The Search for a Church That Isn’t a Church

Continuing the NPR series, “Enlighten Me,” Rachel Martin cites the finding that nearly 30% of Americans consider themselves “unaffiliated” from any religious institution from PRRI’s 2022 Census of American Religion. For comparison, in 1991, only 6% of Americans said they were religiously unaffiliated. Martin talks with Perry Bacon, author of a recent Washington Post piece about being a religious “none,” about how his engagement with the Black Lives Matter movement as well as his former church’s exclusion of LGBTQ people contributed to his move away from organized religion.

Judge Hearing Florida Abortion-Ban Case Has a Huge Conflict of Interest

For The New Republic, Tori Otten reports that a Florida Supreme Court justice who heard arguments in a case that will decide the future of abortion rights in the state is married to a Republican state representative who co-sponsored the state’s six-week abortion ban. Five of the seven state Supreme Court justices are conservatives appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and, if the court dismisses this legal challenge and upholds the current 15-week ban, the six-week ban that DeSantis signed into law in April, automatically goes into effect. PRRI finds that 64% of Floridians say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

White House Urges Eligible Immigrants to Apply for Work Permits

At The New York Times, Michael D. Shear describes the Biden administration’s new effort to encourage migrants who are eligible to apply for work permits to do so in the hopes of reducing the cost of housing and supporting hundreds of thousands of recently-arrived migrants. Currently, most migrants have to wait approximately six months after they file an asylum application to apply for permission to work. Federal officials have sent over one million text messages to those who entered the United States legally through special programs and are able to immediately apply for work permits as well as those who are nearing the end of their waiting period. PRRI research finds that 61% of Americans say that immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents.

Over 75% of Voters Want Maximum Age Limit for Elected Officials, Poll Shows

Shauneen Miranda at Axios reports that over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a new CBS News/YouGov survey. Recently, more attention has been paid to politicians’ ability to serve, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had his second apparent freeze-up in as many months in August and amid ongoing concerns about President Biden’s age. Support for an age limit is bipartisan: 76% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans support maximum age limits for elected officials. Overall, 45% of respondents said the maximum age limit for elected officials should be 70.

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Read PRRI’s full report “Welcoming Immigration Policies Remain Popular, But Immigration Is Not a Critical Issue for Most Americans” here.