In 2018, PRRI looked at how Americans feel about more women running for public office. “Six in ten Americans (60%) agree with this, up slightly from 58% who agreed in 2016. The number of Americans who completely agree has increased from 16% in 2016 to 26% in 2018,” PRRI wrote. A new piece at FiveThirtyEight examines a rise in women running for office in 2020, many of them running as Republicans. PRRI Board Chair Melissa Deckman tells FiveThirtyEight that after a bump in Republican women running in 2010, numbers fell off. “But as the tea party movement began losing steam in 2012 and 2014 (or at least started morphing into something different), the number of Republican women running also dropped off,” FiveThirtyEight reports.

PRRI data from April shows that 77% of Americans oppose religious exemptions to stay-at-home orders, including 40% who strongly oppose such a policy. Despite this, churches across the U.S. are opening their doors, and congregants are showing up. PRRI Public Fellow Eric L. McDaniel writes of this phenomena in a new piece for Sojourners. “Americans are outliers regarding levels of religious fervor. As income and industrialization increase in nations, religiosity is expected to decrease—the U.S is the exception and the most religious nation (by statistics) among its industrialized counterparts,” McDaniel writes.

In 2018, PRRI found that Americans were split on whether churches and places of worship should be required to provide no cost access to contraception in employees’ healthcare plans. Half of Americans (50%) said they should not, while 45% said they were obligated to. Majorities of Americans say publicly held corporations (66%), privately owned corporations (61%), religiously-affiliated hospitals (59%), religiously affiliated colleges and universities (54%), and privately owned small businesses (53%) should be required to provide such coverage. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-2 that employers with religious objections would not be obligated to provide contraception in a healthcare plan, thus making the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate null. “Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, wrote that the justices held that the government “had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption.” He was joined in full by Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,” reports CNN.

Earlier this year, PRRI asked Americans if they would be comfortable getting on a plane during the spread of the coronavirus. Nearly four in five Americans (79%) said they were likely to avoid flying. In The New York Times, Elaine Glusac looks at how different airlines are handling social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. Some airlines, like American and United Airlines are packing flights to the max. Others like JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are providing empty seats so passengers can stay further away from one another. “The problem will only grow as demand for travel grows. On July 2, the Transportation Security Administration reached a high of 764,761 travelers passing through its airport checkpoints, the highest figure since March 18 but still well below the more than 2 million travelers processed the same day a year ago,” The Times reports.