White evangelical Protestants (56%) stand out as the only major religious group that favors allowing small business owners to refuse goods or services to gay and lesbian people on religious grounds. Fewer than one-third of white mainline Protestants (32%), Catholics (28%), black Protestants (24%), religiously unaffiliated Americans (21%), and members of non-Christian traditions (18%) support a religious exemption for small business owners. Notably, despite opposition to same-sex marriage, more than seven in ten (73%) black Protestants oppose allowing small business owners to refuse service to gay and lesbian people.

Same-sex marriage now garners majority support among most religious groups. Roughly two-thirds of white mainline Protestants (66%) and Catholics (68%), and more than eight in ten (84%) religiously unaffiliated Americans and members of non-Christian religious traditions (86%) favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. In stark contrast, only about one-third (34%) of white evangelical Protestants and roughly half (47%) of black Protestants support same-sex marriage.

Notably, Republicans are significantly more likely to say that whites, rather than blacks, experience a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today (43% vs. 27%, respectively). Democrats and independents are far more likely to say blacks experience a lot of discrimination than to say the same about whites (82% vs. 19% and 59% vs. 30%, respectively). The partisan gap in perceptions of discrimination against blacks has increased substantially over the last four years, driven primarily by shifts among Democrats. In 2013, about two-thirds (66%) of Democrats compared to roughly one-third (32%) of Republicans expressed the view that discrimination against blacks in the U.S. is common. Notably, white and nonwhite Democrats recorded nearly identical changes in opinion.

Religious differences are also striking, with white evangelical Protestants standing out from other religious Americans. White evangelicals are more likely to say Christians face a lot of discrimination than they are to say Muslims face a lot of discrimination (57% vs. 44%, respectively). White evangelicals are the only major religious group in which a majority say Christians face a lot of discrimination. In contrast, roughly three-quarters of religiously unaffiliated Americans (77%) and nonwhite Protestants (75%), and more than six in ten white Catholics (64%) and white mainline Protestants (63%) agree Muslims face a lot of discrimination. Fewer than half of nonwhite Protestants (40%), white mainline Protestants (30%), white Catholics (26%) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (23%) say Christians experience a lot of discrimination.

pacino wrote:Southern Baptists are trying to oust a leader that doens't back Trump

ReadingPhilly wrote:

pacino wrote:Southern Baptists are trying to oust a leader that doens't back Trump

Saw the Islamic center pretty much forced Hamid out for supporting him.

drsmooth wrote:

kruker wrote:It's ridiculous that a very large swath of the public doesn't have to even think about federal taxes.

It's ridiculous that CEOs are paid hundreds of times what their least-paid fulltime employees are

because "It's not about the dollars, it's about getting the rest of the population into the discussion"

West Virginia leans heavily Republican on the federal level. Trump won it by 42 percentage points in 2016. Republican Shelley Moore Capito easily dispatched — by 28 percentage points — Democrat Natalie Tennant in the 2014 U.S. Senate race — the last Senate race in West Virginia with a Democrat not named Manchin on the ballot. Tennant, who was the secretary of state, was deemed a “top recruit.” But she performed about as you’d expect for a non-incumbent Democrat running for the Senate from West Virginia.

So I can see why progressives would be peeved with Manchin. But it’s sort of silly to compare Manchin to the median Democrat. He represents West Virginia! FiveThirtyEight’s “Trump Score,” which ignores party and instead compares how often members vote with Trump to how often we would expect them to based on Trump’s share of the vote in their state, shows Manchin as one of the Democrats’ most valuable members. Manchin votes for the Trump position occasionally, but he does so about 33 percentage points less than senators from similarly red states.

In other words, Manchin’s real worth to Democrats is that he’s a Democrat, because a Republican from West Virginia would probably vote GOP far more often. In fact, West Virginia’s other senator, Capito, has voted with Trump 100 percent of the time.

kruker wrote:Why does this have to be mutually exclusive? Oh, because that's your shtick. Got it.

The White House also named David Malpass, a former official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, as its nominee for Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, a key economic diplomacy post.

Malpass also served as a former economist at Wall Street bank Bear Stearns prior to its 2008 collapse and most recently served as an economic adviser to Trump's campaign.

JUburton wrote:Why not just keep the taxes in the AHCA? I mean besides the obvious answer that their ultra rich lobbyist friends would be angry. People still would have been mad but would have been nice for the GOP if they could say it would save a trillion dollars. Cutting services from the poor and sick is pretty hard to defend. Doing it while the top 1 and 0.1% get a #$!&@ of money is even harder.

pacino wrote:

JUburton wrote:Why not just keep the taxes in the AHCA? I mean besides the obvious answer that their ultra rich lobbyist friends would be angry. People still would have been mad but would have been nice for the GOP if they could say it would save a trillion dollars. Cutting services from the poor and sick is pretty hard to defend. Doing it while the top 1 and 0.1% get a #$!&@ of money is even harder.

yeah, the entire point of cutting the services is so the tax cuts can be enacted