Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to trust the CDC

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In a recent poll, YouGov asked 1,000 Americans their opinions on 18 federal government agencies and departments that have been the subject of controversy in recent years. This includes agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Homeland Security. The findings show that Americans are most likely to trust NASA and NOAA, and least likely to trust ICE and the IRS. We also find that Republicans are far less trusting of most government agencies than Democrats are, with the exception of agencies focused on enforcing laws around immigration. CONTINUED

Taylor Orth, YouGov

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Russian Public Accepts Putin’s Spin on Ukraine Conflict

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While the whole world seems to be watching the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, a new joint survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center conducted March 24–30 shows that most people living in Russia are not following these events closely. Nevertheless, a majority of Russians say they support their country’s military action—with just over half strongly backing it. For the most part, Russians think these actions are being taken to protect and defend fellow Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, to protect Russia itself, or to “denazify” Ukraine—storylines that have been amplified by the Russian government’s media apparatus. CONTINUED

Dina Smeltz, Emily Sullivan, Lily Wojtowicz, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Denis Volkov & Stepan Goncharov, Levada Analytical Center

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U.S. Approval Ratings Retreat After Afghanistan Withdrawal

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After a strong rebound during President Joe Biden’s first six months in office, approval ratings of U.S. leadership around the world slipped in the second half of the year, coinciding with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. …

Biden ended his first year in office with a 45% median approval rating across a total of 116 countries and territories. While far from a ringing global endorsement of U.S. leadership, this rating is much higher than the 30% approval rating in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency or any of the previous ratings during the Trump administration. CONTINUED

Julie Ray, Gallup

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How Jackson will sharpen the Supreme Court’s core conflict

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… Just 51 years old, Jackson will likely spend decades at the center of the gathering conflict between the deeply conservative inclinations of the GOP-appointed justices and the preferences of a diversifying America, particularly the massive millennial and Generation Z cohorts born since 1980, which constitute the most racially and culturally diverse generations in American history. …

The Supreme Court’s docket is crowded with cases that threaten the priorities of those younger generations. …

In polling by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, Americans younger than 40 express views far more liberal than those of most Republicans — especially those who also identify as White evangelical Christians — on virtually every cultural and civil rights issue imaginable, from abortion to whether immigrants threaten or benefit American society to requiring transgender people to use the bathrooms of the sexes they were assigned at birth to whether police killings of black men are isolated incidents or part of a systemic pattern, according to previously unpublished results provided to CNN. On most of the cultural disputes it is deciding, the court majority “is clearly going against the tide of general public opinion,” especially among the young, says Robert P. Jones, the institute’s founder and CEO. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

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A recession would only deepen Democratic woes

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As awful as the last 15 months have been for Democrats since they completed the electoral trifecta of winning control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, there is a strong chance that things get a lot worse. Last summer it was Afghanistan that began to weigh down President Biden’s previously satisfactory job-approval ratings. Then inflation began to take its toll on his numbers. Now an even more dreaded “R” word (recession) looks like more and more of a threat. …

In terms of politics, what’s worse than a train wreck? Democrats may be about to find out. CONTINUED

Charlie Cook, National Journal

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Biden Approval Rating Shows Signs Of Life — But Not Among Independents

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President Joe Biden’s approval rating has continued to surface after plunging to deeply unpopular levels early this year, the April IBD/TIPP Poll finds. But the recovery has been one-dimensional — almost entirely among Democrats — as rampant inflation causes widespread financial stress among American households. …

With Covid remaining under control and restrictions having lapsed, approval of Biden’s handling of the pandemic improved to 46%-33% from 43%-36% in March. … Yet Biden continues to get poor marks for his handling of the economy, with inflation hitting a 40-year high of 7.9% in February. Now 44% of adults disapprove of Biden’s economic policies and 33% approve, a modest improvement from 47%-32% in March. CONTINUED

Jed Graham, Investor’s Business Daily

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