3.26.19 PRRI Report Shows Widespread Support for LGBT Protections
| PRRI Report Shows Widespread Support for LGBT Protections On Tuesday, PRRI released Fifty Years After Stonewall: Widespread Support LGBT Issues Findings from Americans Values Atlas 2018. The new survey shows that a majority of people in all 50 states, and both political parties support laws that would provide more nondiscrimination protection for the LGBT community. “The broad support for laws to protect LGBT people from discrimination represents a rarity in our polarized politics today—an issue that actually brings Americans together across partisan, religious, and geographic lines,” notes PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones in a release about the new report.The report is released amid the recent political conversation about LGBT rights, following the reintroduction of the Equality Act by Congress. |
| Buttigieg Finds Newfound Popularity Just weeks after polling at zero percent, Pete Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is now polling third among announced and potential Democratic presidential candidates. A new Emerson poll shows Buttigieg polling at 11 percent, behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with 24 percent, and former Vice President Joe Biden with 25 percent. “I get that my presence here is a little bit unlikely,” Buttigieg tells CNN.”(I get) that it is not customary for a millennial, Midwestern mayor to be in the conversation about the future of the free world.” |
| After Investigation, House Judiciary Committee Plans to Subpoena Barr On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr announced that special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence of criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Barr’s statement to Congress included Mueller’s statement that the findings did not exonerate or condemn President Donald Trump of any wrongdoing; however, Barr offered his own pardon for Trump. In his analysis, Barr stated that President Trump had not committed any crime while campaigning for or holding public office. Not long after Barr’s summary was made public, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the head of the House Judiciary Committee, announced plans to subpoena Barr’s testimony on the matter. According to PRRI data from 2018, 39 percent of the country had a favorable view of Mueller, while 45 percent had an unfavorable view. |
| New Challenges for the 2020 Presidential Election: ‘Medicare For All’ The “Medicare For All” platform, a program that would offer a national health insurance program for all U.S. residents, may create additional obstacles for Democratic presidential candidates, according to the Associated Press. “The ‘Medicare for All’ legislation that’s become a clarion call for progressives has two little-noticed provisions that could make it even more politically perilous for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates,” writesRicardo Alonso-Zaldivar. Alonso-Zaldivar believes two elements make the program politically contentious—the expansion of public healthcare for undocumented Americans and the elimination of restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions. The author cites PRRI polling in exploring where Americans stand on the issue of public funding of abortion services. “A Public Religion Research Institute poll earlier in 2018 found that 51 percent of Americans said government insurance programs for low-income women should not pay for abortion services, while 46 percent said they should,” Zaldivar says. |