As Clarence Thomas faces record unpopularity, Americans want an ethics code for the Supreme Court

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ended a monthslong saga last week by officially disclosing trips paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

The incident brought to light a key fact: Unlike other federal courts and the executive and legislative branches, the US Supreme Court does not have a formal ethics code.

Americans, it turns out, don’t think the Supreme Court should be an exception in this case. And when it comes to honesty and ethics, they believe the justices on the court are, at best, average. CONTINUED

Harry Enten, CNN

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The nation’s population is growing — but Congress is standing still

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The country’s population grows every year, but the size of the U.S. House of Representatives does not. And over time, that has had a big impact on how representation in Congress’s lower chamber works, prompting some lawmakers to wonder if it’s time to grow the House — something that hasn’t happened for decades.

Under law, the House is currently locked at a ceiling of 435 members. That may sound a lot of people, and most Americans are likely unable to name even a dozen House members, but the U.S. is big country made up of more than 330 million people. When you do the math, that means the average House district represents something like 765,000 people. CONTINUED

Dante Chinni, NBC News

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Why Biden Just Can’t Shake Trump in the Polls

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Like so many bands of wind and rain, hurricane-strength squalls of bad news have battered former President Donald Trump all year. Since April, he’s been indicted four times, on 91 separate felony charges, compared with zero counts for all of his White House predecessors. …

President Joe Biden, by contrast, has been basking in mostly good news. Over recent months, inflation has mostly moderated, job growth has remained steady, and the stock market has recovered briskly. Seemingly every week, Biden cuts a ribbon for an ambitious infrastructure project or new clean-energy plant made possible by a trio of sweeping laws he signed during his first two years. …

And yet national polls, as well as surveys in the key swing states, consistently show Biden and Trump locked in a dead heat when voters are asked about a possible 2024 rematch between them. …

But more than structural “calcification,” as three political scientists called this phenomenon in a recent book on the 2020 election titled The Bitter End, explains the standoff in this summer’s polls between Biden and Trump. The two men are pinioned so close together also because they are caught between the four forces that have most powerfully reshaped the electoral landscape since they first met, in the November 2020 presidential election. Two of these dynamics are benefiting Democrats; two are bolstering Republicans. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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A record-breaking summer

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Record temperatures across the globe, a record-breaking hurricane in Florida, and a once-in-a-century tropical storm in Southern California. The weather this summer has seemed out of control.

It seems like climate change is on our doorstep, leaving some experts predicting that record weather may become our new norm.

What have Americans made of the extreme weather? CONTINUED

Clifford Young & Bernard Mendez, Ipsos

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Biden’s age is a significant concern for voters

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About three quarters of the public think Joe Biden is too old to effectively serve as President of the United States. While Republicans are more likely to think so, most Democrats believe it as well. Although Donald Trump is only three years younger than Biden, only about half of the adults agree that he is too old to effectively serve another term. While a large share of Democrats think Trump is too old, significantly fewer Republicans think so.

When asked about the first word that comes to mind when they think of each candidate, 26% of all adults cited Biden’s age and 15% mentioned words associated with being slow and confused, while only 1% and 3% did so for Trump, respectively. For Trump, nearly a quarter mentioned words associated with corruption, crime, lying, or untrustworthiness, while only 8% mentioned those traits for Biden. …

Two-thirds of the public supports setting age limits for the President, members of Congress, and Supreme Court Justices. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to favor age limits for presidents and Supreme Court Justices. However, the same shares of both Democrats and Republicans favor age limits on members of Congress. CONTINUED

AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

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Most Iowa GOP caucusgoers are ‘pro-life’ and ‘traditional’ conservatives

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Iowa voters who are likely to participate in next year’s GOP presidential caucuses are self-described “traditional” conservatives and stridently opposed to abortion rights, according to new data from the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom statewide poll.

A whopping 80% of likely Republican caucusgoers said they would use the phrase “pro-life” to describe themselves, the top attribute in the survey, which was conducted by Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer. Seven in 10 describe themselves as “traditional conservative.” Nearly 80% of those surveyed also identify with the phrases “afraid for the Constitution” and “disgruntled with government.” CONTINUED

Bridget Bowman, NBC News

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