The poll results are in: Hageman holds commanding lead over Cheney

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Former President Donald Trump’s pick to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney in the race for Wyoming’s lone House seat holds a commanding 22-point lead with a month until the primary, a new Casper Star-Tribune poll shows.

Natural resources attorney Harriet Hageman leads Cheney 52% to 30%, the poll shows. No other challenger received more than 5% support. Only 11% of voters were undecided. CONTINUED

Victoria Eavis, Casper Star-Tribune

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Mother Nature Dissents

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Mother Nature is entering a dissenting opinion on last month’s Supreme Court decision that weakened the federal government’s ability to combat climate change.

With record heat in Texas that is testing the state’s power grid, a California wildfire that has threatened an ancient grove of sequoias considered a foundation stone of the national-park system, and persistent drought across the West that is forcing unprecedented cutbacks in water deliveries from the Colorado River, the summer of 2022 already is shaping up as another season of extreme and dangerous environmental conditions.

The paradox is that precisely as these events are dramatizing the rising costs of inaction on climate change, Washington faces more difficulty in taking action. That’s not only because of the Supreme Court but also because of the resistance to sweeping legislation in the Senate from every Republican as well as Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who represents one of the top coal-producing states, West Virginia. Adding to the strain: The states most integrated into the existing fossil-fuel economy—almost all of them controlled by Republicans—are escalating their efforts to block action on climate change from the federal government and even the private sector. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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Americans’ Views on Federalism as States Take on More Power

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The U.S. Supreme Court concluded its recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade by saying that decisions on abortion would now be returned “to the people and their elected representatives.” This raises the question of which elected representatives. It is possible that the voice of the people and their elected representatives could be heard through abortion laws passed at the national level — either allowing or banning abortion. But with a divided Congress, such national laws appear unlikely at this juncture.

Instead, the focus has mainly been on the 50 states of the union. …

Political identity is highly related to preferences for state versus federal power. Remarkably, this partisan difference has persisted over the past eight decades. In 1936, 72% of Democrats favored the federal government theory of government, compared with 35% of Republicans. In 2016, 80 years later, 62% of Democrats favored the federal government, compared with 17% of Republicans.

More generally, a good deal of data show that the American public is more confident in their state government than in the federal government. This reflects the truism that Americans are, in general, more positive about government the more local it is. CONTINUED

Frank Newport, Gallup

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All-America Economic Survey: Biden’s job approval hits all-time record low

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CNBC’s Steve Liesman joins ‘Squawk Box’ to report on the All America Survey, which reveals Americans thoughts on President Biden’s performance.

CNBC

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Young Voters Are Fed Up With Their (Much) Older Leaders

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… While voters across the spectrum express rising doubts about the country’s political leadership, few groups are as united in their discontent as the young.

A survey from The New York Times and Siena College found that just 1 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds strongly approve of the way Mr. Biden is handling his job. And 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted another candidate to run two years from now. Of all age groups, young voters were most likely to say they wouldn’t vote for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.

The numbers are a clear warning for Democrats as they struggle to ward off a drubbing in the November midterm elections. …

Interviews with these young voters reveal generational tensions driving their frustration. As they have come of age facing racial strife, political conflict, high inflation and a pandemic, they have looked for help from politicians who are more than three times their age. CONTINUED

Maya King & Jonathan Weisman, New York Times

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Americans Divided Over Direction of Biden’s Climate Change Policies

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More than a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, the public is divided over the administration’s approach to climate change: 49% of U.S. adults say the Biden administration’s policies on climate change are taking the country in the right direction, while 47% say these climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. …

Ratings of Biden’s approach to climate change – and the federal government’s role dealing with the issue – are deeply partisan. A majority of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP (82%) say Biden’s climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, most say Biden is moving the country in the right direction on climate policy (79%). …

Despite these polarized attitudes, the Pew Research Center survey of 10,282 U.S. adults conducted from May 2 to 8, 2022, finds broad public agreement on some specific policies to address climate change. CONTINUED

Brian Kennedy, Alec Tyson & Cary Funk, Pew Research Center

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