March Madness sports betting is a booming business for states

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… WalletHub estimates there will be more than $10 billion worth of gambling around the 2023 edition of the NCAA Tournament. Over 50% of Americans will place an online wager on the event.

Those are big numbers, and they are not all coming in strictly above-the-board methods.

About 40% of the money will be wagered illegally in the games, according to WalletHub. But that also means the remaining tournament gambling will be done through legal methods.

That legal share has grown because the number of places allowed to place legal bets on games — online and in-person — has increased in recent years. CONTINUED

Dante Chinni, NBC News

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Why Joe Biden is playing defense on crime

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The Senate this week passed a Republican-led resolution to overturn a Washington, DC, crime law, which critics have argued is soft on violent criminals.

Almost two-thirds of Senate Democrats backed the measure after President Joe Biden announced an about-face by saying he wouldn’t veto the legislation to nullify that law. His move came after a majority of House Democrats had opposed the same measure in their chamber, and Biden’s decision angered many of them, including vulnerable members who opposed the bill believing the president was going to veto it.

So just what was Biden thinking? Why would he leave members of his own party out to dry? A look at the political terrain and certain crime statistics indicate that Biden probably felt boxed in and didn’t want to be seen as soft on crime heading into the 2024 presidential election. CONTINUED

Harry Enten, CNN

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How people think about gender equality

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This week marked International Women’s Day and the start of Women’s History Month. A lot has happened in the lead-up to this week. Nikki Haley, the first female candidate to enter the 2024 race for the White House, announced her candidacy a few weeks ago. Comments about her gender and age began soon after.

Outside of that, gender is playing an enormous role in politics globally and domestically. The overturn of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. pushed questions of gender and bodily autonomy to the front of the national debate and factored heavily into the midterms. Globally, protests over the detainment and death of Masha Amini began in Iran and spread throughout the world in recent months too.

At the same time, the legacy of the pandemic on work, life, and gender inequality is still percolating in the background. With these factors at play, The U.N. chief now warned that gender equality is 300 years away.

In light of all of this, this week, we take a look at how gender and age frame attitudes and approaches to gender equality in the U.S. and around the world. CONTINUED

Mallory Newall, Sarah Feldman & Clifford Young, Ipsos

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Iowa Poll: Trump’s Republican support erodes as DeSantis’ favorability starts strong

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Many Iowa Republicans remain committed to Donald Trump, but the former president is seeing his support erode as campaigning begins to heat up ahead of Iowa’s 2024 presidential caucuses, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.

Trump, who launched a third White House bid late last year, has seen his favorability numbers in the first-in-the-nation caucus state steadily decline among Republicans since they peaked in September 2021. And the percentage of Iowa Republicans who say they would “definitely” vote for him if he were the nominee in 2024 has plummeted by more than 20 percentage points since June 2021.

“Iowa is where the competition starts,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the Iowa Poll. “And someone who has already held the office and who won the state twice would be presumed to be the front-runner, and I don’t know that we can say that at this point. There’s nothing locked in about Iowa for Donald Trump.” CONTINUED

Brianne Pfannenstiel & Francesca Block, Des Moines Register

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The Groundhog Campaign of 2024

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Donald Trump is back, and it’s useless to deny it. The Republican Party, the media, and America have seen everything and learned nothing about the protean force that has consumed our politics and culture for nearly a decade. Today, they’re repeating the same mistakes of 2015 and 2016. …

To beat Trump means tossing aside every cautious instinct and being strong enough to withstand the vile insults, constant death threats, and insane agitprop from his most fervent supporters.

The GOP wannabes can’t and won’t. They all operate under the strategic frame of “I can win the MAGA base when Trump implodes.” Just like he imploded in 2016, right? CONTINUED

Reed Galen & Rick Wilson, Resolute Square

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How Biden Is Shaping the 2024 Battlefield

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President Joe Biden is following a strategy of asymmetrical warfare as the 2024 presidential race takes shape. Through the early maneuvering, the leading Republican candidates, particularly former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are trying to ignite a procession of culture-war firefights against what DeSantis calls “the woke mind virus.”

With the exception of abortion rights, Biden, by contrast, is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues. Instead Biden is targeting his communication with the public almost exclusively on delivering tangible economic benefits to working-class families, such as lower costs for insulin, the protection of Social Security and Medicare, and the creation of more manufacturing jobs.

While the leading Republican presidential contenders are effectively asking voters “Who shares your values?” or, in the harshest versions, “Who shares your resentments?,” Biden wants voters to ask “Who is on your side?” CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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