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President Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks with reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, March 22, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
As economic worries wane, approval of President Trump’s job performance remains just two points shy of his record, according to the latest Fox News Poll. Still, a majority disapproves.
Forty-six percent approve of the job Trump is doing, while 51 percent disapprove. He received his best ratings, 48-47 percent, in February 2017, just after he took office.
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Almost all 2016 Trump voters (92 percent), Republicans (89 percent), and very conservatives (86 percent) approve of the president.
Plus, his approval hit high points among some groups that aren’t typically his biggest fans, such as women (43 percent), college graduates (46 percent), and suburban voters (46 percent).
A key number in the poll is the spread between those who are nervous about the economy and those who are confident. It was 31 percentage points in March 2016 when 61 percent felt nervous and 30 percent were confident.
The poll released Sunday finds more voters feel nervous (43 percent) than confident (37 percent) about the economy by just six points. A year ago, that gap was seven points. At the same time, those having “mixed” feelings about the economy went from 6 percent in 2016 to 11 percent last year to 17 percent today.
In addition, the 43 percent feeling nervous is a new low. The question was first asked in September 2010 and, at that time, 70 percent felt nervous.
President Trump receives his only net positive job rating on the economy, as 50 percent of voters approve, while 42 percent disapprove.
Outside the economy, the news isn’t as good.
Approval of how Trump is handling North Korea dropped four points to 42 percent after his recent Vietnam summit with Kim Jong Un, down from 46 percent in February. Forty-four percent disapprove.
By a narrow margin, voters think North Korea is farther (27 percent) from giving up its nuclear weapons program since Trump took office rather than closer (24 percent) to giving it up, with the largest number, 41 percent, feeling things are unchanged.
Support for the border wall ticked down a couple points, as 44 percent favor building it, while 51 percent oppose it. In February, it was 46-50.
Meanwhile, more than half disapprove (59 percent) of the president declaring a national emergency on the southern border as a way to bypass Congress and fund the wall, while 36 percent approve.
About 9 in 10 Democrats oppose the emergency declaration, while about 7 in 10 Republicans favor it. Republicans (86 percent) are more than 12 times as likely as Democrats (7 percent) to favor the wall.
A dozen Senate Republicans sided with Senate Democrats March 14 in voting for a resolution to end the president’s border-wall emergency declaration. Trump vetoed the bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a March 26 vote in the House to try to override the veto.
Forty-one percent of voters approve of how Trump is handling immigration, while 54 percent disapprove. That is mostly unchanged since January, when it was 42-54 percent.
Pollpourri
After news of the college bribery scandal, the poll shows twice as many voters see the admissions process as rigged as consider it fair: 49 percent rigged vs. 25 percent fair.
Those with a college degree and those without a degree are equally likely to call the process rigged (both 49 percent). Black voters (65 percent) are more likely than Hispanics (49 percent) and whites (47 percent) to feel that way.
In general, 56 percent feel things in the country are rigged to favor the wealthy, while 40 percent believe — if they work hard — they have a fair shot at getting ahead. The admissions scandal does not seem to be changing minds, as a Fox News poll last September found almost exactly the same results.
Republicans (70 percent) think people who work hard can get ahead, while Democrats (82 percent) and independents (62 percent) say things are rigged.
The Fox News Poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,002 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) (formerly named Anderson Robbins Research) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from March 17-20, 2019. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
Source: Fox News Politics
Multiple 2020 Democratic candidates are scrambling to put a negative spin on the state of the economy, with some resorting to incorrect or overblown suggestions that workers have to hold down two or three jobs to merely “survive” in the U.S.
Sens. Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke – all three leading Democrats running for the party’s presidential nomination — have claimed in some form that the workers are struggling in the economy that has so far defied odds with a record-low unemployment rate.
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"Yeah, well, I’ve been traveling our country. People are working. They’re working two and three jobs to pay the bills. It’s not working for working people."
“[They say] ‘the economy is great, it is doing great for everybody.’ And then you ask them, well, how is that? Well, they’ll point to the stock market. Well, that’s fine if you own stocks. Then you’ll ask them, what’s your other measure? And they’ll talk about well, the unemployment rate is down. That’s fine,” Harris reportedly said on the campaign trail multiple times.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been traveling our country. People are working. They’re working two and three jobs to pay the bills. It’s not working for working people,” she added.
But as the Washington Post’s fact checker notes, Harris’ much-repeated talking point appears not to be backed up by the data as the number of people working two or more jobs is particularly small and is decreasing.
Only 251,000 workers out of total 156 million people with jobs had two full-time jobs last month. This is a decline of nearly 100,000 such people compared to last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In general, there are 7.8 million people who have more than one job.
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Sanders, the leading Democrat in the polls so far, has also come under scrutiny after saying last week that “Millions of Americans are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive.”
While his claim is less inaccurate when compared to Harris, according to the Post, he misrepresents the data and omits that the millions people who indeed have more than one job are mostly working part-time rather than full-time.
In fact, merely 5 percent of the total American workforce holds more than one job, which isn’t the impression Sanders wanted to make by his comments.
“Millions of Americans are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive.”
At the same time, O’Rourke, the much-adored Democrat from El Paso, Texas, who’s been criticized for often shying away from policy specifics, made a blunder similar to those of Sanders and Harris.
“I have already shared with you that many are working second or third jobs — in fact in Texas, half of your colleagues are working a second or third job just to put food on the table,” he said in Iowa last week.
The fact checker points out that in this instance, O’Rourke and his team insisted that his claim was related to teachers rather than general workforce, yet even then the Democrat appears to use a dubious self-selected survey from Texas that found 39 percent of teachers expect to take extra jobs outside the classroom to meet family expenses.
At the same time, a U.S. Department of Education study that uses a representative random sample showed that 17 percent of teachers in the South, and 18 percent nationwide, had to boost their income with a job outside their schoolwork, the Post reported.
This is significantly lower than O’Rourke’s claim that “half” of the teachers are working second or third jobs just to get by.
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The Democrats’ negative spin on the economy in relation to people working more than one job was first tested by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during an interview with PBS where she suggested the unemployment rate is low thanks to people holding several jobs.
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family,” she said.
The comments were called out by fact-checkers, with the Post awarding her Four Pinocchios.
Yet 2020 Democrats appear to have learned from the episode avoid directly linking people holding more than one job to the low unemployment rate.
Source: Fox News Politics
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump stepped up his pressure on General Motors to reopen an Ohio manufacturing plant that recently closed and put 1,700 people out of work.
Trump’s arm-twisting came in a series of separate tweets on Saturday and Sunday . He capped his weekend rant against the GM with a tweetdisclosing that he had vented his frustrations during a conversation with the company’s CEO, Mary Barra.
"I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING," Trump wrote. "I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union — I don’t care, I just want it open!"
The union is the United Automobile Workers, which represents the employees who lost their jobs in the Lordstown closure. Trump had previously told a UAW leader, David Green, to "get his act together and produce" for the Lordstown workers.
Green didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday, nor did GM.
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Even he said he talked to Barra, Trump was calling on GM to reopen its Lordstown plant or find another owner, while insisting that the Detroit automaker "must act quickly."
He also blasted GM for letting down the U.S. and asserted "much better" automakers are coming to the country.
Trump praised Toyota for its investments in the U.S. in an apparent attempt to depict GM as being less committed to its home country than the Japan automaker.
The Lordstown closure has become a hot-button issue in an area of Ohio that is expected to be critical for Trump if he seeks re-election as promised in 2020.
Trump prevailed in Ohio in the 2016 election, a win that helped him win enough electoral votes to become president despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
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That may be one reason why Trump joined a coalition of Ohio lawmakers in efforts to get the Lordstown plant running again. The tweets marked some of his most pointed criticism of GM so far.
Trump has skewered several other U.S. companies for not doing more to help their country’s economy, but his remarks so far have been more bark than bite.
For instance, he has publicly called upon Apple to shift most of its manufacturing from China to the U.S., but the Silicon Valley company continues to make its iPhones and most other products overseas.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, last week expressed doubts GM will reopen its Lordstown plant, but he said the automaker indicated it’s in talks with another company about using the site.
More than 16 million vehicles were made at the Lordstown plant during its 53-year history until GM closed it earlier this month as part of a massive reorganization. The company also intends to close four other North American plants by early next year.
Source: Fox News Politics
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, left, and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, right, are acknowledged on the House floor at the Illinois State Capitol, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019, in Springfield, Ill. Illinois legislators moved quickly to deliver one of Pritzker’s top campaign promises, a gradual hike in the statewide minimum wage from $8.25 to $15 an hour, more than double the pay floor that most of its Midwestern neighbors require. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP)
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a measure gradually hiking the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the highest in the Midwest.
It was one of the new Democratic governor’s top campaign promises. He signed the six-year plan Tuesday at the Governor’s Mansion.
“For nine long years, there were many forces that were arrayed against giving a raise to the people who work so hard to provide home care for seniors, child care for toddlers, who wash dishes at the diner, and who farm our fields,” Pritzker said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Today is a victory for the cause of economic justice.”
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Illinois is on track to be the first state in the Midwest to push its base wage to $15. The pay jump increases from $8.25 by $1 on Jan. 1, and jumps to $10 on July 1, 2020. Then, it increases $1 each Jan. 1 until 2025.
Currently there are an estimated 1.4 million Illinois residents making less than $15 an hour.
Business groups opposed the plan. They wanted a longer phase-in and a regionalized approach with lower minimum wage levels for areas outside Chicago.
Pritzker noted there are payroll tax credits in the law to ease the transition for employers.
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The move is also opposed by the state’s Republican Party, which on Tuesday called the minimum wage signing “only the beginning of J.B. Pritzker’s war on taxpayers and small business.”
“This is only the beginning of J.B. Pritzker’s war on taxpayers and small business,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider said in a statement. “Nearly doubling the minimum wage will destroy entry-level jobs, raise prices for consumers, and bust budgets at every level of government. Pritzker pledged to govern differently and listen to all parties and stakeholders, but those turned out to meaningless words.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: Fox News Politics
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