“For the first time in nearly a decade of polling, more than half of Americans say the country’s best days are already behind it. Three-quarters think the country’s political system needs major reforms or a complete overhaul,” according to a new CNN poll.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds 79% of voters say the United States is in a political crisis, while 18% say it is not.

And 82% of voters think the way people talk about politics these days is contributing to violence in the United States, while 15% do not. 

AP-NORC poll: “The share of Republicans who see the country headed in the right direction has fallen sharply in recent months…Today, only about half in the GOP see the nation on the right course, down from 70% in June. The shift is even more glaring among Republican women and the party’s under-45 crowd.”

“Overall, about one-quarter of Americans say things in the country are headed in the right direction, down from about 4 in 10 in June. Democrats and independents didn’t shift meaningfully.”

Playbook: “The anger is colossal today, visceral. And understandably so. Charlie Kirk was loved and admired by millions of people — he built a movement, from the ground up. You may have embraced his worldview or you may have vehemently disagreed with everything he said, but his approach was to persuade, to use charm and charisma and provocation and the power of argument to convince people of the righteousness of his cause.”

“And he had courage, taking his arguments out into the country, out to wherever his fans and his critics were. As so many people have already said — including his fiercest critics — this has to be the right approach. This is what we want from our politics. Yet this is also what put him in harm’s way. So where does our politics go from here?”

“It’s hard to be optimistic this morning about the road ahead. The sight of Congress erupting into another angry shouting match last night — in what should have been a solemn moment of reflection — was the most depressing, and revealing, reaction of all.“

“Even before the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an influential right-wing activist, there were signs of a looming political crisis. Rising polarization and the coarsening of public discourse left little room for shared understanding. Acts of violence, targeting figures on the left and the right, had begun piling up,” the New York Times reports.

“But the killing of Mr. Kirk on a Utah college campus on Wednesday — shortly after he began speaking to a young crowd on a sunny afternoon — raises the possibility that the country has entered an even more perilous phase.”

Politico: America searches for a way back from the edge.

Punchbowl News: “Much of the behavior that we see from national political leaders themselves would be deemed unacceptable for grade-school children.”

“Many – if not most – members and senators see the other party as their mortal enemies out to destroy the country, not just good-hearted yet wrong-thinking political rivals. That mindset makes each day an existential struggle between good and evil rather than a contest between competing political ideas or policies…”

“The rise of social media has fed into growing extremism on both sides of the aisle. Passing legislation or making bipartisan deals is seen as far less valuable than someone who can pound their opponents on TikTok or X. In fact, bipartisanship is a sign you’ve been compromised and fallen prey to the other side’s malevolent machinations.”

NBC News Poll: “Among Gen Z overall, 64% disapprove of Trump’s job performance versus 36% who approve. But young men are more evenly split (53% disapprove, 47% approve) than young women (74% disapprove, 26% approve). The 21-point difference in Trump’s approval rating is unchanged from April.”

“That split continues when it comes to Trump’s handling of issues. On two issues — inflation and the cost of living, and trade and tariffs — young men approve of the president by about 20 points more than young women do. The biggest Gen Z gender split on the issues is on immigration, where 45% of young men approve of the way Trump is handling deportation and immigration, compared to just 21% of young women.”

Gallup: “Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years.”

Derek Thompson: “The math is straightforward. Population growth has two sources: natural increase (births minus deaths) and net immigration (arrivals minus departures). Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people. That means any decline in net immigration in excess of half a million could push the U.S. into population decline. A recent analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the US foreign-born population fell for the first time in decades by more than one million.”

“While some economists have questioned the report, a separate analysis by the American Enterprise Institute predicted that net migration in 2025 could be as low as negative 525,000. In either case, annual population growth this year could easily turn negative.”

“This would be a historic first. For nearly 250 years, America has only known growth.”

A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds that “the share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987.”

“More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found.”

“Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.”

A new Gallup poll finds 76% of Republicans saying they are satisfied with the direction of the country versus less than 1% of Democrats.

New York Times: “The year is 2032. Studying the Electoral College map, a Democratic presidential candidate can no longer plan to sweep New Hampshire, Minnesota and the ‘blue wall’ battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and win the White House. A victory in the swing state of Nevada would not help, either.”

“That is the nightmare scenario many Democratic Party insiders see playing out if current U.S. population projections hold.”

Ron Brownstein: “Earlier in the 21st century, the dominant view among experts was that swing voters — those who might switch their party preference between elections — were all but extinct. Even today, the number of people who reliably turn out to vote but also regularly flip their votes between parties remains very modest by historical standards.”

“Yet strategists in both parties believe a new kind of swing voter has emerged as the total number of voters has dramatically increased in the past decade. Today’s key swing voters are the many Americans who cycle in and out of the electorate, casting a ballot in some elections but not others.”

Robert Putnam and Richard Reeves: “Many boys and men are struggling today… in an America… disrupted by technological change, immigration and growing inequality. Since 2010, suicide rates among young men have risen by a third — they are now higher than they are among middle-aged men. The share of college degrees going to men has fallen to 41 percent, lower than the women’s share in 1970. One in 10 men aged 20 to 24 is effectively doing nothing — neither enrolled in school nor working. That’s twice the rate in 1990. This crisis demands a response equivalent to what the Progressive era delivered, not just in public policy but equally important, from our civic institutions…”

“This male malaise is not just about jobs and diplomas. It is also a crisis of connection, as men and boys are increasingly detached from civic, familial and social life. They are lost, in part because they are lonely: 25 percent of boys and men aged 15 to 34 told Gallup they had experienced loneliness “a lot” on the previous day. One in seven young men reports that he has no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. Two thirds of men under the age of 30 think that ‘no one cares if men are okay.'”

“Consider the despair implicit in that last statistic.”

Washington Post: “During the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, affluent Americans who benefited from tax cuts were more likely to be Republicans. The political party they supported delivered material benefits that boosted their pocketbooks. Democratic voters, by comparison, were more likely to be working or middle class.”

“Now, more than half of upper-income families — defined as those earning more than $215,400 per year — vote Democratic.”

Gallup: “Americans’ average confidence in major U.S. institutions is unchanged since last year, with a near-record-low 28% of U.S. adults expressing ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in nine institutions tracked consistently since 1979.”

“On average across these nine institutions, Democrats’ confidence, at 26%, has decreased by five percentage points and sits at a new low, while Republicans’ 37% reflects an increase of nine points and is the highest reading since 2020.”

Gallup: “A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are ‘extremely’ (41%) or ‘very’ (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020.”

“Democrats are mostly responsible for the drop in U.S. pride this year, with 36% saying they are extremely or very proud, down from 62% a year ago. This is only the second time Democrats’ pride has fallen below the majority level, along with a 42% reading in 2020, the last year of the first Trump administration.”