Griffin: Trump Still Popular Among Republicans

A new piece from Voice of America(VOA) examines how Trump supporters have remained loyal to the president, despite a myriad of scandals surrounding the administration. PRRI Associate Research Director Rob Griffin, PhD, spoke to VOA about WHY this is happening. Griffin says, “Trump has been able to sort of hit on key Republican pieces of legislation-things that they’ve wanted to do for years, like tax cuts. Even a lot of his immigration policies are popular among the general Republican population.” A July PRRI survey found that Trump is still popular among Republicans, despite fairly low overall favorability. PRRI found that 86 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 41 percent of overall Americans who say the same.

Republican Senator Thinks About Leaving the Republican Party Every Day

Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) appeared on CNN Sunday to talk about recent comments he made on wanting to leave the Republican Party. Sasse doubled down on this notion in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” According to Sasse, he thinks about leaving the Republican Party “every morning”  but sticks around because he is loyal to the party of “Lincoln and Reagan.” Sasse says, “The main thing the Democrats are for is being anti-Republican and anti-Trump. The main thing Republicans are for is being anti-Democrat and anti-CNN. And neither of these things are really worth getting out of bed in the morning for.” In 2017, PRRI asked Americans whether they felt that “the policies of the Republican Party generally move the country in the right direction, are somewhat misguided but not dangerous, or…so misguided they pose a serious threat to the country.” Twenty-three percent of Americans said the party was moving the country in the right direction, while 41 percent said their policies were misguided, but not dangerous. Thirty percent of respondents said the party posed a serious threat. A majority (55 percent) of Republicans say their party’s policies are moving the country in the right direction, while 35 percent say they are misguided and seven percent say they are a threat.

China Bars Protestant Churches in Beijing

An “underground” Protestant church in China has been shut down by authorities, despite the country’s constitution  allowing religious freedom. The Zion church in Beijing was shuttered by authorities, and “illegal promotional materials” were confiscated. The closure comes months after the Zion church, along with dozens of other local Protestant churches, released a statement criticizing “obstruction” by the government. The church had previously protested against a request to install closed circuit televisions that the government could use to monitor their ceremonies. Christian Shepherd of Reuters writes, “China’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but since President Xi Jinping took office six years ago the government has tightened restrictions on religions seen as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Communist Party.”

Dallas Officer Faces Charges for Manslaughter

Amber Guyger, a Dallas police officer, is facing a manslaughter charge for fatally shooting her black neighbor in his downtown apartment last Thursday. Guyger, who is white, mistakenly entered Botham Shem Jean’s apartment after she thought it was her own, according to police. She was off-duty at the time while still in uniform. Guyger is now on administrative leave and was released from Kaufman County Jail Sunday night after posting a $300,000 bond. There has been no official explanation for why Guyger mistook Jean’s apartment for her own, beyond her statement to police that she believed Jean to be an intruder. Tensions continue to rise in the community after Jean’s mother asked on NBC if race was a factor in her son’s death: “If it was a white man, would it have been different?” Per a 2017 PRRI survey, racial and ethnic divisions on the issue of police brutality are profound. More than eight in ten (83 percent) black Americans and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Hispanic Americans reject the idea that police officers treat black Americans and members of other minority groups the same as whites. White Americans are about evenly divided over whether the police treat minority communities the same as whites: 49 percent agree vs. 51 percent disagree.

Bob Woodward Details Trump Tweet that Could Have Angered North Korea

According to author Bob Woodward, President Donald Trump nearly provoked an act of war from the North Korean government amid a flurry of tweets in October of 2017. Trump famously tweeted on October 1, 2017, that then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…” Woodward told CBS on Sunday that Trump almost sent a subsequent tweet threatening to remove 28,000 American dependents from South Korea. U.S. officials allegedly learned that North Korea would view that tweet as a preemptive move before an armed conflict, Woodward says,”In that moment there was a sense of profound alarm in the Pentagon leadership that, my God, one tweet and we have reliable information that the North Koreans are going to read this as ‘an attack is imminent.”