Gallup: “At 39%, the share of U.S. adults who are “extremely proud” to be American is essentially unchanged from last year’s 38% record low.”

Wall Street Journal: “Roughly 650,000 Americans over 80 were working last year, according to the Census Bureau, about 18% more than a decade earlier. Some people have been pressed back into duty by inflation and stock-market volatility, while the fading pandemic made others who took a break feel more comfortable clocking in again. Many cite a simpler reason to keep working—they just want to.”

Wall Street Journal: “The unfolding 2024 campaign is shaping up as one in which each party accuses the other of criminality, with the cumulative effect being the steady erosion of public trust in the U.S. political system.”

“History is littered with examples of presidential candidates calling their opponents crooks, from the days of George McGovern’s campaign against Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal to Trump’s supporters chanting ‘Lock Her Up’ as the Justice Department investigated his rival Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails. But perhaps never has the U.S. electorate been so primed to believe the worst about those it puts in office.”

“Since the late 1930s, sperm counts around the world appear to have dropped significantly. While the decline was initially observed in western countries, there is evidence of the same phenomenon in the developing world, and it seems to be accelerating,” the Financial Times reports.

The median age in the United States reached a record high of 38.9 in 2022, the New York Times reports.

“The new data adds to the evidence that, like many European and Asian nations, the United States is graying, posing challenges for the work force, the economy and social programs.”

“Low birthrates are the main driver of the nation’s rising median age, experts said.”

A new Monmouth poll finds a majority (55%) of Americans are very concerned that their fundamental rights and freedoms are under threat – with Republicans (63%) being somewhat more likely than Democrats (53%) or independents (51%) to feel this way.

Another 29% of the general public is somewhat concerned about threats to their rights and about 1 in 6 is either not too (11%) or not at all (5%) concerned.

Nate Cohn: “This shift toward the right among the young voters who propelled Mr. Obama to victory 15 years ago is part of a larger pattern: Over the last decade, almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted toward the right, based on an analysis of thousands of survey interviews archived at the Roper Center.”

“It’s not necessarily a stunning finding. Political folklore has long held that voters become more conservative as they get older. But it is nonetheless at odds with a wave of recent reports or studies suggesting otherwise.”

A new Gallup poll finds just 18% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., staying below 20% as it has since March.

The Upshot: “This pattern, visible in an Upshot analysis of census microdata, is startling in retrospect. Major coastal metros have been hubs of the kind of educated workers coveted most by high-powered employers and economic development officials. Economists have lamented the growing coastal concentration of their wealth. A politics of resentment in America has fed on it, too. These urban centers have become a class of their own — ‘superstar cities’ — with outsize impact on the American economy fueled by the clustering of workers with degrees.”

“But it appears in domestic migration data that, years after lower-wage residents have been priced out of expensive coastal metros, higher-paid workers are now turning away from them, too.”

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that fewer consider “wokeness” (41%) a “big problem” in America today than any other option provided, including inflation (74%), breaching the debt ceiling (58%) and border security (58%).

Racism (50%) also outranks wokeness, as do new abortion restrictions (46%) and book banning in schools (47%) — issues on which President Biden plans to focus his reelection bid.

“New results from a U.S. Census Bureau simulation suggests a significant number of noncitizens were missed in the 2020 census, a national head count during which the Trump administration tried but failed to prevent people in the country illegally from being tallied,” the AP reports.

Josh Kraushaar: “It’s been a tough start to 2023 for moderates hoping for a return to normalcy in our politics.”

“For all the talk of a No Labels third-party effort, the reality is that politicians —and by extension, many of their constituents — are still in a no-compromise mood.”

Mark Barabak: “Over the last two decades, the West has gone from a Republican stronghold … into a bastion of Democratic support. The transformation has remade the nation’s political map and reshaped the fight for the White House, helping Democrats win three of the last four presidential elections and offsetting the drift of certain states — Florida, Missouri, Iowa among them — toward the GOP.”

Rolling Stone: “Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control.”

“Americans are in a negative mood about the current state of the country, with large majorities expressing dissatisfaction with the economy and overall national conditions. And when they look toward the not-too-distant future, they see a country that in many respects will be worse than it is today,” according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

“Sizable majorities of U.S. adults say that in 2050 – just over 25 years away – the U.S. economy will be weaker, the United States will be less important in the world, political divisions will be wider and there will be a larger gap between the rich and the poor. Far fewer adults predict positive developments in each of these areas.”

“And when Americans reflect on the country’s past, the present looks worse by comparison. Around six-in-ten (58%) say that life for people like them is worse today than it was 50 years ago.”