Tesla sales drop

 Independent, UK - Tesla has seen a significant 13 per cent drop in electric car sales over the past three months, a development that suggests boycotts linked to Elon Musk's political views continue to deter buyers. This decline is particularly notable given expectations that public anger towards the billionaire CEO might have subsided by now.

The plunging sales figures underscore growing concerns that Mr Musk's public embrace of Donald Trump and various far-right politicians across Europe has inflicted a profound and lasting blow to the appeal of the Tesla brand.

Court action

 Newsweek -  The Trump administration suffered two deportation-related legal defeats in New York and Virginia on Tuesday. A New York judge blocked a proposal to strip thousands of Haitian migrants of legal protections, and judges in Virginia rejected a bid to place Georgetown University academic Badar Khan Suri into immigration detention for a second time.

President Donald Trump has made cracking down on immigration a policy priority for his second administration, deporting migrants living in the U.S. illegally and revoking the temporary protected status of migrants residing in the U.S. legally. The president recently said there were no illegal crossings into the U.S. via its southern border in May.

As Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, the courts have become one of the main impediments to the Trump administration's decisions.

NY Times -  The Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated a state abortion ban that was enacted in 1849 and had been dormant for five decades.  The decision on Wednesday settles an uncertainty that has surrounded abortion law in the state since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

It also reflects the significance of the state’s elections for Supreme Court justices, which have been hotly contested and revolved largely around abortion rights since the fall of Roe.

 

Trump administration withholds over $6B in grants for US education, after-school programs

 News Center Maine -  The administration is withholding more than $6 billion in federal grants for after-school and summer programs, English language instruction, adult literacy and more.

Day camp providers and schools are warning that a Trump administration funding freeze could wreck summer for low-income American families and wipe out some after-school programming next year.

The administration is withholding more than $6 billion in federal grants for after-school and summer programs, English language instruction, adult literacy and more as part of a review to ensure grants align with President Donald Trump’s priorities.

The move leaves states and schools in limbo as they budget for programs this summer and in the upcoming school year, introducing new uncertainty about when — or if — they will receive the money. It also sets the stage for a clash with Democrats, who say the administration is flouting the law by holding back money Congress appropriated.

Without the money, schools say they won't be able to provide free or affordable after-school care for low-income kids while their parents work, and they may not be able to hire staff to teach children who are learning English. Even classes or camps underway this summer could be in jeopardy.

For instance, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America depend on some of the withheld money to run camps and other summer programming for low-income students. If funding isn’t restored soon, the programming may end mid-season, said Boys and Girls Club President Jim Clark.

After-school programming in the fall could also take a hit. “If these funds are blocked, the fallout will be swift and devastating,” Clark said. As many as 926 Boys and Girls Clubs could close, affecting more than 220,000 kids, the group said.

What is and isn’t legal when ICE officers make an immigration arrest

Polling

 SurveyUSA exit poll on NYC voters’ attitudes toward RCV:

• 96% of voters found their RCV ballot simple to complete.
  
• New York voters continue to support RCV: 76% want to keep it or expand it to more elections.
  
• 81% of voters say they understand RCV very or extremely well.
  
• Turnout in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary exceeded 1 million voters for the first time since 1989.
  
• 95% of voters weighed in between the two finalists for mayor. 

House GOP anger over Senate changes to "big bill"

 Axios - House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing an explosion of internal anger over the Senate's changes to President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," Axios' Andrew Solender and Kate Santaliz report. 

Johnson has just days to pass the bill before Republicans' July 4 deadline (that's Friday!) — which will require flipping dozens of "no" votes and overcoming numerous procedural hurdles.

 "Our bill has been completely changed. ... It's a non-starter," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) bemoaned to reporters today.

• One House Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Axios there are "well over 20" GOP lawmakers threatening to vote against the bill.

 Right-wing House Republicans are upset that the Senate bill is projected to add more to the deficit than the House version would.  "They're backing away from the spending cuts, the spending restraint. They're backing away from the reforms that we think makes the math work," Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in a post on X.

EPA workers hit back at Trump

The New York Times-  More than 270 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency signed a letter on Monday denouncing what they described as the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize, dismantle and sideline the main federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health.

The letter to President Trump’s E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin, was a remarkable rebuke of the agency’s political leadership. It followed a similar missive sent this month by more than 60 employees of the National Institutes of Health, who criticized orders they saw as illegal and unethical.

“E.P.A. employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies, including those that undermine the E.P.A. mission of protecting human health and the environment,” the E.P.A. workers wrote.

Some new presidential powers

 Axios - Through silence or vocal support, House and Senate Republicans are backing an extraordinary set of new precedents for presidential power they may come to regret if and when Democrats seize those same powers.

 Here are 10 new precedents, all established with minimal GOP dissent, being set by President Trump + Congress + courts:

1. Presidents can limit the classified information they share with lawmakers after bombing a foreign country without the approval of Congress.
2. Presidents can usurp Congress's power to levy tariffs, provided they declare a national emergency.
3. Presidents can unilaterally freeze spending approved by Congress, and dismantle or fire the heads of independent agencies established by law.
4. Presidents can take control of a state's National Guard, even if the governor opposes it, and occupy the state for as long as said president wants.
5. Presidents can accept gifts from foreign nations, as large as a $200 million plane, even if it's unclear whether said president gets to keep the plane at the end of the term.
6. Presidents can actively profit from their time in office, including creating new currencies structured to allow foreign nationals to invest anonymously, benefiting said president.
7. Presidents can try to browbeat the Federal Reserve into cutting interest rates, including by floating replacements for the Fed chair before their term is up.
8. Presidents can direct the Justice Department to prosecute their political opponents and punish critics. These punishments can include stripping Secret Service protections, suing them and threatening imprisonment.
9. Presidents can punish media companies, law firms and universities that don't share their viewpoints or values.
10. Presidents can aggressively pardon supporters, including those who made large political donations as part of their bid for freedom. The strength of the case in said pardons is irrelevant.

‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is Massively Unpopular

Time -   In the end, Democrats were unable to stop Republicans from getting their tax-cuts-and-spending plan across the finish line on Tuesday. But, in conversations with strategists close to the Democratic leaders, they had a pretty clever consolation spin: this bill is the most hated piece of major legislation since at least 1990, and Republicans have no plan to fix that.

GOP strategists seemed to understand the buzzkilling buzzsaw they were marching toward with a grim sense of inevitability. Even then, there was still no guarantee the House would accept the Senate’s rewrite of their work.

Fiscal conservatives hated the massive spending and budget trickery. Centrists despised the deep cuts to programs for the poor and elderly. Parochial lawmakers did not realize until the eleventh hour that subsidies for wind and solar energy would hit their states hard, plus an industry-killing hidden tax on those clean-energy sectors seemed to come from nowhere, before getting scrapped. And the pragmatists were watching the GOP’s biggest donor, Elon Musk, threaten everyone who voted for it with a primary challenge and throwing his money toward a new third party. (True to form, President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to deport the South African-born American citizen for his disloyalty.)

NPR -  House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t afford more than three people voting against the package and has said the weather is a factor. Flights were delayed and canceled last night as members of the House tried to make it to the nation’s capital to vote. NPR’s Deirdre Walsh tells Up First that some conservatives threatened to vote no because the Senate bill costs significantly more than the version the House passed in May. The GOP message is that Congress has to pass the bill to avoid a tax hike since the tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term expire at the end of this year. Walsh says that it is a complicated message, as most people won’t see significant changes in their paychecks. 

NPR -  There are 26 million Americans without health insurance right now. That number is expected to go up by a third because of this bill, according to the CBO. The primary way the bill will separate people from their insurance is increased paperwork, says Julie Rovner with KFF Health News. The bill would require people to prove their eligibility every six months instead of once a year. The process would be more than filling out a form; people would need to upload lots of documentation to prove their claims about their income or health status. This can be a difficult task for those who are physically or mentally sick. 

 

Pentagon halts weapons shipment to Ukraine

NBC News - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a pause in sending a shipment of missiles and ammunition to Ukraine over concerns about the U.S. military's stockpiles, according to two defense officials, two congressional officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision. The pause comes weeks after Hegseth ordered a review of the U.S. stockpile of munitions. The supply has been depleted in recent years as the U.S. sent assistance to Ukraine in its war against Russia and to the Middle East as the U.S. fought Houthi rebels in Yemen and defended Israel and allies against Iran, four officials said.

Among the thousands of weapons being delayed are dozens of Patriot interceptors. President Donald Trump said last week after a NATO conference that the U.S. is trying to find such missiles to send to Ukraine. If the munitions are found to be in short supply or needed in other parts of the world, they could be held back even after the Hegseth-ordered assessment is complete. Full story. 

Mamdani Responds to Trump’s Arrest Threat

Time - Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the upcoming New York City mayoral race, denounced President Donald Trump’s threat to arrest him over his pledge to push back on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, calling the President's comments “an attack on our democracy” and “intimidation.”

Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist state assemblymember whose victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in last week’s Democratic primary marked a stunning political upset, has said that he would be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.” He has condemned the Trump Administration’s efforts to conduct mass deportations, promising in a speech the night of the primary election to use his authority to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.”

Trump has criticized Mamdani since the 33-year-old state lawmaker declared victory in the Democratic primary, calling him “a 100% Communist lunatic” in the wake of the election. The President escalated his attacks on Mamdani during a press briefing on Tuesday. He alluded to false claims that Mamdani is in the country “illegally.” Mamdani is not in the U.S. illegally; he was born in Uganda and moved to the U.S. at the age of 7, becoming a naturalized American citizen in 2018. Trump was also asked during the press briefing how he responded to Mamdani’s vow to defy ICE agents, to which the President replied, “Well then, we’ll have to arrest him.”

Mamdani took to social media hours later to slam the President’s comments, saying that Trump had threatened to arrest him “not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”

More than 100 rural hospitals have closed in past decade

Time - More than 100 rural hospitals have closed in the past decade, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR), a national policy center that works to improve health care payment systems and whose data have been cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center. About one-third of all rural hospitals in the country are at risk of closing because of financial problems. In Alabama, 23 rural hospitals—about half of all of them in the state—are at immediate risk of closing, according to CHQPR.

Even more rural hospitals might be in trouble if Congress passes the huge piece of legislation before it, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes significant cuts that would slash Medicaid spending in rural areas by $119 billion over 10 years, according to KFF. Thom Tillis, the U.S. Senator from North Carolina who said he couldn’t support the bill in its current form, said in a statement on June 28 that Congress needed to achieve the tax cuts and spending in the bill “without hurting our rural communities and hospitals.”

People often blame rural hospital closures on poor reimbursement rates from Medicare and Medicaid. There’s a reason for that assumption: Just about every hospital loses money on Medicaid and Medicare, since reimbursement rates are low nationwide. But hospitals like the one in Thomasville are struggling not because they serve a large share of poor patients or elderly people on these plans. 

“When you look at the data, what you see is that Medicare and Medicaid are not the problem,” says Harold Miller, president and CEO of CHQPR. “The problem is private insurers.”

Rural hospitals depend on private insurers for the majority of their patient costs, Miller says. In Alabama, for instance, CHQPR’s data shows that most rural hospitals depend on private insurers for anywhere between 65-80% of patient costs; in Thomasville, 18.4% of patients were using Medicare to pay for their coverage, 16.2% were using Medicaid, and 65.4% were using private insurance.

But many rural hospitals are losing money on what private insurers will pay for patient care. The one in Thomasville, for instance, was getting paid by private insurers roughly half of what it was costing to deliver services, according to federal data compiled by CHQPR.  

This is a very different situation than what is happening between private insurers and urban hospitals, he says. Urban hospitals and large rural hospitals are able to make up for the losses from Medicare and Medicaid patients with what they can charge private insurers. Small rural hospitals can’t do that.

Senate passes massive bill for Trump’s agenda

Nationwide lunchmeat recall

 Health.com

• More than 140,000 pounds of lunch meat have been recalled nationwide.
• Bologna from Gaiser’s European Style Provisions Inc. may contain meat that’s not declared on the product label.
• Look for the items in your fridge and freezer, and discard or return them.

 

Only 7% correctly identified three false claims

Newsguard - Nearly half of Americans (49 percent) reported they believed at least one of the three false claims to be true, while only seven percent of respondents could correctly identify all three claims as false. Seventy-four percent were unsure about the truth or falsehood of at least one claim.

For example, asked about the claim that Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal spent $800,000 in taxpayer money on hotels during a trip to Ukraine, 27 percent of those surveyed said the claim was true and 57 percent were “not sure.” Only 17 percent correctly identified the claim as false.

Asked about the claim that pallets of bricks were planted in Los Angeles during the June 2025 anti-deportation protests as part of a plan to arm protesters, 24 percent said the claim was true and 43 percent said they were “not sure.” Thirty-three percent correctly classified the claim as false.

Asked about the claim that white South Africans are being systematically killed as part of a “white genocide,” 26 percent said the claim was true, 33 percent were “not sure,” and 40 percent correctly identified the claim as false.

Read NewsGuard’s first Reality Gap Index report and the press release announcing the new initiative here.

Stupid Trump stuff

Naples News -    President Donald Trump is expected today (July 1) to visit the site of the temporary migrant detention center being referred to as Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades.  The detention center is being built in the Big Cypress National Preserve, which is about 44 miles southeast of Naples.

Republicans against Trump  - Q: With Alliagator Alcatraz, is the idea that if some illegal immigrant escapes, they just get eaten by an alligator? 

Trump: I guess that’s the concept. Snakes are fast but alligators, we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator.

 

Some Social Security Recipients May Get Smaller Payments

 Newsweek - Some Social Security recipients will begin receiving reduced monthly payments starting in late July, as the Social Security Administration implements new overpayment recovery policies. The SSA announced in April that it would begin withholding 50 percent of benefit payments from recipients who have been overpaid, representing a significant increase from the previous 10 percent withholding rate. This policy change affects approximately 2 million Americans who received Social Security overpayments, according to data from the SSA's efforts to reclaim overpayments in fiscal year 2023.

The new 50 percent withholding rate could substantially impact household budgets for vulnerable populations who rely on Social Security as their primary income source. The change comes as the SSA seeks to recover $23 billion in uncollected overpayments as of September 2023.

Trump Withholds Federal Money From Schools:

 Newsweek - President Donald Trump's administration has acted to withhold billions of dollars in federal education funding from states and local school districts, impacting a wide range of programs and threatening the financial stability of schools across at least 33 states and territories.

The administration notified grantees that funds previously slated for teacher training, after-school programs and services for English learners and migrant students would not be released on July 1 as expected, pending an ongoing departmental review of fiscal year 2025 grant funding, Politico reported Monday.

Estimates place the total amount affected nationwide between $5 billion and $6.8 billion, including at least $811 million earmarked for California alone. The move came with limited advance notice to states, many of which had already hired staff and planned programs expecting the money to arrive.

 

Donald Trump

Mediaite -  President Donald Trump indicated Tuesday morning that he is open to deporting Elon Musk — amid his renewed battle with the Tesla boss. Speaking with reporters ahead of a flight to Florida on Tuesday, the president was asked about whether he would consider deporting the South African mogul.

“We’ll have to take a look,” Trump said. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon! Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Weather

 Newsweek -  Air quality alerts were in place for parts of California and Colorado on Tuesday, with local authorities urging residents in affected areas to take steps to reduce air pollution. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued an ozone action day alert for the Front Range Urban Corridor. The highest chance for elevated ozone levels is in the western parts of the Denver metro area, including Golden.

"If possible, please help us reduce ozone pollution by limiting driving gas and diesel-powered vehicles until at least 4 p.m. Ozone concentrations could reach the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups category Tuesday afternoon and evening," the alert read

 

Nationwide Amazon Boycott Planned for Today

 Newsweek -  Amazon is facing another nationwide boycott of its stores and services from July 1, held by The People's Union USA, announced during the wedding festivities of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

Consumer-led boycotts against well-known and prolific American corporations have been sweeping the country since late February, in what organizers have framed as an attempt to regain control from corporations.

While short-term financial effects may be limited, such movements seek to encourage broader discussions on economic fairness and corporate accountability.

The Whole Country Is Starting to Look Like California

 The Atlantic -  Something is happening in the housing market that really shouldn’t be. Everyone familiar with America’s affordability crisis knows that it is most acute in ultra-progressive coastal cities in heavily Democratic states. And yet, home prices have been rising most sharply in the exact places that have long served as a refuge for Americans fed up with the spiraling cost of living. Over the past decade, the median home price has increased by 134 percent in Phoenix, 133 percent in Miami, 129 percent in Atlanta, and 99 percent in Dallas. (Over that same stretch, prices in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have increased by about 75 percent, 76 percent, and 97 percent, respectively).

This trend could prove disastrous. For much of the past half century, suburban sprawl across the Sun Belt was a kind of pressure-release valve for the housing market. People who couldn’t afford to live in expensive cities had other, cheaper places to go. Now even the affordable alternatives are on track to become out of reach for a critical mass of Americans.

Money

Gavin Newsom on the Trump budget bill:  

- Largest transfer of wealth to the rich in American history.
- Largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
- Largest cut to food assistance in American history.
- Electricity costs could go up by 30%.
- Millions of jobs could disappear. 

All the states where minimum wage will rise in July 

Stanford University will cut $140m from its budget, citing ‘federal policy changes’ 

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear on Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill: “They’re adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. They’re going to blow a hole in every state’s budget with what they’re doing to SNAP. They’re going to fire a ton of healthcare workers. They’re gonna throw people off their healthcare coverage. They’re gonna close rural hospitals and more people are going to go hungry. What could be beautiful about that? Absolutely nothing.”

Bloomberg -   Senate Republicans are moving forward with a plan to mask the $3.8 trillion cost of extending expiring tax cuts in President Donald Trump’s signature economic legislation. GOP senators voted Monday in favor of a plan that says renewing the party’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire, somehow costs nothing.

What’s seen by Democrats as a brazen attempt at accounting sleight of hand allows the GOP to both mollify Trump with more of his populist wish list and satisfy the party’s self-described fiscal conservatives. The renewal of tax cuts that largely go to the rich and corporations will come at the expense of millions of lower income and disabled Americans who will no longer have healthcare of assistance buying food.

“Even a preschooler knows this is magic math,” said Patty Murray of Washington State, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. She accused Republicans of “trashing the rules” to pass the bill. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pledged there was nothing “sneaky” about the maneuver. 

 

Immigration

The Guardian - The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.

The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.

At the center of the move are the estimated 25 million US citizens who immigrated to the country after being born abroad, according to data from 2023 – and it lists 10 different priority categories for denaturalization.

According to the memo, those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases. And the government has a lighter burden of proof in civil cases than they do in criminal ones.

Republicans in Florida building concentration camp with souvenirs

 Wonkette -  The Republicans are building a concentration camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades where they plan to imprison thousands of migrants and foreigners being scooped up by the ICEstapo. And they are so fucking proud of it that the Florida GOP is selling T-shirts and beer koozies with the prison’s cutesy appellation “Alligator Alcatraz” stamped on them. Sure, it’s an inhumane prison camp, but that is no reason to skip making a little profit off the merchandising!  You can buy these allegedly made in the USA products in the Florida GOP’s online store.

 

 

60th anniversary and death bed for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The Guardian  - July 2 is the 60th anniversary  of the first day of business for a brand-new federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which had been created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today it is on its deathbed.

Over the last six decades, EEOC was the primary enforcer of federal laws that prohibit employment-related discrimination, including sex discrimination, racial discrimination, and age discrimination. Just last year, EEOC was able to compel hundreds of employers to pay a total of more than $700 million in damages to some 21,000 individuals who had been the victims of illegal employment discrimination.

For 60 years, EEOC has been responsible for attempting to ensure that employers determine wages, benefits and working conditions without regard to race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual preference, or age. Yet despite the law and EEOC’s efforts, it is indisputable that Blacks and women in the U.S. are the victims of employment discrimination that is little different than it was in the 1980s. 

It was EEOC that determined that newspapers were violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when they published “help-wanted” advertising in separate sections for women and for men.

It was EEOC that determined it was illegal for employers to fire female employees when they marry.

It was EEOC that required employers to desegregate restrooms, shower and locker rooms and cafeterias. 

In its first full year of operations, EEOC handled 8854 cases of employment discrimination. In 2011, it handled 99,947 cases. In 2025, it handled 237,251 cases.

On January 28, 2025, President Trump fired two of the three EEOC Commissioners. The Commission cannot meet or conduct business without a quorum present. It will remain out of business until and unless a second Commissioner is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Don’t hold your breath.

 

Religion

 The Making of an American Pope

Schools

 Axios - Most K-12 public students in the biggest U.S. cities attend schools in extreme urban heat zones, a new analysis finds.  The heat island effect can make some neighborhoods notably warmer than others, especially during heat waves like the one that recently struck much of the country.

• Many schools lack adequate air conditioning, jeopardizing students' health and learning abilities in periods of extreme heat while class is in session.

About 76% of public K-12 students in the 65 most populous U.S. cities attend schools where the heat island effect increases temperatures by at least 8°F, per a new analysis from Climate Central, a climate research group, More

Health

 NPR - Nearly 12 million people would lose their health insurance under President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," an erosion of the social safety net that would lead to more unmanaged chronic illnesses, higher medical debt and overcrowding of hospital emergency departments.

The changes in the Senate version of the bill could wipe out most of the health coverage gains made under the Affordable Care Act and slash state support for Medicaid and SNAP.

The stakes are huge for low-income and working-class Americans who depend on Medicaid and subsidized ACA coverage.

• Without health coverage, more people with diabetes, heart disease, asthma and other chronic conditions will likely go without checkups and medication to keep their ailments in check.
• Those who try to keep up will pay more out of pocket, driving up medical debt and increasing the risk of eviction, food insecurity and depleted savings.
• Uninsured patients have worse cancer survival outcomes and are less likely to get prenatal care. Medicaid also is a major payer of behavioral health counseling and crisis intervention.

The Medicaid and ACA changes will also affect people who keep their coverage.

• The anticipated drop-off in preventive care means the uninsured will be more likely to go to the emergency room when they get sick. That could further crowd ERs, resulting in even longer wait times.

The White House and GOP proponents of the bill say the health care changes will address fraud, waste and abuse, and argue that coverage loss projections are overblown.  More

Polls

NPR - A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll reveals that 76% of Americans believe democracy is facing a serious threat. That percentage includes 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents and 57% of Republicans. Additionally, 73% view politically motivated violence as a significant issue.

Trump has a 43% job approval. In key issue areas, like immigration, foreign policy and the economy, the president receives similar percentages. Right now, only 44% of Democrats approve of their party’s approach in Congress, compared to 73% of Republicans who approve of their party. Montanaro says Democrats have a lot of work to do if they want to take back the House next year.