nixon. He also served as president of the District of Columbia Bar.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

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71 percent don't want Biden to run for reelection: poll

Seven in 10 Americans say they do not want President Biden to run for a second term, according to a new poll that comes as Biden’s approval numbers remain low and his party braces for losses this November.

A Harvard CAPS–Harris Poll survey shared exclusively with The Hill found that 71 percent of respondents polled do not think Biden should run for a second term, compared to 29 percent who say he should run.

Among the contingent of respondents who believe the president should not run, 45 percent said Biden should not make another bid because he is a bad president, while about one-third of respondents said he is too old and about one-quarter said because it is time for a change.

“President Biden may want to run again but the voters say ‘no’ to the idea of a second term, panning the job he is doing as president. Only 30 percent of Democrats would even vote for him in a Democratic presidential primary,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS–Harris Poll survey, said.

But a majority of respondents — 61 percent — also say former President Trump should not run for the White House in 2024. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said the former president should run again. 

Among the respondents polled who believe Trump should not make another bid in the next presidential cycle, 36 percent said Trump was erratic, 33 percent said he would divide the country and 30 percent said he was responsible for Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of pro-Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election results.

A majority of those polled said they would consider a moderate independent candidate should Biden and Trump square off against each other in 2024, including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats polled.

Sixty percent said they would consider a moderate independent candidate for president if Biden and Trump ended up running against each other in the next presidential cycle, compared to 40 percent who said they would not consider it. 

Broken down by party, 53 percent of Republicans polled and 64 percent of Democrats said they would consider a moderate independent candidate in that situation.

The development comes as Biden continues to suffer low approval ratings. The Harvard CAPS–Harris Poll survey found that the president has an overall approval rating of 38 percent, with respondents giving him low marks on handling inflation (28 percent), the economy (32 percent), stimulating jobs (43 percent) and reacting to COVID-19 (50 percent), among other issues.

Democrats are already bracing for losses this November given Biden’s low approval numbers and the historical precedent that a first-term president’s party generally suffers losses in the midterm elections. 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week overturning Roe v. Wade, Democrats have used abortion as an issue to galvanize voters, though it is unclear how the issue will compare to inflation and other concerns in November.

The polling also demonstrates that while Trump is considered one of the most influential people within his party, Americans may not necessarily be married to the idea of voting for him in 2024. 

Some of that comes against the backdrop of the House Jan. 6 select committee hearings, which have sought to show how the former president and his allies tried to get state officials and others like former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey was conducted on June 28 and 29 with 1,308 registered voters surveyed. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.

Source: TEST FEED1