President Trump has just signed the first phase of an historic trade agreement with China, although both countries are still keeping their recently imposed tariffs in place for now. Voters tend to think the deal will be good for America and are more upbeat on how it will impact them personally. But as usual, party line makes a difference.
Almost all of us know (because President Trump boasts of it in nearly every speech) that our 3.5% unemployment rate has reached a 50-year low. But this official decline in joblessness doesn't tell the entire story of the improvement in the job market in the United States. And it doesn't fully capture the change in direction between what happened under President Barack Obama and Trump.
On the holiday set aside in 2020 to honor Martin Luther King, the premier advocate of nonviolent Gandhian civil disobedience, thousands of gun owners gathered in Richmond to petition peacefully for their rights.
Forty-five percent (45%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 16, 2020.
For many Democrats, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who can beat Joe Biden for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination. But voters are less in sync with Sanders’ avowedly socialist views than those of his potential campaign rival, President Trump.
In surveys last week, this is what America told Rasmussen Reports...
Russia -- OK, not the actual Russian government but a private troll farm company located in Russia -- bought $100,000 worth of political ads on Facebook designed to change the outcome of the 2016 election. Except that only a small fraction of those ads were political. Also except that the small fraction was divvied up between pro-Hillary Clinton and pro-Donald Trump ads. And especially except that $100,000 in Facebook ads can't affect the outcome of a $6.8 billion election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains the best-known leader of Congress and is enjoying her greatest popularity ever. Her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, earns his highest favorables in five years.
Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed this week to go around Congress and begin cancelling $640 billion in student loan debt on her first day in office if she is elected president. But most voters oppose the Massachusetts Democrat’s plan, and even more think Congress needs to have a say in the matter.
About the impeachment of President Donald Trump she engineered with her Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday: "It's not personal. It's not political. It's not partisan. It's patriotic."
Seriously, Madam Speaker? Not political? Not partisan?
Elections are a form of communication. Voting tells politicians, and the press if they're capable of getting the message, what citizens will tolerate and what they won't. The Democrats haven't voted yet, but they've been campaigning for more than a year and have just had their last debate before the Iowa caucuses two weeks from Monday.
While the diminishing Democratic field of White House hopefuls continues to slug it out, just over half of voters still plan to vote against President Trump come November.
— The Kansas Senate race is getting a lot of national buzz, but we still see the GOP as clearly favored to hold the seat.
— The chances of Republicans springing Senate upsets in New Hampshire and Virginia appear to be growing dimmer.
— Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) decision not to hold a special election for CA-50 makes it likelier for Republicans to hold the seat.
— Vermont is a sleeper Democratic gubernatorial target.
States and localities throughout the country are debating whether to outlaw the use of disposable plastic bags, even as Americans nationwide appear less agreeable to the idea.
A sizable number of Americans want to get involved in the pro-democracy protests in Iran, but they’re doubtful the protests will lead to meaningful change. Most suspect, however, that increased U.S. sanctions will push Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program.
In November, I was banned in Boston after speech-squelchers on the left and right forced the cancellation of my lecture at Bentley University, a small private institution. The grassroots activists who had invited me were rejected by every major event venue in the nation's purported Cradle of Liberty. The tail-tuckers cited security concerns or jacked up their rental fees to make it prohibitively expensive to gather peacefully to discuss -- gasp! -- ideas.
People who want to work should be allowed to work. That includes people who once went to jail.
The Rasmussen Reports Immigration Index for the week of January 5-9, 2020 is at 99.7, up slightly from 98.4 the week before.
Voters are largely divided along party lines when asked if President Trump should fill any U.S. Supreme Court vacancy this year and whether former President Obama should be considered for the job.
Over the holidays, I read Elton John's biography, "Me." He writes about his friendship with Freddie Mercury, the ultratalented lead singer of the rock group Queen. Mercury tragically died of AIDS at the age of 45 in 1991. Mercury was one of the last people to die of the disease in Britain during the epidemic years. John writes sadly and almost offhandedly that if Mercury had lived one year longer, he probably would have survived because of the AIDS medication that eventually saved millions of lives.
