At The Hill, Tara Suter reports that a “Majority of voters think Trump ‘did something illegal,” and writes: “In a recent Fox News poll, a majority of registered voters said they think Trump “did something illegal” related to “efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”….The poll, released Wednesday, also found that 20 percent of registered voters think Trump “did something wrong” but “not illegal.” Another 24 percent said the former president “did nothing seriously wrong.”….The same poll revealed a drop in the number of voters who think the Department of Justice’s “treatment” of the former president “is politically motivated,” from 55 percent in June to 51 percent this month. Parallel to those findings, there was a rise in those who said the DOJ’s actions against the former president are not “politically motivated.”….The poll was conducted between August 11 and 13, with a margin of error of 3 percent and a sample size of 1,002 registered voters.” Suter did not report any numbers indicating what percentage of survey respondents would vote for him anyway.

In similar vein, G. Elliot Morris, editorial director of data analytics at ABC News, writes at FiveThirtyEight that “two weeks after Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, polling data suggests he has been unable to convince voters that his latest boogeyman — the United States Department of Justice — is really out to get him. Instead, polls show that while it may not be putting a serious dent in his lead in the Republican primary, voters overall view his latest indictment as serious and believe that Trump’s actions related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, merit criminal charges. And among both adults and Republicans, Trump’s favorability rating fell after he was indicted in June for illegally retaining classified documents and refusing to return them to the U.S. officials when asked….In the two weeks after federal prosecutors unsealed the classified-documents indictment, Trump’s net favorability rating among Republicans fell from +57.1 to +55.3, a drop of 1.8 percentage points….Over that same time period, Trump’s net favorability rating among all adults fell from -11.9 percentage points — the high point for him in 2023 — back down to -14.8, a slightly larger dip than among Republicans….Two studies of election results in the 2022 midterms found that the Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives who received endorsements from Trump or voiced support for his election denialism performed worse than Republican House candidates who did not. In a CBS/YouGov poll conducted Aug. 2-4,  a majority of adults said the indictments against Trump were “upholding the rule of law” (57 percent) and an effort to “defend democracy” (52 percent), although more than half also said the indictments and investigations were trying to stop the Trump campaign (59 percent).”

Voters who are concerned about big corporations picking their pocket will probably find the efforts of President Biden and Democrats of significant interest. At least that’s one of the big bets Democratic Party leaders are placing in the 2024 campaign. As Madison Hall reports at The Insider, “House Democrats are increasingly embracing what could be a winning strategy as the 2024 election approaches by joining in on the Biden Administration’s crusade against “junk fees.”….In October 2022, the White House announced its plans to go after junk fees — “fees designed either to confuse or deceive consumers or to take advantage of lock-in or other forms of situational market power” — which it said could save consumers more than $1 billion each year….According to a recent report from the Associated Press, with assistance from the Progressive Change Institute, some House Democrats have already held events addressing junk fees and there are at least a dozen or more planned across the country….Then, five months later, Biden addressed the issue again during his 2023 State of the Union speech, where he made a point to note how he personally understands “how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.”….And after the Biden Administration’s push in part led to some airlines changing policies to allow family seating without additional fees and Live Nation Entertainment to introduce a more “transparent” pricing model, House Democrats have entered the fight as well….According to a recent report from the Associated Press, with assistance from the Progressive Change Institute, some House Democrats have already held events addressing junk fees and there are at least a dozen or more planned across the country.”

In “Will Biden Have Enough Chips in 2024? Today on TAP: His industrial-policy programs are great. How much of an election year difference can they make?,” Robert Kuttner writes at The American Prospect: “Biden’s big public programs, including the CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure law together spend about $2 trillion over ten years—about 1 percent of GDP. If you compare the relative scale, as well as the longer lead time of Biden’s public investments, you can appreciate why Biden does not get the credit he deserves….The White House fact sheet on CHIPS, released August 8, tells us: “In the one year since CHIPS was signed into law, companies have announced over $166 billion in manufacturing in semiconductors and electronics, and at least 50 community colleges in 19 states have announced new or expanded programming to help American workers access good-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry.”….as Ronnie Chatterji, who recently stepped down as White House coordinator for the CHIPS and Science program, points out, these new publicly subsidized investments do make a concentrated difference, with high local media visibility, in some states and regions….These include Ohio, where Intel has broken ground for a massive new campus and several thousand new jobs, and upstate New York, where Micron will invest billions. Other key places with large new semiconductor investments are Arizona and Indiana….The challenge, beyond election year visibility, is that the administration has only so much leverage. These are global companies that can produce anywhere in the world; they have never had union production workforces….That said, the Biden semiconductor program is a genuine achievement that will revive a key domestic industry and relieve supply chain pressures, as well as a monumental ideological reversal. The political question is whether it’s sufficient, even with the best messaging in the word, to overcome the long-term sense of government having failed to deliver for working-class voters who face worsening terms of engagement with the economy.”