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Tag: Public opinion

  • Poll shows most US adults think AI will add to election misinformation in 2024

    Poll shows most US adults think AI will add to election misinformation in 2024

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    NEW YORK — The warnings have grown louder and more urgent as 2024 approaches: The rapid advance of artificial intelligence tools threatens to amplify misinformation in next year’s presidential election at a scale never seen before.

    Most adults in the U.S. feel the same way, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

    The poll found that nearly 6 in 10 adults (58%) think AI tools — which can micro-target political audiences, mass produce persuasive messages, and generate realistic fake images and videos in seconds — will increase the spread of false and misleading information during next year’s elections.

    By comparison, 6% think AI will decrease the spread of misinformation while one-third say it won’t make much of a difference.

    “Look what happened in 2020 — and that was just social media,” said 66-year-old Rosa Rangel of Fort Worth, Texas.

    Rangel, a Democrat who said she had seen a lot of “lies” on social media in 2020, said she thinks AI will make things even worse in 2024 — like a pot “brewing over.”

    Just 30% of American adults have used AI chatbots or image generators and fewer than half (46%) have heard or read at least some about AI tools. Still, there’s a broad consensus that candidates shouldn’t be using AI.

    When asked whether it would be a good or bad thing for 2024 presidential candidates to use AI in certain ways, clear majorities said it would be bad for them to create false or misleading media for political ads (83%), to edit or touch-up photos or videos for political ads (66%), to tailor political ads to individual voters (62%) and to answer voters’ questions via chatbot (56%).

    The sentiments are supported by majorities of Republicans and Democrats, who agree it would be a bad thing for the presidential candidates to create false images or videos (85% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats) or to answer voter questions (56% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats).

    The bipartisan pessimism toward candidates using AI comes after it already has been deployed in the Republican presidential primary.

    In April, the Republican National Committee released an entirely AI-generated ad meant to show the future of the country if President Joe Biden is reelected. It used fake but realistic-looking photos showing boarded-up storefronts, armored military patrols in the streets and waves of immigrants creating panic. The ad disclosed in small lettering that it was generated by AI.

    Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, also used AI in his campaign for the GOP nomination. He promoted an ad that used AI-generated images to make it look as if former President Donald Trump was hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease specialist who oversaw the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting DeSantis, used an AI voice-cloning tool to imitate Trump’s voice, making it seem like he narrated a social media post.

    “I think they should be campaigning on their merits, not their ability to strike fear into the hearts of voters,” said Andie Near, a 42-year-old from Holland, Michigan, who typically votes for Democrats.

    She has used AI tools to retouch images in her work at a museum, but she said she thinks politicians using the technology to mislead can “deepen and worsen the effect that even conventional attack ads can cause.”

    College student Thomas Besgen, a Republican, also disagrees with campaigns using deepfake sounds or imagery to make it seem as if a candidate said something they never said.

    “Morally, that’s wrong,” the 21-year-old from Connecticut said.

    Besgen, a mechanical engineering major at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said he is in favor of banning deepfake ads or, if that’s not possible, requiring them to be labeled as AI-generated.

    The Federal Election Commission is currently considering a petition urging it to regulate AI-generated deepfakes in political ads ahead of the 2024 election.

    While skeptical of AI’s use in politics, Besgen said he is enthusiastic about its potential for the economy and society. He is an active user of AI tools such as ChatGPT to help explain history topics he’s interested in or to brainstorm ideas. He also uses image-generators for fun — for example, to imagine what sports stadiums might look like in 100 years.

    He said he typically trusts the information he gets from ChatGPT and will likely use it to learn more about the presidential candidates, something that just 5% of adults say they are likely to do.

    The poll found that Americans are more likely to consult the news media (46%), friends and family (29%), and social media (25%) for information about the presidential election than AI chatbots.

    “Whatever response it gives me, I would take it with a grain of salt,” Besgen said.

    The vast majority of Americans are similarly skeptical toward the information AI chatbots spit out. Just 5% say they are extremely or very confident that the information is factual, while 33% are somewhat confident, according to the survey. Most adults (61%) say they are not very or not at all confident that the information is reliable.

    That’s in line with many AI experts’ warnings against using chatbots to retrieve information. The artificial intelligence large language models powering chatbots work by repeatedly selecting the most plausible next word in a sentence, which makes them good at mimicking styles of writing but also prone to making things up.

    Adults associated with both major political parties are generally open to regulations on AI. They responded more positively than negatively toward various ways to ban or label AI-generated content that could be imposed by tech companies, the federal government, social media companies or the news media.

    About two-thirds favor the government banning AI-generated content that contains false or misleading images from political ads, while a similar number want technology companies to label all AI-generated content made on their platforms.

    Biden set in motion some federal guidelines for AI on Monday when he signed an executive order to guide the development of the rapidly progressing technology. The order requires the industry to develop safety and security standards and directs the Commerce Department to issue guidance to label and watermark AI-generated content.

    Americans largely see preventing AI-generated false or misleading information during the 2024 presidential elections as a shared responsibility. About 6 in 10 (63%) say a lot of the responsibility falls on the technology companies that create AI tools, but about half give a lot of that duty to the news media (53%), social media companies (52%), and the federal government (49%).

    Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans to say social media companies have a lot of responsibility, but generally agree on the level of responsibility for technology companies, the news media and the federal government.

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    The poll of 1,017 adults was conducted Oct. 19-23, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Many Americans say their household expenses are outpacing earnings this year, AP-NORC poll shows

    Many Americans say their household expenses are outpacing earnings this year, AP-NORC poll shows

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    NEW YORK — About 2 in 3 Americans say their household expenses have risen over the last year, but only about 1 in 4 say their income has increased in the same period, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    As household expenses outpace earnings, many are expressing concern about their financial futures. What’s more, for most Americans, household debt has either risen in the last year or has not gone away.

    Steve Shapiro, 61, who works as an audio engineer in Pittsburgh, said he’d been spending about $100 a week on groceries prior to this past year, but that he’s now shelling out closer to $200.

    “My income has stayed the same,” he said. “The economy is good on paper, but I’m not doing great.”

    About 8 in 10 Americans say their overall household debt is higher or about the same as it was a year ago. About half say they currently have credit card debt, 4 in 10 are dealing with auto loans, and about 1 in 4 have medical debt. Just 15% say their household savings have increased over the last year.

    Tracy Gonzales, 36, who works as a sub-contractor in construction in San Antonio, Texas, has several thousand dollars of medical debt from an emergency room visit for what she thought was a bad headache but turned out to be a tooth infection.

    “They’ll treat you, but the bills are crazy,” she said. Gonzales said she’s tried to avoid seeking medical treatment because of the costs.

    Relatively few Americans say they’re very or extremely confident that they could pay an unexpected medical expense (26%) or have enough money for retirement (18%). Only about one-third are extremely or very confident their current financial situation will allow them to keep up with expenses, though an additional 42% say they’re somewhat confident.

    “I’ve been looking forward to retirement my entire life. Recently I realized it’s just not going to happen,” said Shapiro, of Pittsburgh, adding that his wife’s $30,000 or so of student debt is a financial factor for his household. The couple had hoped to sell their house and move this past year, but decided instead to hold on to their mortgage rate of 3.4%, rather than facing a higher rate. ( The current average long-term mortgage rate reached 7.79% this month. )

    About 3 in 10 Americans say they’ve foregone a major purchase because of higher interest rates in the last year. Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults have student debt, with the pandemic-era payment pause on federal loans ending this month, contributing to the crunch.

    Will Clouse, 77, of Westlake, Ohio, said inflation is his biggest concern, as he lives on a fixed income in his retirement.

    “A box of movie candy — Sno-Caps — that used to cost 99 cents is now a dollar fifty at the grocery store,” he said. “That’s a 50% increase in price. Somebody’s taking advantage of somebody.”

    Yet even as Americans have expressed gloomy sentiments about the economy, many have continued spending, which drove a strong quarter of growth from July though September, when the economy expanded at an annual pace of 4.9%.

    Even so, wages and salaries have largely trailed inflation since the pandemic, leaving most households worse off, though economists debate which measures are the best to use. In the past 12 months, however, average hourly pay has started to pull ahead of prices, rising 0.5% faster.

    Americans are generally split on whether the Republicans (29%) or the Democrats (25%) are better suited to handle the issue of inflation in the U.S. Three in 10 say they trust neither party to address it.

    Geri Putnam, 85, of Thomson, Georgia, said she’s been following the ongoing auto workers strikes with sympathy for the workers’ asks.

    “I don’t think it’s out of line, what they’re asking for, when you see what CEOs are making,” she said. “I think things have gotten out of control. When you can walk into a store and see the next day, across the board, a dollar increase — that’s a little strange. I understand supply and demand, the cost of shipping, et cetera. But it seems to me everyone’s looking at their bottom lines.”

    Putnam also said she sees her six children struggling financially more than her generation did.

    “They all have jobs and have never been without them,” she said. “They’re achievers, but I think at least two or three of them will never be able to buy a home.”

    A slight majority of all Americans polled (54%) describe their household’s financial situation as good, which is about the same as it’s been for the last year but down from 63% in March of 2022. Older Americans are much more confident in their current finances than younger Americans. Just 39% of 18- to 29-year-olds describe their household finances as good, compared to a majority (58%) of those who are 30 and older. People with higher levels of education or higher household incomes are more likely than Americans overall to evaluate their finances as solid.

    About three-quarters of Americans describe the nation’s economy as poor, which is in line with measurements from early last year.

    Among those who are retired, 3 in 10 say they are highly confident that there’s enough saved for their retirement, about 4 in 10 are somewhat confident, and 31% are not very confident or not confident at all.

    Clouse, of Ohio, said the majority of his money had gone towards caring for his wife for the past several years, as she’d been ill. When she passed away this past year, his household lost her Social Security and pension contributions. He sees the political turmoil between Republicans and Democrats as harming the economy, but remains most frustrated by higher prices at the supermarket.

    “Grocery products going up by 20, 30, 40%. There’s no call for that, other than the grocery market people making more money,” he said. “They’re ripping off the consumer. I wish Mr. Biden would do something about that.”

    About 4 in 10 Americans (38%) approve of how Biden is handling the presidency, while 61% disapprove. His overall approval numbers have remained at a steady low for the last several years. Most Americans generally disapprove of how he’s handling the federal budget (68% disapprove), the economy (67%), and student debt (58%).

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    The poll of 1,163 adults was conducted Oct. 5-9, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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  • Dobbs’s Confounding Effect on Abortion Rates

    Dobbs’s Confounding Effect on Abortion Rates

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    When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Diana Greene Foster made a painful prediction: She estimated that one in four women who wanted an abortion wouldn’t be able to get one. Foster, a demographer at UC San Francisco, told me that she’d based her expectation on her knowledge of how abortion rates decline when women lose insurance coverage or have to travel long distances after clinics close.

    And she was well aware of what this statistic meant. She’d spent 10 years following 1,000 women recruited from clinic waiting rooms. Some got an abortion, but others were turned away. The “turnaways” were more likely to suffer serious health consequences, live in poverty, and stay in contact with violent partners. With nearly 1 million abortions performed in America each year, Foster worried that hundreds of thousands of women would be forced to continue unwanted pregnancies. “Having a baby before they’re ready kind of knocks people off their life course,” she told me.

    But now, more than a year removed from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Foster has revised her estimate. After seeing early reports of women traveling across state lines and ordering pills online, she now estimates that about 5 percent of women who want an abortion cannot get one. Indeed, two recent reports show that although Dobbs upended abortion access in America, many women have nevertheless found ways to end their pregnancy. A study by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, signals that national abortion rates have not meaningfully fallen since 2020. Instead, they seem to have gone up a bit. A report released this week by the Society of Family Planning, another pro-abortion-rights group, shows that an increase in abortions in states that allow the procedure more than offset the post-Dobbs drop-off in states that closed down clinics.

    Read: The abortion backup plan that no one is talking about

    Some of this increase may be a result of trends that predate Dobbs: Abortion rates in the U.S. have been going up since 2017. But the reports suggest that the increase may also be due to travel by women who live in red states and the expanded access to abortion that many blue states enacted after the ruling. Still, it is not yet clear exactly how much each of these factors is contributing to the observed increase—and how many women who want an abortion are still unable to get one.

    Alison Norris, a co-chair of the Society of Family Planning study, told me that she fears that the public will “become complacent” if they see the likely increase in abortion rates and believe that everyone has access. “Feeling like the problem isn’t really that big of a deal because the numbers seem to have returned to what they were pre-Dobbs is a misunderstanding of the data,” she said.

    It seems illogical that more than a dozen states would ban abortion and national rates would hardly change. But even as red states have choked off access, blue states have widened it. And the data show that women have flooded the remaining clinics and ordered abortion pills from pharmacies that ship across the country. More than half of all abortions are done using medication, a pattern that began even before the Dobbs decision.

    “It just doesn’t work to make abortion illegal,” Linda Prine, a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital, told me. “There may be some people who are having babies that they didn’t want to have, but when you shift resources all over the place, and all kinds of other avenues open up, there’s also people who are getting abortions that might not have gotten them otherwise.”

    With mail-order abortion pills, “it’s this weird moment where abortion might, ironically, be more available than it’s ever been,” Rachel Rebouché, an expert in abortion law and the dean of the Temple University Beasley School of Law, told me.

    The Guttmacher Institute sampled abortion clinics to estimate the change in abortion counts between the first halves of 2020 and 2023. Areas surrounding states with post-Roe bans saw their abortion numbers surge over that period of time. In Colorado, which is near South Dakota, a state with a ban, abortions increased by about 89 percent, compared with an 8 percent rise in the prior three-year period. New Mexico saw abortions climb by 220 percent. (For comparison, before Dobbs, the state recorded a 27 percent hike from 2017 to 2020.) Even states in solidly blue regions saw their abortion rates grow over the three-year interval from 2020 to 2023: Guttmacher estimates that California’s abortion clinics provided 16 percent more abortions, and New York’s about 18 percent more.

    Some shifts predated the court’s intervention. After a decades-long decline, abortions began ticking upward around 2017. In 2020, they increased by 8 percent compared with 2017. The researchers I spoke with for this story told me that they couldn’t point to a decisive cause for the shift that started six years ago; they suggested rising child-care costs and Trump-era cuts to Medicaid coverage as possible factors. But the rise in abortion rates reflects a broader change: Women seem to want fewer children than they used to. Caitlin Myers, a professor at Middlebury College, told me that abortion rates might have increased even more if the Court hadn’t reversed Roe. “It looks like more people just want abortions than did a few years ago,” she said. “What we don’t know is, would they have gone up even more if there weren’t people trapped in Texas or Louisiana?”

    One of the most significant factors in maintaining post-Roe abortion access dates from the latter half of 2021. As the coronavirus pandemic clobbered the health-care system, the FDA suspended its requirement that women pick up abortion medications in person. A few months later, it made the switch permanent. The timing was opportune: People became accustomed to receiving all of their medical care through virtual appointments at the same time that they could get abortion pills delivered to their doorstep, Rebouché told me. People no longer have to travel to a clinic and cross anti-abortion picket lines. But access to mifepristone, one of the most commonly used drugs for medication abortions, is under threat. After an anti-abortion group challenged the FDA’s approval of the drug, a federal court instated regulations that would require women to visit a doctor three times to get the pills, making access much more difficult. The Supreme Court is weighing whether to hear an appeal, and has frozen the 2021 rules in place while it decides.

    But paradoxically, several of the factors that may have contributed to the rise in abortion rates seem to have sprung directly from the Dobbs decision. In the year since the ruling, six blue states have enacted laws that allow practitioners to ship abortion pills anywhere, even to deep-red Texas. Although these laws haven’t yet been litigated to test whether they’re truly impenetrable, doctors have relied on them to mail medication across the country. Aid Access, an online service that operates outside the formal health-care system, receives requests for about 6,500 abortion pills a month. (The pills cost $150, but Aid Access sends them for free to people who can’t pay.) Demand for Aid Access pills in states that ban or restrict medication abortion has mushroomed since the Dobbs decision, rising from an average of about 82 requests per day before Dobbs to 214 after. The Guttmacher report doesn’t count abortions that take place in this legally fuzzy space, suggesting that actual abortion figures could be higher.

    As the Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to an abortion and turned the issue back to the states, it also hardened the resolve of abortion-rights supporters. In the five months after Roe fell, the National Network of Abortion Funds received four times the money from donations than it got in all of 2020. People often donate as states encroach on abortion rights. In many cases, they bankrolled people’s travel out of ban states. Community networks also gained experience in shuttling people out of state to get abortions. “There’s definitely been innovation in the face of abortion bans,” Abigail Aiken, who documents abortions that occur outside of the formal health-care system, told me.

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    Some researchers believe that the Dobbs decision has actually convinced more women to get abortions. Abortion-rights advocacy groups have erected highway billboards that promise Abortion is ok. Public opinion has tilted in favor of abortion rights. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor at UC San Francisco, told me that California’s rising abortion rates cannot all be due to people traveling from states that ban abortion. “It’s also got to be an increase among Californians,” she said. “It’s just a lot of attention, destigmatization, and funding that has been made available. Even before Dobbs, there was a lot of unmet need for abortion in this country.”

    Abortion used to be a topic that was “talked about in the shadows,” Greer Donley, an expert in abortion law and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told me. “Dobbs kind of blew that up.” Still, she believes that it’s unlikely that people are getting significantly more abortions simply because of changes within blue states. Just as obstacles don’t seem to have stopped people from seeking abortions, efforts that moderately expand access are unlikely to lead people to get an abortion, she said.

    The people I spoke with emphasized that even though overall abortion rates might be going up, not everyone who wants the procedure can get it. People who don’t speak English or Spanish, who don’t have internet access, or who are in jail still have trouble getting abortions. “What I foresee is a bunch of Black women being stuck pregnant who didn’t want to be pregnant, in a state where it’s incredibly dangerous to be Black and pregnant,” Laurie Bertram Roberts, a founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, told me.

    Bertram Roberts’s fund used to provide travel stipends of up to $250. Now women need three times that. Most people travel from Mississippi to a clinic in Carbondale, Illinois. The trip takes two days—48 hours that women must take off work and find child care for. “If you are in the middle of Texas, and you have to travel to Illinois, even if funds covered all the costs, to say that abortion is more accessible for that person seems callous and wrong,” Donley told me.

    Many women spend weeks waiting for an abortion. “It is excruciating to be carrying a pregnancy that one knows they’re planning to end,” Upadhyay said. And although studies show that abortion pills are safe, women who take them can bleed for up to three weeks, and they may worry that they’ll be prosecuted if they seek help at a hospital. Only two states—Nevada and South Carolina—explicitly criminalize women who give themselves an abortion (and few women have been charged under the laws), but the legislation contributes to a climate of fear.

    More than a year out from the Dobbs decision, the grainy picture of abortion access is coming into focus. With the benefit of distance, the story seems not to be solely one of diminished access, widespread surveillance, and forced births, as the ruling’s opponents had warned. For most Americans, abortion might be more accessible than it’s ever been. But for another, more vulnerable group, abortion is a far-off privilege. “If I lived in my birth state—I was born in Minnesota—my work would be one hundred times easier,” Bertram Roberts told me, later adding, “I think about that a lot, about how the two states that bookend my life are so different.”

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    Rose Horowitch

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  • Polls open for Argentina election that could see right-wing populist who upended political landscape win the presidency

    Polls open for Argentina election that could see right-wing populist who upended political landscape win the presidency

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    Polls open for Argentina election that could see right-wing populist who upended political landscape win the presidency

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 22, 2023, 7:01 AM

    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Polls open for Argentina election that could see right-wing populist who upended political landscape win the presidency.

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  • Americans’ faith in institutions has been sliding for years. The chaos in Congress isn’t helping

    Americans’ faith in institutions has been sliding for years. The chaos in Congress isn’t helping

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    WASHINGTON — For many Americans, the Republican dysfunction that has ground business in the U.S. House to a halt as two wars rage abroad and a budget crisis looms at home is feeding into a longer-term pessimism about the country’s core institutions.

    The lack of faith extends beyond Congress, with recent polling conducted both before and after the leadership meltdown finding a mistrust in everything from the courts to organized religion. The GOP internal bickering that for nearly three weeks has left open the speaker’s position — second in line to the presidency — is widely seen as the latest indication of deep problems with the nation’s bedrock institutions.

    “They’re holding up the people’s business because they’re so dysfunctional,” said Christopher Lauff, 57, of Fargo, North Dakota.

    Part of that business, he said, is approving money for Ukraine to continue its fight against Russia’s invasion, something he says ultimately helps the U.S. — a point President Joe Biden stressed Thursday during an Oval Office address.

    “We’re usually the knight in shining armor, but we can’t be that now,” said Lauff, a Democrat.

    The disdain for Congress is just one area where Americans say they are losing faith. Various polls say the negative feelings include a loss of confidence or interest in institutions such as organized religion, policing, the Supreme Court, even banking.

    “Trust in institutions has deteriorated substantially,” said Kay Schlozman, professor of political science at Boston College. Schlozman said she believes in government and the things it provides, such as national defense and access to health care, but “I also can very much understand why the American people can be cynical about government.”

    The turmoil in the House and the federal case against Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who is facing charges for bribery, show that both major parties are contributing to the dour outlook.

    The House has been without a permanent leader since early October after a small cadre of right-wing Republicans pushed out a member of their own party, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Subsequent attempts to replace him have failed.

    “That is an example of exactly the kind of thing that I would say can’t foster trust of government among the American people — the multiple votes, the fractiousness within parties, of people being personally ambitious and not being willing to compromise” Schlozman said.

    About half of adults (53%) say they have “hardly any confidence at all” in the people running Congress, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that was conducted in October. That’s in line with 49% who said that in March. Just 3% have a great deal of confidence in Congress, virtually unchanged from March.

    About 4 in 10 adults (39%) have hardly any confidence in the executive branch of the federal government, compared with 44% in March. Most Republicans (56%) have low levels of confidence in the executive branch — which is overseen by a member of the opposing party, Democrat Joe Biden — compared with just 20% of Democrats.

    About a third of adults (36%) say they have hardly any confidence in the conservative-majority Supreme Court, a figure that has remained steady in recent months. The polling reinforces that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say their confidence in the Supreme Court is low. Black Americans are more likely than Americans overall, as well as more likely than white or Hispanic adults, to have hardly any confidence in the nation’s highest court.

    One-third of U.S. adults (33%) continue to have low levels of confidence in the Justice Department, with Republicans having less confidence than Democrats. This comes as former President Donald Trump rails against the department after being charged with mishandling classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Rick Cartelli, 63, a health care worker in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, who identifies as an independent, said he is happy with his local and state government but the current environment, especially the chaos on Capitol Hill, has wiped out what little confidence he had in that institution.

    “What is happening now is not good for the country at all,” he said.

    Cartelli also said he has little confidence in the executive branch, citing what he says are “mental lapses” by Biden that “are only probably going to become more and more pronounced.”

    Multiple AP-NORC polls from earlier this year find that the dearth of confidence is pervasive, spreading to organized religion, the government’s intelligence gathering and diplomatic agencies, as well as financial institutions. Slightly fewer than half (45%) in a study from AP-NORC and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights said they have little or no confidence that the news media is reporting news fully, accurately and fairly.

    Views on the military were best, with just 17% saying they have hardly any confidence in it.

    Kathleen Kersey, a 32-year-old health care worker in Brunswick, Georgia, who is a Republican, said she has little confidence in any of the federal entities, including Congress, but has more for the institutions closer to home. She also is a fan of Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who she said is a moral man.

    “There’s only so much one person can do, and just with all the evil, it’s hard to have confidence in anything really, even the churches because everything works together as one,” she said.

    Confidence in the country’s foundational institutions has ebbed and flowed historically, though there’s been a long-term downward trend since at least the 1970s. Trust in government waned in the era of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers before making a slight recovery during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s — despite Reagan’s famous declaration that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

    David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, said the tea party movement during former President Barack Obama’s term was the beginning of a steadier decline in confidence, as noted in polling from Gallup. But Bateman believes the most acute problem in recent years has been Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, despite dozens of courts rejecting his claims and multiple audits and reviews in the swing states where he disputed his loss.

    “The biggest threat to trust in institutions was the Trump campaign’s refusal to concede the election and insistence that they had won,” along with a large segment of the Republicans in Congress going along with the claim in the certification process, Bateman said.

    “That validated the idea that the whole institutional system is rigged, which it isn’t,” he said.

    He said an example of the fallout is the Republican attack on the Justice Department, including the FBI. The “weaponization” of the FBI has been a battle cry for Republicans who maintain it has targeted conservatives and who are incensed at the various investigations of Trump. Candidates vying against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination have said they would fire FBI Director Chris Wray.

    Distrust of the FBI had long been the purview of Democrats, especially those aware of civil rights-era monitoring.

    “If you told me in 2000 that Republicans are going to be saying you can’t trust the FBI, I would have been shocked,” Bateman said. “Going after the FBI has been a real ratcheting up of distrust.”

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    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Republicans are divided on far-right move to remove McCarthy as House speaker, an AP-NORC poll shows

    Republicans are divided on far-right move to remove McCarthy as House speaker, an AP-NORC poll shows

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    WASHINGTON — The unprecedented ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has left no consensus among Republicans about whether his removal was the right move as the party struggles to coalesce around a new leader, according to a new poll.

    Only one-quarter of Republicans say they approve of the stunning decision by a small group of House Republicans to remove the California lawmaker from his post during a vote last week. Three in 10 Republicans believe it was a mistake for a small faction of the party, and all Democrats, to support a motion ejecting McCarthy from the speakership.

    “It’s just chaos,” Betsy Young, a Republican from Oregon, told The Associated Press. “And I don’t think it’s helpful.”

    About 4 in 10 Republicans (43%) say they neither approve nor disapprove. That is according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted after McCarthy became the first speaker in history to be voted out of the role.

    The political upheaval in Congress has left Americans as a whole split on the issue — if they have an opinion at all — with some saying McCarthy had it coming and others warning of the precedent such action could set for future speakers. Overall, a quarter of Americans said they approve, a quarter disapprove and about half say neither.

    Thomas Adkins, a Republican from North Carolina, told the AP that the former speaker “relinquished his leadership” when he made a deal with congressional Democrats to fund the government last month while facing a looming shutdown deadline.

    “That’s sort of going over to the enemy in my thinking, so in that respect, I thoroughly disapprove of the speaker’s actions,” the 84-year-old said.

    Kevin Fry, a Republican from Indiana, echoed those sentiments, saying McCarthy “didn’t keep his word” to the party when he said he would not negotiate on cutting spending and other conservative priorities. “When you give your word and everybody relies on that, then you know, you need to be held accountable,” the 64-year-old added.

    It is the same argument the eight far-right members who voted for McCarthy’s removal made on the floor of the House last week. That decision and Democrats’ willingness to join along has since thrown the House and its Republican leadership into disarray as the majority is now rushing to vote in a new speaker this week to lead them during this divisive moment.

    But Young, who considers herself a moderate Republican, calls the reasoning for McCarthy’s removal “stupid,” resulting in a stain on the GOP moving forward.

    “(Democrats and Republicans) are supposed to work together, and they forget that,” she said. “They’re in their own bubble and they forget that the rest of the country is not Washington, or it’s not the state capitals.”

    The poll shows that conservative Republicans are more likely than those who describe themselves as moderate or liberal to approve of the move to remove McCarthy, 31% to 16%. Even among conservatives, though, 33% said they disapprove.

    A quarter of Democrats also disapprove of McCarthy being removed, despite all their representatives voting in favor of the motion. Thirty percent of Democrats approve.

    Deedee Gunderson, a Democrat from New Mexico, said that while she’s not a fan of McCarthy and how he has governed, she’s worried that his ouster has given more power to the extremes of the Republican Party.

    “I think they are trying to destroy this government,” she said.

    Following McCarthy’s removal, 39% of Republicans say they have an unfavorable view of the former speaker. That’s up slightly from 25% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in January.

    The fight over congressional leadership also comes after the chamber narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a short-term funding bill that delays its fiscal deadline until mid-November. That conflict over government spending and financial priorities is expected to resume in the coming weeks, with U.S. aid to Ukraine against Russia’s invasion one of the major issues at play. The poll shows 69% of Republicans — but just 37% of Democrats — think the U.S. government is spending too much on Ukraine aid.

    Overall, a majority of Americans continue to say U.S. spending is too high, but have little appetite for cuts to major programs. And Americans are split on which party would do a better job handling the federal budget, with 27% saying Democrats and 26% Republicans. A third of Americans say they trust neither party.

    “Our spending is so out of control that I can’t believe how much debt we’ve incurred on both sides,” Fry said. “I don’t think that’s necessarily a Democratic or Republican issue.”

    ___

    The poll of 1,163 adults was conducted Oct. 5-9, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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  • Labour Party leader Keir Starmer makes his pitch to UK voters with a speech vowing national renewal

    Labour Party leader Keir Starmer makes his pitch to UK voters with a speech vowing national renewal

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    LIVERPOOL, England — U.K. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer delivers a speech on Tuesday that amounts to a public job interview for the post of prime minister. He’ll set out to answer the question in many voters’ minds: “Why Labour?”

    Starmer is addressing the opposition party’s annual conference, likely the last before a national election next year. He needs to persuade voters fed up with economic stagnation and political turmoil to switch allegiance to his party, which has been out of office since 2010.

    He plans to pledge “a decade of national renewal,” after what he depicts as 13 years of decline under the Conservatives.

    “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt,” Starmer will say, according to the party.

    Starmer’s speech to the conference in Liverpool is a key moment for a politician who has managed to unite a fractious party and gain a substantial lead in opinion polls, but remains a blank slate to many voters. A barrister and former head of the national prosecution service, he’s widely seen as managerial and a bit dull.

    Labour has lost four straight national elections. Its landslide 1997 election victory under Tony Blair — the peak of its popularity — was a quarter-century ago and in the last national election in 2019, voters handed Labour its worst drubbing since 1935.

    But with an election due next year, polls put Labour as much as 20 points ahead of the governing Conservative Party.

    Starmer, elected leader in 2020, steered the social democratic party back toward the political middle ground after the divisive tenure of predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch socialist who advocated nationalization of key industries and infrastructure.

    Starmer’s actions angered some grassroots Labour members who want a bolder agenda, but it has revived the party’s poll ratings.

    Underscoring the way the party has changed, Starmer plans to say he leads “a changed Labour Party, no longer in thrall to gesture politics, no longer a party of protest. … Those days are done. We will never go back.”

    In a sign that corporate Britain is warming to Labour, companies thronged to the conference in The Beatles’ birthplace of Liverpool, buying space in the exhibition hall, sponsoring panel discussions and attending a business forum with party leaders. The mood was noticeably buzzier than at the Conservatives’ muted conference last week in Manchester.

    Labour is trying to walk a delicate line. Party leaders want to convince voters it can ease the U.K.’s chronic housing crisis and repair its fraying public services, especially the creaking, overburdened state-funded National Health Service – but without imposing tax increases on the public.

    Labour economy spokeswoman Rachel Reeves told the conference on Monday that a Labour government would “tax fairly and spend wisely,” using economic growth to fund public services and boosting investment through a new national wealth fund. She pledged to build 1.5 million homes to ease Britain’s chronic housing crisis and repair the creaking, overburdened state-funded National Health Service.

    Former Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of Blair’s election victories, said Starmer has to “make an offer the country feels it can’t refuse.”

    “He’s got to bring home to working people in this country what a difference a Labour government will make, both in the short term but more seriously in the long term,” Mandelson told The Associated Press. “And I think he will do that. At the moment people are cynical about the difference any government can make. … He’s got to give them hope mixed with realism.”

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  • UK’s Labour Party says it will invest for growth, as violence in Israel hangs over its conference

    UK’s Labour Party says it will invest for growth, as violence in Israel hangs over its conference

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    LIVERPOOL, England — Britain’s main opposition Labour Party said Monday that it will focus on economic growth rather than higher taxes to “rebuild” the country after more than a decade of Conservative rule.

    Labour economy spokeswoman Rachel Reeves told delegates at the party’s annual conference that “Labour will tax fairly and spend wisely.”

    “But I must tell you, you cannot tax and spend your way to economic growth,” she said. “The lifeblood of a growing economy is business investment.”

    Reeves was making her pitch to British voters and businesses at the four-day conference in Liverpool, where Labour is trying to cement its front-runner status in opinion polls before an election due in 2024.

    The party is running 15 or more points ahead of the governing Conservatives in multiple opinion polls, as Britain endures a sluggish economy and a cost-of-living crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and economic disruption following the U.K.’s exit from the European Union.

    Labour is trying to show it can provide an alternative to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010. But the opposition party is wary of promising big public spending increases that would require tax hikes. The social democratic party also wants to convince corporate Britain that it is on the side of business.

    For years, businesses were wary of the party, which has its roots in the trade union movement, and tended to favor the Conservatives. But recent economic and political upheavals have made many think again.

    Reeves said a Labour government would get the economy growing faster to fund public services and boost investment through a new national wealth fund. She pledged to build 1.5 million homes to ease Britain’s chronic housing crisis, reform an “antiquated” planning system Labour says is holding back infrastructure improvements, and repair the creaking, overburdened state-funded National Health Service.

    Money for health and education will come from abolishing “non-domiciled” tax status, which allows some wealthy individuals to avoid paying U.K. tax, and ending private schools’ tax-free status, she said.

    Reeves said Labour also will strengthen workers’ rights and abolish “zero hours” contracts that do not guarantee employees a minimum number of hours a week.

    The speech was broadly welcomed by both business and workers’ groups — no mean feat. Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the Confederation of British Industry, said businesses would be “encouraged” to hear Labour “speak so ambitiously about driving up business investment and committing to tackle some of the key blockers.”

    Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB trade union, said Reeves’ speech “gave a far-sighted vision of a better U.K.”

    Reeves also said a Labour government would appoint a “COVID corruption commissioner” to try to recoup some of the billions lost to fraud and waste during the pandemic.

    Reeves said the commissioner would bring together tax officials, fraud investigators and law enforcement officers to track down an estimated 7.2 billion pounds ($8.8 billion) in lost public money spent on grants and contracts related to COVID-19, and “get back every penny of taxpayers’ money that they can.”

    Like many countries, the U.K. was forced to sidestep usual rules as it rushed to procure essential supplies and prop up people’s livelihoods during the coronavirus pandemic.

    A multi-year public inquiry is examining Britain’s handling of the pandemic, which left more than 200,000 people in the country dead.

    Leader Keir Starmer has steered Labour back toward the political middle ground after the divisive tenure of predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch socialist who advocated nationalization of key industries and infrastructure. Corbyn resigned after Labour suffered its worst election defeat in almost a century in 2019.

    The brutal, shocking attack by Hamas militants on Israel, and Israel’s military response, overshadowed the gathering of a party that has spent several years confronting allegations that antisemitism was allowed to fester under Corbyn, a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause.

    After being elected leader in 2020, Starmer apologized and vowed to restore relations between Labour and the Jewish community. Corbyn was expelled from the party.

    The conference schedule includes several meetings by pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, including one on Monday organized by Labour Friends of Palestine that opened with 30 seconds of silence to reflect on the “horrors” of recent days.

    In a speech to delegates, party foreign affairs spokesman David Lammy said that Labour “utterly condemns Hamas’s appalling attack on Israel.”

    “There is never a justification for terrorism,” he said. “Labour stands firmly in support of Israel’s right to defend itself, rescue hostages and protect its citizens.”

    He reiterated Labour’s support for a two-state solution that now seems a distant prospect.

    “There will not be a just and lasting peace until Israel is secure, Palestine is a sovereign state and both Israelis and Palestinians enjoy security, dignity and human rights,” Lammy said.

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  • After years in opposition, Britain’s Labour Party senses it’s on the verge of regaining power

    After years in opposition, Britain’s Labour Party senses it’s on the verge of regaining power

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    LONDON — Members of Britain’s opposition Labour Party gather in Liverpool on Sunday for their annual conference with an unfamiliar feeling: optimism.

    The party has been out of power for 13 years, and in the last national election in 2019, voters handed Labour its worst drubbing since 1935. But with an election due next year, polls put Labour as much as 20 points ahead of the governing Conservative Party, and Labour scored a morale-boosting special election victory in Scotland last week.

    Power is within the party’s grasp — as long as it doesn’t mess things up.

    “It was a big step in the right direction, an important one,” Labour leader Keir Starmer said Friday after the special election result. “But we accept this humbly. This is a step on the journey.”

    Labour’s landslide 1997 election victory under Tony Blair — the peak of its popularity — was a quarter-century ago, and the party has suffered four straight election defeats.

    The Conservatives have been in power nationally since 2010, years that saw austerity following the world banking crisis, Britain’s divisive decision to leave the European Union, a global pandemic and a European war that has triggered the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

    Those upheavals left both Britain’s main parties in turmoil — and both responded by picking populist leaders. Labour members elected the veteran left-wing lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. The Conservatives, after years of division and wrangling over the country’s EU exit, chose brash Brexit-booster Boris Johnson and won a thumping election victory over Corbyn in 2019.

    Corbyn quit after that defeat, and amid criticism that he’d allowed antisemitism to fester in a party that sees itself as proudly antiracist.

    Starmer won a party leadership contest in 2020, vowing to restore relations between the party and the Jewish community. He also has steered the social democratic party back toward the political middle-ground after the divisive tenure of Corbyn, a staunch socialist who advocated nationalization of key industries and infrastructure.

    Starmer’s actions angered some grassroots Labour members who want a bolder agenda, but it has revived the party’s poll ratings. In a sign that corporate Britain is preparing for a change of government, Labour says companies have been queuing up to buy stands in the conference exhibition hall and to attend a business forum with Starmer and other senior party leaders.

    In a speech opening the gathering, Deputy Leader Angela Rayner plans to accuse the Conservatives of presiding over “national decline” and being too consumed with internal political chaos to sort out the country’s problems.

    “With five prime ministers in seven years and constant chaos and instability, Britain’s future has been left to take a back seat,” she will say, according to extracts released by Labour.

    The Conservatives, who held their own, rather muted conference in Manchester last week, have not given up hope. Conservative officials argue that voters are not sold on Starmer, a lawyer and former chief prosecutor with a cautious, managerial style. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has depicted himself as a force for change, with Starmer as the face of the status quo.

    But Sunak’s party has a big gap to close. The Conservatives are losing support across the country, from affluent southern voters turned off by Brexit to working-class northern voters who switched from Labour in 2019.

    Labour is also gaining ground in Scotland, where its former dominance had been obliterated in recent years by the pro-independence Scottish National Party. Labour won an emphatic victory over the SNP in a special election Thursday for the parliamentary seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, near Glasgow. Starmer hailed it as a “seismic result.”

    “They said that we couldn’t change the Labour Party and we did it,” Starmer told local party workers. “They said that we couldn’t win in the south of England and the north of England, and we did it. They said ‘You’ll never beat the SNP in Scotland’ – and, Rutherglen, you did it.”

    Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said the polling figures are “stark” for the Conservatives. But he cautioned that voters remain “depressed and very skeptical” of all political parties.

    “They are much more enthusiastic about the idea of turfing the Tories out than they are about putting Labour in,” Ford said. “Starmer’s own poll ratings remain pretty mediocre. People think he’s a bit weak, they think it’s unclear what he stands for, they’re not really sure what his vision is for government.

    “What Labour really need to do with this conference is to convince people — to steal a line from Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign — that things can only get better.”

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  • Britain’s Treasury chief raises the minimum wage but angers some colleagues by ruling out tax cuts

    Britain’s Treasury chief raises the minimum wage but angers some colleagues by ruling out tax cuts

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    MANCHESTER, England — Britain’s Treasury chief announced a hike in the national minimum wage on Monday, as the governing Conservative Party tries to persuade voters it is on the side of those who are struggling financially.

    But Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt ruled out tax cuts, saying they would fuel inflation.

    “I do want us to have lower taxes,” Hunt told Sky News before his speech. But he said “it’s very difficult to see” it happening this year.

    That message was not what many Conservatives at the party’s annual conference wanted to hear. Hundreds of them packed a room to applaud as former Prime Minister Liz Truss — whose seven weeks in office last year plunged Britain’s economy into crisis — demanded Hunt slash taxes in his fall budget next month.

    Hunt told conference delegates that the hourly rate for workers 23 or older will rise in April from 10.42 pounds ($12.70) to at least 11 pounds ($13.40). The exact amount will be set after a recommendation by the Low Pay Commission, an advisory body. Hunt said that will mean a raise for more than 2 million workers.

    Hunt also pledged to freeze civil service recruitment to cut costs and toughen the rules on social benefits in an attempt to stem the flow of working-age people out of the workforce, a trend that has accelerated since the coronavirus pandemic.

    “It isn’t fair that someone who refuses to look seriously for a job gets the same as someone trying their best,” he said, in remarks that drew concern from anti-poverty groups.

    The party is trying to sprinkle voter-pleasing measures such as the pay increase at the conference, which may be the last before a national election due in 2024. But the government’s spending power is constricted by the U.K.’s sluggish economy and stubbornly high inflation that hit double digits last year and now stands just below 7%.

    The result was a grab-bag of generally inexpensive policy announcements: a ban on children using cell phones in school, a curb on local authorities slapping “ excessive fines on motorists,” a push for “smarter regulation.”site

    Opponents see a government that has run out of big ideas and a party heading for defeat. The right-of-center Tories, in power since 2010, are lagging far behind the center-left opposition Labour Party in opinion polls. Voters are weary after years of political turmoil over the U.K.’s exit from the European Union, the coronavirus pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took office just under a year ago, is facing grumbling — and even open rebellion — from some Conservative members and lawmakers.

    Sunak steadied the economy after his predecessor Truss crashed the pound and trashed Britain’s reputation for fiscal prudence with her tax-slashing economic plans. She left office after just 49 days.

    Many Conservatives doubt whether Sunak — the party’s fifth leader since 2016 — can restore its popularity to the level that saw the party win an 80-seat majority in the 650-seat House of Commons in 2019. The prime minister then, Boris Johnson, resigned in mid-2022 amid scandals over his ethics and judgment.

    In recent weeks, Sunak has sought to take the initiative with a clutch of measures depicted as easing the economic burden on taxpayers. He has delayed a ban on selling new gas and diesel cars and watered down other green measures that he said imposed “unacceptable costs” on ordinary people. Critics say the measures will have little impact on people’s pocketbooks and will make it harder for Britain to reach its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 in order to limit climate change.

    Hundreds of party lawmakers, activists and officials attending the four-day conference in Manchester, northwest England, are being wooed by rivals to Sunak, positioning themselves for a party leadership contest that could follow election defeat.

    Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch are both addressing meetings and receptions as they vie for the support of the party’s populist right wing, which wants tough curbs on irregular migration and a war on liberal social values derided as “woke.” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is popular with more centrist Conservatives.

    Even Truss, who resigned in disgrace less than 12 months ago, is on hand to offer her opinion, keep her name in the headlines and make life difficult for her successor.

    At a packed meeting attended by several high-profile lawmakers on the party’s right wing, Truss, called for everyone to “unleash their inner Conservative” and back a platform of lower taxes, less environmental regulation — including removing a ban on fracking — and a smaller state,

    Truss, whose plan for billions in unfunded tax cuts spooked the financial markets last year, got loud applause for her mantra that “government is too big, that taxes are too high and that we are spending too much.”

    “Let’s stop taxing and banning things,” she said.

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  • Few Americans say conservatives can speak freely on college campuses, AP-NORC/UChicago poll shows

    Few Americans say conservatives can speak freely on college campuses, AP-NORC/UChicago poll shows

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    WASHINGTON — Americans view college campuses as far friendlier to liberals than to conservatives when it comes to free speech, with adults across the political spectrum seeing less tolerance for those on the right, according to a new poll.

    Overall, 47% of adults say liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express their views on college campuses, while just 20% said the same of conservatives, according to polling from the University of Chicago and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    Republicans perceive a stronger bias on campuses against conservatives, but Democrats see a difference too — about 4 in 10 Democrats say liberals can speak their minds freely on campuses, while about 3 in 10 Democrats say conservatives can do so.

    “If you’re a Republican or lean Republican, you’re unabashedly wrong, they shut you down,” said Rhonda Baker, 60, of Goldsboro, North Carolina, who voted for former President Donald Trump and has a son in college. “If they hold a rally, it’s: ‘The MAGA’s coming through.’ It’s: ‘The KKK is coming through.’”

    Debates over First Amendment rights have occasionally flared on college campuses in recent years, with conflicts arising over guest speakers who express polarizing views, often from the political right.

    Stanford University became a flashpoint this year when students shouted down a conservative judge who was invited to speak. More recently, a conservative Princeton University professor was drowned out while discussing free speech at Washington College, a small school in Maryland.

    At the same time, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states have proposed bills aiming to limit public colleges from teaching topics considered divisive or liberal. Just 30% of Americans say states should be able to restrict what professors at state universities teach, the poll found, though support was higher among Republicans.

    Overall, Republicans see a clear double standard on college campuses. Just 9% said conservatives can speak their minds, while 58% said liberals have that freedom, according to the polling. They were also slightly less likely than Americans overall to see campuses as respectful and inclusive places for conservatives.

    Chris Gauvin, a Republican who has done construction work on campuses, believes conservative voices are stifled. While working at Yale University, he was once stopped by pro-LGBTQ+ activists who asked for his opinion, he said.

    “They asked me how I felt, so I figured I’d tell them. I spoke in a normal tone, I didn’t get excited or upset,” said Gauvin, 58, of Manchester, Conn. “But it proceeded with 18 to 20 people who were suddenly very irritated and agitated. It just exploded.”

    He took a lesson from the experience: “I learned to be very quiet there.”

    Republicans in Congress have raised alarms, with a recent House report warning of “the long-standing and pervasive degradation of First Amendment rights” at U.S. colleges. Some in the GOP have called for federal legislation requiring colleges to protect free speech and punish those who infringe on others’ rights.

    Nicholas Fleisher, who chairs an academic freedom committee for the American Association of University Professors, said public perception is skewed by the infrequent cases when protesters go too far.

    “The reality is that there’s free speech for everyone on college campuses,” said Fleisher, a linguistics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “In conversations within classrooms, people are free to speak their minds. And they do.”

    Officials at PEN America, a free speech group, say most students welcome diverse views. But as the nation has become more politically divided, so have college campuses, said Kristen Shahverdian, senior manager for education at PEN.

    “There’s this polarization that just continues to grow and build across our country, and colleges and universities are a part of that ecosystem,” she said.

    Morgan Ashford, a Democrat in an online graduate program at Troy University in Alabama, said she thinks people can express themselves freely on campus regardless of politics or skin color. Still, she sees a lack of tolerance for the LGBTQ+ community in her Republican state where the governor has passed anti-LGBTQ legislation.

    “I think there have to be guidelines” around hate speech, said Ashford. “Because some people can go overboard.”

    When it comes to protesting speakers, most Americans say it should be peaceful. About 8 in 10 say it’s acceptable to engage in peaceful, non-disruptive protest at a campus event, while just 15% say it’s OK to prevent a speaker from communicating with the audience, the poll found.

    “If they don’t like it, they can get up and walk out,” said Linda Woodward, 71, a Democrat in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

    Mike Darlington, a real estate appraiser who votes Republican, said drowning out speakers violates the virtues of a free society.

    “It seems to me a very, very selfish attitude that makes students think, ‘If you don’t think the way I do, then your thoughts are unacceptable,’” said Darlington, 58, of Chesterfield County, Virginia.

    The protest at Stanford was one of six campus speeches across the U.S. that ended in significant disruption this year, with another 11 last year, according to a database by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group.

    Those cases, while troubling, are one symptom of a broader problem, said Ilya Shapiro, a conservative legal scholar who was shouted down during a speech last year at the University of California’s law school. He says colleges have drifted away from the classic ideal of academia as a place for free inquiry.

    An even bigger problem than speakers being disrupted by protesters is “students and faculty feeling that they can’t be open in their views. They can’t even discuss certain subjects,” said Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute think tank.

    About three in five Americans (62%) say that a major purpose of higher education is to support the free exchange and debate of different ideas and values. Even more U.S. adults say college’s main purpose is to teach students specific skills (82%), advance knowledge and ideas (78%) or teach students to be critical thinkers (76%). Also, 66% said a major purpose is to create a respectful and inclusive learning environment.

    “I believe it should be solely to prepare you to enter the workforce,” said Gene VanZandt, 40, a Republican who works in shipbuilding in Hampton, Virginia. “I think our colleges have gone too far off the path of what their function was.”

    The poll finds that majorities of Americans think students and professors, respectively, should not be allowed to express racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ views on campus, with slightly more Republicans than Democrats saying those types of views should be allowed. There was slightly more tolerance for students expressing those views than for professors.

    About 4 in 10 said students should be permitted to invite academic speakers accused of using offensive speech, with 55% saying they should not. There was a similar split when asked whether professors should be allowed to invite those speakers.

    Darlington believes students and professors should be able to discuss controversial topics, but there are limits.

    “Over-the-top, overtly racist, hateful stuff — no. You shouldn’t be allowed to do that freely,” he said.

    ___

    The poll of 1,095 adults was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

    ___

    Gecker reported from San Francisco.

    ___

    The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Rishi Sunak needs to rally his flagging Conservatives. He hopes a dash of populism will do the trick

    Rishi Sunak needs to rally his flagging Conservatives. He hopes a dash of populism will do the trick

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    LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak heads to the governing Conservative Party’s annual conference on Sunday facing a triple challenge: Cheer up a party that’s trailing in opinion polls, sideline rivals who are eyeing his job and persuade the voting public that a party in power for 13 years deserves another term in office.

    Sunak’s arsenal includes a package of populist measures — such as slowing moves to phase out fossil fuels — designed to win back voters who have rejected the Conservatives over Britain’s stagnating economy, cost-of-living crisis and waves of strikes that have intermittently shut down doctors’ offices, schools and train services.

    “Public services are crumbling, the economy’s not responding and (the Conservatives) haven’t met some of the pledges they’ve made, so you’d expect them to be pretty downhearted,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

    He said that in response, the party is “doubling down on the populism. It’s about pushing the Conservatives as standing up for ordinary people against some sort of elite.”

    In recent weeks, Sunak has approved new North Sea oil and gas drilling, delayed a ban on selling new gas and diesel cars and watered down other green measures that he said imposed “unacceptable costs” on ordinary people. On the eve of the conference, he announced plans to curb supposed “anti-car measures,” such as blanket 20 mph (32 kph) speed limits and traffic restrictions in residential areas.

    Such moves have dismayed environmental campaigners, but are designed to appeal to the party members, officials and lawmakers gathering in the northwest England city of Manchester for a conference that culminates in a leader’s speech by Sunak on Wednesday. The left-of-center opposition Labour Party will hold its own convention in nearby Liverpool a week later.

    The autumn conferences — blends of pep rally, policy forum and boozy bash — play an important role in British political life. This year’s may well be the last before a national election. Under the U.K. parliamentary system, an election must be called within five years of the previous one, held in December 2019.

    Since the last national vote, the U.K. has left the European Union, endured a pandemic and ejected two prime ministers — scandal-tarnished Boris Johnson and ill-fated Liz Truss, who lasted just 49 days in office. Sunak took the reins in October 2022 with the aim of calming economic turmoil sparked by Truss’ tax-cutting plans.

    Bronwen Maddox, director and chief executive of the international affairs think tank Chatham House, said that conferences are a place where a political party “shows off to itself and looks at itself,” while also trying to speak to the wider electorate.

    “This is a very stuck, difficult-feeling time in Britain, and has been in a way since Brexit,” Maddox said. “And it’s jarred the country’s image of itself as being well run and good at things like government.

    “So people will be looking for reassurance and for hope — and also looking for reasons to scorn. What we’ll watch for … is can (Sunak) really engender a sense of hope in his party and in a much wider audience of potential voters?”

    That could be a struggle. After 13 years of Conservative government, opinion polls put the party 15 to 20 points behind Labour. They suggest support for the party is sagging across almost all demographics, including the “red wall” voters in post-industrial northern English areas. The Conservatives under Johnson won many of those seats from Labour in 2019 by promising that Brexit would bring economic renewal — a renewal that has largely failed to materialize.

    Sunak is the fifth Conservative leader since 2016, and rivals have started positioning themselves for a party leadership contest that could follow election defeat. Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch are both bidding for the support of the party’s populist wing, which wants tough curbs on irregular migration and a war on liberal social values derided as “woke.”

    Paul Goodman, a former lawmaker who edits the Conservative Home website, said that Sunak’s strategy is to depict Labour leader Keir Starmer, a lawyer who was once the country’s chief prosecutor, as an out-of-touch agent of the status quo.

    “He knows that if the next election is framed as Labour versus the Conservatives, Labour will almost certainly win,” Goodman said. “But I think he thinks that if it can be framed as Keir Starmer versus change, then maybe he’ll make it back. So he has to personify himself as change and tell a story of how he is all about change.”

    Goodman said election victory for Sunak is “possible, but very unlikely.”

    “It is looking a bit better for him than it was when he became prime minister, although the odds are still daunting,” he said.

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  • Biden says shutdown isn’t his fault. Will Americans agree?

    Biden says shutdown isn’t his fault. Will Americans agree?

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    WASHINGTON — Staring down a likely government shutdown, the White House wants to make sure any blame falls at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue — specifically on House Republicans.

    After all, it’s House Republicans who have been paralyzed by their inability to pass a funding package, and Republicans who don’t want to uphold a bipartisan spending agreement from earlier this year.

    President Joe Biden is hoping the rest of the country will see things the same way. It’s a murky proposition at a time of extreme political polarization, with many Americans dug into their partisan corners regardless of the facts of the matter.

    A shutdown would arrive at a tenuous moment for Biden, who already faces low poll numbers and concerns about the economy as he seeks a second term in office, partially on the pitch that he offers steady stewardship in Washington.

    If no spending bill passes Congress by the end of Saturday, federal workers stop getting paid, air travel could be ensnarled by staffing shortages and food benefits will pause for some of the country’s most vulnerable families.

    Asked on Friday if Biden should bear any responsibility for the shutdown, White House budget director Shalanda Young said “absolutely not” and accused Republicans of being cavalier with people’s lives.

    “The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck,” she said. “That’s real. And that’s what makes me angry.”

    Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser, blamed the looming shutdown on “the most extreme fringe” of House Republicans in a presentation to allies on Thursday. She said “we have to hold them accountable” and “make sure they pay the political price.”

    Speaking from the White House, she criticized adherents of former President Donald Trump‘s Make America Great Again coalition — but she stopped just short of using the MAGA acronym.

    “We’re not allowed to actually use the M-word here in the White House right now,” said Dunn, referring to legal guidance intended to ensure compliance with the Hatch Act, which prevents political activity while administration officials are on the job. “But everyone here knows what I mean. It’s a four-letter word. It begins with M. It ends with A. It’s got an AG in the middle.”

    Dunn added, “So those people are the ones who are refusing to do their job and shutting the government down for no reason.”

    The current crisis is a sequel to the standoff over raising the debt limit earlier this year. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., refused to authorize the federal government to issue debt unless Biden negotiated over spending cuts.

    After resisting, Biden agreed to budget talks, reaching a bipartisan deal that averted a first-ever default. But now a group of House Republicans want even deeper spending cuts and they’ve threatened to oust McCarthy from the speaker’s job if they don’t get what they want.

    So far, the White House has refused to negotiate, stressing that an agreement was already in place and House Republicans are refusing to honor its terms. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that Republicans were “solely to blame” for any shutdown, calling that “a basic fact.”

    Administration officials have also been highlighting that a shutdown would cause lapses in paychecks for military service members and delays in assistance for victims of natural disasters.

    The White House messaging effort has received no shortage of unintended help from Republicans themselves, with moderates criticizing their hard-right colleagues.

    Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, said “just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet — frankly, not only is it wrong — it’s just pathetic.”

    Even McCarthy acknowledged recently that some members of his caucus “just want to burn the whole place down.”

    At a Wednesday fundraiser outside San Francisco, Biden said McCarthy cares more about protecting his job as speaker than keeping the government open.

    “The fact is that I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Biden said.

    While Washington endured partial shutdowns as long as 35 days during Trump’s presidency, Biden warned his donors that Republicans could shutter the government for weeks, if not months.

    “It would be disastrous for us, especially if it became long-term,” he said.

    Romina Boccia, a veteran of Washington fiscal debates and the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, said this situation is much different than the government shutdown in 2013.

    At that time, Republicans were united around trying to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And even then, it didn’t work. Once the shutdown happened, Boccia recalled, “it didn’t provide any more leverage,” and “Republicans caved and reopened the government when they learned the hard way that they weren’t going to get their way.”

    This time, she said, “it’s not clear what they’re trying to get out of a government shutdown. It just seems dysfunctional all around.”

    Some polls conducted ahead of the expected shutdown suggest Biden and Democrats in Congress could bear a substantial portion of the blame if a closure occurs. But U.S. adults generally have two conflicting priorities regarding the federal budget.

    About 60% of them say the government spends too much money, but majorities also back more money for Social Security, health care and infrastructure, according to a survey by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This enables some Republicans to say the public backs them on cuts, but it also justifies spending on programs that are projected to contribute to higher deficits in the years to come.

    The likely shutdown overlaps with Biden ramping up next year’s reelection campaign. For the past few months, the president has taken full ownership of the economy’s performance as inflation has dropped while unemployment has stayed low.

    But an emerging set of risks are on the horizon and most U.S. adults still feel pessimistic about the country’s direction.

    Mortgage rates are at a 22-year high. Oil prices are nearly $91 a barrel, pushing up the cost of gasoline. Unionized autoworkers are likely entering a third week of strikes. Student loan repayments are restarting. Pandemic-related money for child care centers is set to end, potentially triggering a set of closures that could hit working parents.

    A government shutdown would be another dose of chaos that could cause pain for millions of households. White House officials who are ready to blame Republicans say they’d rather see a shutdown avoided.

    “I’m still hoping,” Young said Friday. “I’m still remaining an optimist.”

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  • After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

    After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

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    Kathleen Maxwell has lived in Phoenix for more than 20 years, but this summer was the first time she felt fear, as daily high temperatures soared to 110 degrees or hotter and kept it up for a record-shattering 31 consecutive days.

    “It’s always been really hot here, but nothing like this past summer,” said Maxwell, 50, who last week opened her windows for the first time since March and walked her dog outdoors for the first time since May. “I was seriously scared. Like, what if this doesn’t end and this is how it’s going to be?”

    Maxwell blames climate change, and she’s not alone.

    New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that extreme weather, including a summer that brought dangerous heat for much of the United States, is bolstering Americans’ belief that they’ve personally felt the impact of climate change.

    About 9 in 10 Americans (87%) say they have experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — including drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding — up from 79% who said that just a few months ago in April. And about three-quarters of those believe climate change is at least partly to blame.

    In total, 64% of U.S. adults say both that they’ve recently experienced extreme weather and that they believe it was caused at least partially by climate change, up from 54% in April. And about 65% say climate change will have or already has had a major impact in their lifetime.

    This summer’s heat might be a big factor: About three-quarters of Americans (74%) say they’ve been affected by extremely hot weather or extreme heat waves in the last five years, up from 55% in April — and of those, 92% said they’ve had that experience just in the past few months.

    This summer was the hottest ever measured in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization and the European climate service Copernicus.

    Millions of Americans also were affected by the worst wildfire season in Canada’s history, which sent choking smoke into parts of the U.S. About six in 10 U.S. adults say haze or smoke from the wildfires affected them “a lot” (15%) or “a little” (48%) in recent months.

    And around the world, extreme heat, storms, flooding and wildfires have affected tens of millions of people this year, with scientists saying climate change has made such events more likely and intense.

    Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said researchers there have conducted twice-yearly surveys of Americans for 15 years, but it wasn’t until 2016 that they saw an indication that people’s experience with extreme weather was affecting their views about climate change. “And the signal has been getting stronger and stronger year by year as these conditions continue to get worse and worse,” he said.

    But he also believes that media coverage of climate change has changed dramatically, and that the public is interpreting information in a more scientific way than they did even a decade ago.

    Seventy-six-year-old Bruce Alvord, of Hagerstown, Maryland, said it wasn’t unusual to experience days with a 112-degree heat index this summer, and health conditions mean that “heat really bothers me because it’s restricted what I can do.”

    Even so, the retired government worker doesn’t believe in human-caused climate change; he recalls stories from his grandparents about bad weather, and thinks the climate is fluctuating on its own.

    “The way the way I look at it is I think it’s a bunch of powerful politicians and lobbying groups that … have their agenda,” said Alvord, a Republican who sees no need to change his own habits or for the government to do more. “I drive a Chrysler 300 (with a V8 engine). I use premium gas. I get 15 miles a gallon. I don’t give a damn.”

    The AP-NORC poll found significant differences between Democrats and Republicans. Among those who have experienced extreme weather, Democrats (93%) are more certain that climate change was a cause, compared to just half of Republicans (48%).

    About 9 in 10 Democrats say climate change is happening, with nearly all of the remaining Democrats being unsure about whether climate change is happening (5%), rather than outright rejecting it. Republicans are split: 49% say climate change is happening, but 26% say it’s not and an additional 25% are unsure. Overall, 74% of Americans say climate change is happening, largely unchanged from April.

    Republican Ronald Livingston, 70, of Clute, Texas, said he’s not sure if human activity is causing climate change, “but I know something is going on because we have been sweating our butts off.”

    The retired history teacher said it didn’t rain for several months this year, killing his grass and drying up a slough on his property where he sometimes fishes. It was so hot — with 45 days of 100 degrees or more — that he could barely go outside, and he struggled to grow a garden. He also believes that hurricanes are getting stronger.

    And after this summer, he’s keeping an open mind about climate change.

    “It worries me to the extent that I don’t think we can go two or three more years of this,” Livingston said.

    Jeremiah Bohr, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh who studies climate change communication, said scientific evidence “is not going to change the minds that haven’t already been changed.” But people might be swayed if people or institutions they already trust become convinced and spread the word, Bohr said.

    After a brutal summer, Maxwell, the Phoenix resident, said she hopes more Americans will accept that climate change is happening and that people are making it worse, and support measures to slow it.

    “It seems very, very obvious to me, with all of the extreme weather and the hurricanes and flooding,” said Maxwell. “I just can’t imagine that people wouldn’t.”

    ___

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    ___

    The poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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  • 3rd Republican presidential debate is set for Nov. 8 in Miami, with the strictest qualifications yet

    3rd Republican presidential debate is set for Nov. 8 in Miami, with the strictest qualifications yet

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    The third Republican presidential debate will be held in Miami on Nov. 8, a day after several states hold off-year elections, and candidates will be facing the most stringent requirements yet to take part.

    Participating candidates must secure 4% of the vote in multiple polls and 70,000 unique donors to earn a spot on the stage, the Republican National Committee said Friday. Party officials did not immediately respond to inquiries about who would moderate the debate.

    Details of the gathering come as the broad GOP field prepares for a second primary debate without their current front-runner. Former President Donald Trump, who also skipped the first debate last month, plans to meet with current and former union workers in Michigan instead of participating in the Sept. 27 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

    The requirements for the third debate will be more challenging to meet than the second. For the second debate, candidates need at least 3% in two national polls or 3% in one national poll as well as two polls from four of the early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, according to the RNC. The White House hopefuls must also have at least 50,000 unique donors.

    The GOP hasn’t confirmed the qualified participants for Wednesday’s debate, but several campaigns have said they’ve satisfied the marks, including former Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Vice President Mike Pence.

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson participated in the first debate, but their attendance for the second is uncertain.

    The candidates are arranged on stage based on their order in polls that meet standards set by the RNC, with higher performing candidates being closer to center stage.

    Scott, who was second from the right edge of the stage for the first GOP debate last month, has proposed the RNC change how it orders the candidates for next week’s debate. In a letter to Chair Ronna McDaniel, Scott’s campaign argued that, since Iowa’s caucus is the leadoff to GOP balloting next year, “polling results from Iowa should be the primary consideration for podium placement at the September debate.”

    “The debate committee has had a very thoughtful approach to the entire process, and we continue to welcome input from all candidates, partners and stakeholders,” RNC officials said of Scott’s proposal. “We look forward to hosting another fair and transparent debate stage in Simi Valley.” ___

    Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

    ___

    Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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  • Most Americans view Israel as a partner, but fewer see it as sharing US values, AP-NORC poll shows

    Most Americans view Israel as a partner, but fewer see it as sharing US values, AP-NORC poll shows

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    NEW YORK — As President Joe Biden prepares to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week in New York, a new poll finds that while Americans generally view Israel as a partner or ally, many question whether his far-right government shares American values.

    The poll results from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the meeting come during a new period of tension between the Biden administration and Israel. Those tensions are caused by Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul that has sparked mass protests in major Israeli cities, ongoing disagreements over how to deal with Iran and how to approach the Palestinians, and comments from Netanyahu political allies that have irked U.S. officials.

    Despite the friction, Biden, who spoke out in barely disguised opposition to the judicial plan, and Netanyahu are expected to project a solid partnership in which the U.S. continues to support Israel’s security.

    Biden will also emphasize that the U.S. is continuing to work on expanding the Trump-era Abraham Accords, which normalized Israeli relations with several Arab countries, to include Saudi Arabia. However, there is little sign of an imminent breakthrough on that front.

    Although the poll showed that Americans overwhelmingly view Israel as more of a friend than a foe, it also found that they are divided on whether Israel is a country with which the U.S. shares common interests and values.

    About 4 in 10 Americans described Israel as a partner with which the U.S. should cooperate, but they also said the country does not share U.S. interests and values, the poll found. Only about 3 in 10 said Israel is an ally that shares U.S. interests. Republicans (44%) are more likely than Democrats (25%) to call Israel an ally with shared values. About 2 in 10 Americans described Israel as either a U.S. rival or an adversary.

    The U.S. provides Israel with more than $3 billion a year in military and other assistance and the close relationship has endured over the decades despite not infrequent spats over policy, most notably over Iran and treatment of the Palestinians.

    Overall, 61% of Americans disapprove of how Biden is handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with only 35% approving. That number was slightly lower than Biden’s overall approval rating.

    Many Americans don’t see a need for the U.S. to change its position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. About 4 in 10 Americans, or 44%, said the U.S. gives about the right amount of support to Israel in the conflict, while 27% said it’s too supportive of Israel and 23% not supportive enough.

    About the same percentage, 42%, say the correct amount of support is given to the Palestinians, with 30% saying they want more support and 21% wanting less.

    Among Republicans, 34% said they would like the U.S. to give more support to Israel, but slightly more (40%) say the current level is sufficient. Only 11% of Democrats said the U.S. needs to be giving more assistance to Israel. About half of Democrats said the current amount is “about right” while only about a third said the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, the poll found.

    In their meeting Wednesday, Biden is expected to reaffirm steadfast American commitment to Israel’s security in the turbulent Middle East. At the same time, his administration is hoping to give Netanyahu one of his major asks — entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, which would allow Israelis to visit the United States on a temporary basis without a visa.

    U.S. law requires that Americans, including Palestinian-Americans, be treated the same in order to qualify for the program. Israel has taken several steps to ensure equal treatment for all Americans entering Israel but it has only until the end of September to prove that the criteria have been met. Otherwise, Israel must requalify for the program during the next budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

    In terms of the Palestinian conflict, about two-thirds of Americans profess neutrality, according to the AP-NORC poll — 37% said they sympathize with neither Israel nor the Palestinians, while 29% said they sympathized with both equally.

    A similar percentage, 58%, said they neither favor nor oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, while 22% favor it and 15% oppose it.

    ___

    The poll of 1,165 adults was conducted Aug. 10-14 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

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  • With an election looming, New Zealand lawmakers wrap up rowdy final session

    With an election looming, New Zealand lawmakers wrap up rowdy final session

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    New Zealand lawmakers rushed to pass legislation and criticize opponents during a rowdy final day of the nation’s 53rd Parliament

    ByNICK PERRY Associated Press

    WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand lawmakers rushed Thursday to pass legislation and criticize opponents during a rowdy final day of the nation’s 53rd Parliament.

    With an election looming in six weeks, lawmakers will now switch focus to the campaign trail. Opinion polls indicate the opposition conservatives hold a slight edge over the incumbent liberals.

    Lawmakers took just two hours to introduce and pass a new bill to ensure some violent sexual offenders will be kept under long-term supervision. Then a fiery debate session began, with loud cheers, laughter and groans. At one point, environmental protesters interrupted by unfurling a banner saying there were too many cows, before security guards escorted them out.

    Nicola Willis, deputy leader of the opposition, took aim at Grant Robertson, the finance minister.

    “Does he think he has been a good steward of taxpayers’ money when government spending is up 80%, our hospitals are in crisis, educational achievement is in decline, and many New Zealanders feel worse off?” Willis asked.

    Robertson replied that the government was getting high marks from ratings agencies and had helped low-income families and beneficiaries.

    “Confidence is rising, spring is coming, the member should cheer up,” he said.

    Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won the last election in a landslide. But the Labour Party’s fortunes have turned since then as many people wearied of COVID-19 restrictions and felt the impacts of high inflation.

    Ardern stepped down earlier this year and Chris Hipkins took over as prime minister. Hipkins axed many contentious polices to focus on the rising cost of living.

    Tax has become a major election issue, with both parties promising cuts.

    Hipkins says his party will remove the sales tax from fruit and vegetables and cut taxes for lower-income families. The opposition National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, promises to cut income taxes, with relief aimed at the “squeezed middle.”

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  • Germany’s Scholz pledges less infighting as his government works to boost the economy

    Germany’s Scholz pledges less infighting as his government works to boost the economy

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    BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged on Wednesday that his government will tone down frequent public infighting that has weighed it down badly in polls as it works to pick up the country’s stagnant economy, Europe’s biggest.

    Scholz spoke after his Cabinet held a two-day retreat outside Berlin, emerging with plans to encourage climate-friendly investments, provide tax relief for companies and cut red tape. The meeting followed months in which the three-party coalition’s agenda to modernize Germany has often been overshadowed by internal squabbling.

    “We are a government in which hammers and screws are at work, and that leads to noise, as you have noticed — but things come out of it,” Finance Minister Christian Lindner said.

    Scholz made clear that he’s banking on less noise going forward.

    “We will hammer and tap, but with sound absorbers,” the chancellor told reporters. “It shouldn’t be heard any more.”

    Center-left Social Democrat Scholz leads a coalition of socially liberal parties that took power in late 2021 with a progressive agenda. But their approaches to economic and other issues are often at odds, in particular between his two junior partners: the environmentalist, traditionally left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.

    The two squabbled at length earlier this year over a plan to replace fossil-fuel home heating systems.

    Two weeks ago, hopes of presenting a more united front after the summer break were dashed when one of the Greens’ ministers initially blocked a Cabinet decision on the plan by Lindner, the Free Democrats’ leader, for company tax relief. She had been trying to months to get more money for her plan to expand child benefits. On Monday, the coalition reached a compromise on that issue.

    Another potential disagreement lies ahead: a call by Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, the economy minister and a Green party member, for subsidized electricity for big companies. Lindner and the Free Democrats oppose the idea; Scholz’s party came out in favor of it this week, but the chancellor himself is skeptical and avoided a clear position Wednesday.

    Scholy emphasized efforts to transition to renewable energy, and said he is confident that they ultimately “will be reflected in big growth.” At present, the economy is stuttering.

    In the past two weeks, the Cabinet has approved major parts of the coalition’s social reform agenda — plans to ease rules for obtaining German citizenship, liberalize rules on the possession and sale of cannabis, and make it easier for transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to change their gender and name in official registers.

    It’s unclear whether the government can win back voters. Manfred Guellner, the head of the Forsa polling agency, wrote in a weekly report Wednesday that “the self-described ‘progressive coalition’s’ efforts at progress are not understood … not considered important (such as the ‘cannabis legalization’) or they cause a lot of anxieties (like the ‘heating bill.’)”

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  • North Carolina governor vetoes election bill, sparking override showdown with GOP supermajority

    North Carolina governor vetoes election bill, sparking override showdown with GOP supermajority

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    RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a sweeping Republican elections bill Thursday that would end a grace period for voting by mail and make new allowances for partisan poll observers.

    In a video message, the Democratic governor accused legislative Republicans of using their slim veto-proof majorities to execute “an all-out assault on the right to vote,” which he said has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with their party keeping and gaining power. The bill would make voting more difficult for young and nonwhite voters who are are more likely to vote absentee and less likely to elect Republicans, he said.

    “They’re making it harder for you to vote, hoping that you won’t bother,” he said, urging North Carolinians to contact their representatives and demand they uphold his veto.

    Another bill Cooper vetoed on Thursday would take away the governor’s appointment power to several boards and commissions, such as those that set electricity rates and environmental regulations. The bill marks another attempt by Republican legislative leaders to wrest control of key panels from the governor and give his appointment power to the General Assembly or to other statewide elected officials.

    Cooper, who is term-limited and cannot run for reelection in 2024, had successfully blocked several components of the elections bill during past sessions. But Republicans now hold a narrow three-fifths supermajority needed to override his vetoes.

    Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican and chair of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, said that by overriding Cooper’s veto of the elections measure, Republicans will guarantee every citizen’s right to vote with confidence in the state’s election security.

    “We are creating a secure election system that makes it easy to vote and protects election integrity,” Warren said. “But Gov. Cooper wants his handpicked partisans running our elections and he apparently feels threatened by North Carolinians observing what happens in their polling places.”

    The governor’s announcement comes as both major parties strengthen their forces in the Tar Heel state, which is expected to be a presidential battleground and home to one of the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial races. Most of the proposed election changes would take effect in early 2024, before the state holds elections for president, governor, Congress, the General Assembly and other offices.

    North Carolina’s 7.3 million registered voters already must navigate new voter identification requirements, starting with local elections this fall, after the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court upheld a 2018 law in April.

    The new bill, passed last week along party lines, would remove a state law that allows elections officials to count absentee ballots received by mail for up to three days after the election if they are postmarked by Election Day. A previously vetoed proposal contained in the bill would instead require those ballots to be returned to county elections offices by the time in-person voting ends at 7:30 p.m. on the day of the election.

    Across the country, Republican-controlled legislatures have acted against early voting — shortening windows for returning mail ballots, banning or limiting the use of drop boxes and criminalizing third-party ballot collection.

    Other previously vetoed provisions would prohibit officials from accepting private money to administer elections and direct state courts to inform elections officials about potential jurors being disqualified because they aren’t U.S. citizens, so they can then be removed from voter rolls.

    New guidelines for partisan poll observers would allow them to move freely about the voting location instead of being confined to a certain area.

    Republicans say the changes are needed to improve efficiency and restore trust in the state’s electoral process. But Democrats argue that the changes would make it more difficult for minority groups to cast ballots and could increase intimidation at the polls.

    Attorney General Josh Stein, the only prominent Democrat running for governor in 2024, criticized Republicans for creating what he called “barriers to the ballot box” and said state leaders should be doing everything in their power to make it easier, not harder, for eligible voters to be heard.

    The offices of Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore did not respond to emails seeking comment Thursday on the veto announcement.

    Cooper also vowed Thursday to veto another elections bill if it reaches his desk. That proposal, which has idled in the House since the Senate approved it in June, would shift appointment power for the State Board of Elections from the governor to legislative leaders.

    ___

    Hannah Schoenbaum is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Voting begins as Malaysian leader Anwar seeks to shore up his rule in vital state elections

    Voting begins as Malaysian leader Anwar seeks to shore up his rule in vital state elections

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    KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Voting began Saturday in crucial state elections in Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s multi-coalition government is seeking to strengthen its hold against a strong Islamic opposition.

    Queues formed outside schools and other polling stations as voters began to stream in. Nearly 9.8 million people, or about half the country’s electorate, are eligible to elect 245 assembly members in six states that contribute more than half of Malaysia’s gross domestic product.

    The polls are widely viewed as an early referendum both for Anwar’s leadership and also the strength of the Islamist opposition after a divisive general election in November.

    While the local elections have no direct impact on the federal government, the outcome could signal whether Anwar’s government can last a full five-year term. The two contending coalitions currently control three states each. If the opposition takes control of states led by Anwar’s bloc or otherwise has a strong showing in state polls, analysts say it will put pressure on Anwar and could rock the country’s political stability.

    Before Anwar, Malaysia had three prime ministers since 2018 after lawmakers switched support for political mileage.

    “The stakes are high for Anwar and his leadership,” said Amir Fareed Rahim, director of strategy at political risk consultancy KRA Group. “A good showing will be a boost for the longer-term stability of Anwar’s unity government. Otherwise, there will be increased political noise that can disrupt and undermine the political authority of his government.”

    Malaysia’s politics were thrown into disarray after November’s general election led to an unprecedented hung Parliament. Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance won the most seats but failed to win a majority after many ethnic Malays threw their support behind the Perikatan Nasional (PN) bloc, led by former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. The PN bloc includes the conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which emerged as the largest single party in Parliament.

    At the behest of the nation’s king, rival parties came together to form Anwar’s unity government. The support of the once-dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and other smaller parties gave Anwar a two-thirds majority in Parliament, but analysts say this loose alliance is perceived as unstable and needs stronger support from the Malay majority.

    The polls are in Selangor and Penang, two of the country’s richest states, as well as Negeri Sembilan, which were ruled by Anwar’s PH alliance. Three poorer Malay heartland states — Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu — were controlled by PAS. Most political observers predict a status quo but believe there will be increased support for the PN opposition.

    Voting ends at 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) and the results will be known later Saturday.

    Anwar, 76, has zig-zagged across the country pitching the appeal of political stability and his concept of a progressive government. He marked his 76th birthday on Thursday by giving fiery speeches late into the night at political rallies in Selangor.

    In a Facebook video Friday, Anwar urged Malaysians to vote wisely and opt for unity for a stable future and a strong economy. He has said a win for his unity government will save the country from racial and religious bigotry, and appealed for time for his government to deliver on its promises for reforms.

    Many in the Malay community view Anwar as too liberal and fear their Islamic identity and economic privileges under a decades-old affirmative action program could be chipped away. By law, all Malays are Muslims and Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. Malays make up over 2/3 of Malaysia’s 33 million people, with large Chinese and Indian minorities.

    The rise of PAS, which espouses a theocratic state and has long positioned itself as a defender of Islam and Malays, partly reflected a growing religious conservatism among Malays. Despite a poor economic track record in the three states it rules, PAS retained loyalty through its religious agenda.

    In a Facebook post this week, PAS hard-line leader Abdul Hadi Awang implied that the opposition can topple Anwar’s government if they sweep all six states.

    Analysts said Anwar would have time to build his political base before the next general election in 2027 if he can keep the three states under his alliance. If Anwar fails, it could prompt allies in his government to rethink their partnership. A shift in allegiance could plunge the country into new turbulence, analysts said.

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