Trump-Backed Wyoming Gubernatorial Candidate Falls in Primary

Foster Friess, Wyoming gubernatorial candidate and GOP megadonor, l ost the race for the Republican nomination on Tuesday. Friess, supported by Donald Trump, received an endorsement earlier in the day when the President tweeted : “Go VOTE TODAY for Foster Friess – He will be a fantastic Governor! Strong on Crime, Borders & 2nd Amendment. Loves our Military & our Vets. He has my complete and total Endorsement!” The president’s endorsement was not enough, as Friess suffered a defeat to Repubican primary winner State Treasurer Mark Gordon by a margin of six percentage points. According to most the recent PRRI polling , 86 percent of Republicans continue to view Donald Trump favorably.

Dan Cox: Young Women Don’t Think Trump Is on Their Side

PRRI Research Director Dan Cox was quoted in a recent Newsweek piece regarding whether the Republican Party will ever regain the majority of votes cast by young women. Newsweek recapped Cox’s most recent appearance on “What America’s Thinking,” on Hill.TV. This week, Cox and fellow guest Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.” analyzed whether President Donald Trump has done irreparable damage to the GOP’s appeal to young women voters. “Young women, particularly when it comes to reproductive health issues and other concerns, they think that Trump is not on their side, and that is a little bit unique,” Cox told host Krystal Ball. PRRI’s most recent study examined this even further. “Close to half (45 percent) of women say Trump’s policies have been harmful to women, while only 30 percent of men say the same,” the study reports. “About one-quarter (23 percent) of men say Trump’s policies have helped women, while only 14 percent of women express this view. Similar numbers of men (36 percent) and women (32 percent) say they do not believe there has been any effect on women.”

D.C. School Drops Name of Slave-Owning Mayor and Renames it After First Black Principal

When students at the former Orr Elementary School returned to class for the coming school term, they walked into a brand-new building next to the remains of their old school. The building carries a new name, Lawrence Boone Elementary School. The school had previously been named for Benjamin Orr, a former mayor of Washington, D.C., who owned slaves. When the student body found out, they pushed to rename the school after a black principal who had presided over the halls from 1970-1995. Special education teacher Kelly Jones explains why to WAMU, “As students and as faculty and as people involved in the school, we were like, ‘Well as a predominantly black school, could we have that name represent us, our student body?’ And the students were just like, ‘No that’s not right.’” Though Lawrence Boone died in 2013, his daughter, Littyce Boone was on hand for the opening of the new school. “I’ve gone over to the cemetery,” she tells WAMU. “I was like, ‘Daddy, we did it. Your name. Your legacy, everything is carrying on.’”

GOP Representative and Wife Indicted

On Tuesday, an indictment against Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and his wife Margaret, was unsealed, detailing how the Hunters misused and abused campaign money for personal expenses. The indictment showcases how the Hunter family routinely used a campaign credit card to pay for extravagances like large bar bills, expensive hotels, lavish vacations, and smaller items like groceries and party supplies. The Hunters lived beyond their means and racked up thousands in overdraft fees and other credit card debt. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) issued the following statement on the Hunter fiasco: “The charges against Rep. Hunter are deeply serious. The Ethics Committee deferred its investigation at the request of the Justice Department. Now that he has been indicted, Rep. Hunter will be removed from his committee assignments pending the resolution of this matter.”

How Sexism Follows Women

A new study shows that in places where sexist attitudes are more prevalent, the earnings of homegrown white women are negatively impacted relative to white women born elsewhere. Jim Tankersley writes in The New York Times , “Perhaps most strikingly, the study finds that a woman’s lifelong earnings and how much she works are influenced by the levels of sexism in the state where she was born. A woman born in the Deep South is likely to face a much wider economic gender gap than a woman born on the Pacific Coast, the research shows, even if both women move to New York as adults.” The study, which will be released as a working paper, comes from economists Kerwin Kofi Charles of the University of Chicago, Jonathan Guryan of Northwestern University and Jessica Pan of the National University of Singapore.

Transgender Vermont Gubernatorial Candidate Reports Death Threats

Christine Hallquist, the transgender politician campaigning to be the next governor of Vermont, revealed this week that she has received death threats throughout her campaign. “Early on when our team assembled, I said, ‘the more successful we are, the more vitriol and threats we are going to receive,’” Hallquist told reporters on Tuesday . “It’s kind of a natural outcome of our divided country.” According to Hallquist, the unspecified threats have changed how her campaign interacts with potential voters. If a request comes in from out of state, the campaign will not specify where Hallquist will be. Threats against Hallquist are the latest threats against a transgender woman to receive headlines. In Oklahoma , a 12-year-old girl and her family are moving to Houston after parents in a Facebook group threatened kill the child. Recent PRRI data show that 59 percent of the country believe that transgender people face a lot of discrimination in the United States. However, when the same question was asked in 2013, 71 percent of respondents said the same.