According to PRRI data from 2019, Americans are divided along party lines over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, with 70% of Democrats saying it is more a symbol of racism than Southern pride, along with 41% of independents, and just 17% of Republicans. This week, dozens of congressional Republicans voted alongside Democrats to remove tributes to prominent members of the Confederacy from the Capitol building. “It’s time to sweep away the last vestiges of Jim Crow and the dehumanizing of individuals because of the color of their skin that intruded for too long on the sacred spaces of our democracy,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), said hours before the vote. It is unclear if Republicans in the Senate will take up the bill.

“White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” the upcoming book from PRRI CEO and founder Robert P. Jones, has received early praise from James Astill in The Economist. “Melding history, theology, statistical modelling and his own experience, as a Southern Baptist seminarian, Mr Jones suggests in ‘White Too Long’ that white Christian traditions are so steeped in historic racism that ‘the norms of white supremacy have become deeply and broadly integrated into white Christian identity,” Astill writes. “White Too Long” is currently available for pre-order ahead of its release on July 28th.

In the 2019 American Values Survey, just 38% of Americans said that the gap between the rich and the poor was a critical issue in the United States. In Axios, Dion Rabouin writes about the myths of the racial wealth gap in the United States, and the centuries of inequality that has influenced it. “The fact of the matter — evidenced by decades of reporting from the Federal Reserve System, U.S. Department of Labor, Department of Commerce and various academic and professional studies — is that the wealth gap is the product of centuries of inequality and racism that has grown too large to be impacted significantly by individual actions, achievements or choices,” Rabouin writes.

In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein writes of continued partisan problems in the United States and how President Donald Trump has spread the parties further apart. Trump is currently in a public battle with local governments over the legality and necessity of deploying federal troops to curb protest movements. “He is trying to rally red America by portraying blue cities as a threat, and then positioning himself as the human wall against them. Until now, Trump has advanced that divisive vision through rhetoric denouncing cities and through policies that cost them money and influence,” Brownstein writes. Recent PRRI data shows that 84% of Republicans hold favorable views of Trump, compared to just 7% of Democrats.