PRRI’s most recent data shows that President Trump’s favorability among seniors has declined from 56% in March to 42% in April before rising slightly to 50% in May. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, seniors (especially those residing in nursing homes) have been particularly vulnerable to the disease. In The Atlantic, Olga Khazan writes of the vulnerability of seniors and notes that Trump “has scaled back his engagement on the coronavirus.” According to Khazan, 40% of the nearly 130,000 deaths in the U.S. due to the coronavirus are residents, and staff of nursing home facilities.

In a national poll on the favorability of LGBT nondiscrimination protections, PRRI found a majority of Americans favored laws that protect LGBT residents. Among those Americans were 62% of Montana residents. In Great Falls, Montana, population 58,990, a local LGBT group is pushing the city to adopt further LGBT nondiscrimination protections. “A lot of people assume the law in Montana prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” Laura Wight of the Great Falls LGBTQ+ Center tells The Great Falls Tribune. Despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court bill protecting LGBT citizens from workplace discrimination, there are no federal laws on the books concerning discrimination in housing and other situations.

In a recent piece for The Hill, Juan Williams of Fox News claims that President Donald Trump’s favorability among his base is “cracking.” “With four months to go before Election Day, all Trump can do now is ask his evangelical supporters to overlook his failures in exchange for more promises, especially continuing to pack the federal courts with conservative judges who are hostile to abortion rights and gay rights,” Williams writes. Williams believes that Trump is banking on such a promise to “motivate evangelicals and Catholics to turn out for him.” Recent PRRI data shows that “37% of white Catholics hold favorable views of Trump, down from 60%in March. By contrast, 40% of nonwhite Protestants hold favorable views of Trump, which is mostly steady since March 2020 but a significant increase from 30% across 2019. More than six in ten (62%) of white evangelical Protestants remain supportive of Trump.”

In a recent speech at Mount Rushmore on the 3rd of July, President Trump referred to monuments to members of the Confederacy as “sacred.” According to PRRI CEO and founder Robert P. Jones, Trump’s choice of words goes beyond the rhetorical. “Trump’s use of ‘sacred’ to refer to Confederate monuments is not just rhetoric. Nearly all of these monuments to white supremacy were blessed by white Christian clergy & churches when they were unveiled,” Jones said in a recent tweet. Jones explains this history, and more, in his forthcoming text, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” available for pre-order now.