Joe Biden’s approval rating slumps after tsunami of crises
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s popularity has slumped after a slew of challenges in recent weeks at home and abroad for the leader who pledged to bring the country together and restore competence in government, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Fifty percent now say they approve of Biden, while 49% disapprove. Fifty-four percent approved in August, and 59% did in July. The results come as Americans process the harried and deadly evacuation from Afghanistan, mounted border patrol agents charging at Haitian refugees, the unshakable threat of the coronavirus with its delta variant and the legislative drama of Biden trying to negotiate his economic, infrastructure and tax policies through Congress.
Since July, Biden’s approval rating has dipped slightly among Democrats (from 92% to 85%) and among independents who don’t lean toward either party (from 62% to 38%). Just 11% of Republicans approve of the president, which is similar to July.
Approval also dipped somewhat among both white Americans (49% to 42%) and Black Americans (86% to 64%).
In follow-up interviews, some of those who had mixed feelings about Biden’s performance still saw him as preferable to former President Donald Trump. They said that Biden was dealing with a pandemic that began under the former president, an Afghanistan withdrawal negotiated on Trump’s behalf and an economy that tilted in favor of corporations and the wealthy because of Trump’s tax cuts.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,099 adults was conducted Sept. 23-27 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
California pushes vaccine mandate for schoolkids:
California will enact the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, aiming to have all students in seventh through 12th grades vaccinated by next fall once the shots gain final federal approval for everyone 12 and over.
The Democratic governor said he expects the U.S. government to give that final sign-off sometime next year, bumping up from the emergency authorization given now for those 12 to 15.
He said the state will require students in kindergarten through sixth grades to get the vaccine once final federal approval comes for children 5 to 11.
“We have to do more,” Newsom said during a news conference at a San Francisco middle school after visiting with some seventh-graders. “We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it.”
A handful of school districts have imposed their own vaccine mandates, including five in California. But other states have resisted imposing pandemic rules on schools, including a new law in Kentucky that overturned a statewide mask mandate.
North Korea claims to test anti-aircraft missile:
North Korea said Friday it testfired a new anti-aircraft missile, the fourth weapons
launch in recent weeks that experts suggest is part of a strategy to win relief from sanctions and other concessions.
South Korea, Japan and the United States typically publicly confirm North Korean ballistic missile launches, which are banned by U.N. resolutions, soon after they occur. But they did not do so for Thursday’s, indicating the weapon tested may have been a different kind.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities monitored moves by North Korea but didn’t elaborate.
Three weeks ago, North Korea resumed missile tests after a six-month lull. As it has sometimes done before, the North combined the show of force with a more conciliatory gesture, offering earlier this week to reactivate hotlines that North and South Korea use to set up meetings, arrange border crossings and avoid accidental
clashes.
Diplomacy aimed at getting the North to abandon its nuclear arsenal in return for economic and political rewards has largely been deadlocked since early 2019.
Ala. OKs plan to use virus aid to build jails:
Amid a national debate over the use of pandemic relief funds, Alabama lawmakers swiftly approved a plan Friday to tap $400 million from the American Rescue Plan to help build two super-size prisons, brushing off criticism from congressional Democrats that the money was not intended for such projects.
The Alabama Legislature gave final approval to the $1.3 billion prison construction plan, and to a separate bill to steer $400 million of the state’s $2.1 billion from the rescue funds to pay for it.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bills into law soon afterward. The Republican called the construction plan
“a major step forward” for the prison system, which faces various federal court orders and a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Las Vegas shooting memorial: People who are healing and some still struggling gathered Friday to remember those who died and were injured during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history four years ago on the Las Vegas Strip.
The morning memorial, in which several hundred people gathered during a sunrise ceremony at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas, was the first of several scheduled Friday in Las Vegas and elsewhere, including a livestream to California’s Ventura County hosted by a support group called “So Cal Route 91 Heals.”
The group also planned an afternoon ceremony at a park in Thousand Oaks.
Fifty-eight people were killed on Oct. 1, 2017, and two
others died later. More than 850 were injured.
The gunman, a 64-yearold retired postal service worker, accountant and real estate investor who became a high-stakes casino video poker player, killed himself before police reached him. Local and federal investigators concluded he meticulously planned the attack and appeared to seek notoriety, but they said they could not yet identify a clear motive.
Midair collision: A helicopter and a single-engine plane collided in midair Friday near a suburban Phoenix airport, sending the helicopter crashing into a field and killing both people on board. The plane landed safely, and the flight instructor and a student on board were not hurt.
The collision happened in the city of Chandler near its municipal airport, said police Sgt. Jason McClimans. He said no one on the ground was hurt.