Greg Sargent: “New data supplied to me by the Harvard Youth Poll sheds light on the powerful undercurrents driving these developments. Young voters have shifted in a markedly progressive direction on multiple issues that are deeply important to them: Climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights.”

“John Della Volpe, director of the poll, refers to those issues as the ‘big four.’ They all speak to the sense of precarity that young voters feel about their physical safety, their economic future, their basic rights and even the ecological stability of the planet.”

The Economist: “Roughly a third of Americans live in areas where the government has issued warnings about extreme heat in the past week… These hot cities are in the Sunbelt, or the southern part of the country, ranging from Los Angeles to Miami. Tourists flocked sweatily to Death Valley, California, the hottest place on Earth, to see if it would get warmer than the previous record of 56.7°C (it didn’t). Researchers in Florida worry that hot ocean temperatures will bleach coral reefs and worsen hurricane season…”

“Yet extreme heat in the Sunbelt is not convincing Americans to up sticks. Census figures suggest that 12 of the 15 fastest-growing cities in America are in the region.”

“More than one-quarter of young adults are estranged from one or both parents, or have been, a finding that suggests a societal shift away from the traditional bonds of family,” The Hill reports.

Associated Press: “Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.”

“One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature.”

“The split has sent states careening to the political left or right, adopting diametrically opposed laws on some of the hottest issues of the day.”

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.