Monkey Cage/WaPo:
Why 41 percent of white millennials voted for Trump
When we control for a number of other factors that might lead white millennials to vote for Donald Trump — such as racial resentment, partisanship, ideology, living in the South, gender and employment status — we find that the largest predictor of voting for Trump is that sense of white vulnerability. White millennials who scored high on the white vulnerability scale were 74 percent more likely to vote for Trump than those at the bottom of the scale
Racism. Details in the story.
Well, there’s that. So it is noise or is Mueller going to be fired? Stay tuned.
NY Times:
For much of the seven months since Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel, President Trump’s lawyers have stressed their cooperation with him, believing that the more they work with his investigation, the sooner the president will have his name cleared.
But in recent weeks, as the investigation has reached deeper into Mr. Trump’s inner circle, that image of cooperation has begun to fracture. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters have significantly increased their attacks on Mr. Mueller, especially as the F.B.I. has handed them fresh ammunition to claim that the agents investigating the president may be biased.
The latest salvos came over the weekend, when a top Republican senator said Mr. Mueller should examine his team’s political leanings, and a lawyer for Mr. Trump sent a letter to lawmakers saying that the special counsel had improperly gotten emails from the presidential transition team.
These are the stories fueling the speculation.
NY Times:
E.P.A. Employees Spoke Out. Then Came Scrutiny of Their Email
“This is a witch hunt against E.P.A. employees who are only trying to protect human health and the environment,” said Gary Morton, an E.P.A. employee in Philadelphia, who works on preventing spills from underground storage tanks. His emails were targeted seven days after he participated in a union rally in March challenging proposed budget cuts. “What they are doing is trying to intimidate and bully us into silence,” he said.
The contract with Definers comes at a time of heightened tension between the news media and the Trump administration. Within the E.P.A., the move is also part of a bellicose media strategy that has been helped at key moments by America Rising — even before its affiliate was hired by the agency.
NPR:
Poll: Discrimination Against Women Is Common Across Races, Ethnicities, Identities
Our poll — which was fielded from late January to early April — before this fall's intense news coverage of sexual harassment — also captures what women were feeling and experiencing before the recent scandals.
We found that 37 percent of women overall reported they or a female family member had been sexually harassed because they are women at some point in their lives. But there was a wide range of responses based on age, with 60 percent of those 18 to 29 years old saying they or a female family member had been sexually harassed because they are women, versus 17 percent of women 65 and over.
WaPo:
After Alabama loss, Trump has ambitious plans to campaign in 2018 midterms
The president has told advisers that he wants to travel extensively and hold rallies and that he is looking forward to spending much of 2018 campaigning. He has also told aides that the elections would largely determine what he can get done — and that he expects he would be blamed for losses, such as last week’s humiliating defeat that handed a Senate seat in Alabama to a Democrat for the first time in 25 years.
He will get blamed because America thinks he sucks. Let’s look at that.
NBC:
Fresh off their victory in Alabama’s special Senate election, Democrats now enjoy their largest advantage in congressional preference in nine years, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, signaling a dangerous political environment for Republicans entering next year’s midterm elections.
Fifty percent of registered voters say they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, versus 39 percent who want Republicans in charge….
n this most recent poll, Democrats hold a whopping 48-point lead in congressional preference among voters ages 18-34 (69 percent to 21 percent), a 20-point lead among female voters (54 percent to 34 percent) and a 12-point lead among independent voters (43 percent to 31 percent).
By contrast, Republicans have a 2-point edge among white voters (46 percent to 44 percent) and a 12-point advantage with whites without a college degree (50 percent to 38 percent).
That +11 D is no fluke. In fact, it’s the average. And generic ballot leads a t=year out actually have pretty good predictive power.