Monday Edition

Surveys show young women globally are becoming more liberal, intensifying a gender-based divide in political views. (Financial Times)

The data:

• American women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts, a gap that emerged over just six years per Gallup data.

• In Germany and the United Kingdom, the ideological gap between young men and women is approximately 30 and 25 points, respectively.

• In Poland, nearly half of men aged 18-21 supported the hard-right Confederation party, compared to about one-sixth of young women.

• Non-western countries like South Korea and China are seeing similar trends.

Financial Times chief data reporter John Burn Murdoch: “It would be easy to say this is all a phase that will pass, but the ideology gaps are only growing, and data shows that people’s formative political experiences are hard to shake off. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.”

1 in 4 U.S. parents track their young adult children’s location via GPS in the latest sign Americans today are taking longer than previous generations to grow up. (Pew Research Center)

New surveys from Pew Research Center:

• Less than half (45%) of young adults ages 18 to 34 say they are completely financially independent from their parents.

• 57% of young adults aged 18 to 24 live with their parents, compared to 53% in 1993.

• Only 29% of young adults aged 25 to 29 were married in 2023, compared to 50% in 1993.

Researchers Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding on how the delayed adulthood phenomenon is caused mostly by economics: “The time it takes to transition to adulthood has more to do with being able to transition to the workforce than the perceived apathy of youth. Young people reach adult milestones later when jobs that lead to financial independence are scarce or require additional training. The well-paying manufacturing jobs that were abundant in the 1950s did not exist in the 1890s. … Today, the economy is in transition again, which is affecting young adults’ ability to achieve the markers of adulthood. The rise of a knowledge-based economy means that this generation needs more education and training to gain the skills they need to succeed financially. Many entry-level jobs now require a college degree, which takes time to obtain. Achieving financial stability with only a high-school education is harder today than it was in the 1950s.”

Many right-wingers are starting to view lawsuits, arrests and indictments as badges of honor. (WSJ)

Defamation lawsuits: A federal jury ruled last week Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for defamation. Fox News last year settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million.

Arrests: Last week, a crowd cheered as six of the nine GOP candidates (including Rep. Lauren Boebert) at a primary debate for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District raised their hands after being asked if they’d ever been arrested. Trump and other Republicans have praised people arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and called them “hostages.”

Indictments: Following a series of indictments against him, Trump’s 2024 GOP primary polling numbers improved. Trump raised $9.4 million in less than a week after he was processed in Fulton County, Georgia on charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Merchandise sales alone raked in upwards of $2 million, with the campaign selling 36,000 T-shirts bearing a photo of Trump’s mugshot.

$0.02

The Republican Party under Trump has arguably become less about any particular set of policies and more about bucking a system viewed as irreparably broken and corrupt. Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions is at an all-time low, so it’s not totally a fringe sentiment. To Trump’s supporters, the indictments and lawsuits against the former president aren’t black marks, they’re signs he’s a real threat to the status quo.

A record-high 650,000 Americans reported being homeless in 2023. (CBS News)

A new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University:

• Homelessness increased 12% from the previous year and rose 48% since 2015.

• While traditionally more prevalent in states like California and Washington, homelessness has recently increased in historically affordable areas, including Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas, mainly due to rising housing costs.

• In 2022, half of all U.S. households spent between 30% and 50% of their monthly income on housing and 12 million tenants spent over half their monthly income on rent and utilities.

The issue of rising homelessness has become politicized in recent years. Progressives and liberals tend to focus on housing affordability as the primary solution to reducing homelessness. Conservatives have often used the issue to accuse Democratic mayors of being soft on drugs and crime.

Then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2008: “We believe… shelters solve sleep, and that housing solves homelessness."

Former Republican California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in 2023: “San Francisco’s move toward requiring drug testing and treatment is a step in the right direction, mirroring similar policy shifts we've seen in other parts of the country. It acknowledges a brutal truth that many on the left would rather ignore: that you can't heal someone by merely putting a roof over their head; you have to treat the root cause of their suffering.”

For the second time this year, the U.S. Navy has loosened its recruitment criteria, and is now enlisting individuals without high school diplomas or GEDs. (Stars and Stripes)

The military’s recent years recruitment woes are well documented. The total number of active-duty troops in the U.S. armed forces is expected to drop to 1,284,500 this year, the smallest number since 1940. This represents a reduction of nearly 64,000 personnel over the last three years.

What’s behind the recruitment struggles?

• A decline in recruit quality: The Defense Department estimates only 23% of Americans aged 17 to 24 would qualify for military service, with the rest being rejected for reasons such as obesity, drug abuse, or mental and physical health issues​​.

• Fewer “military families”: In 1995, 40% of young people had a parent who served, but by 2022, this figure dropped to just 12%​​.

• A shift in public attitudes: Patriotism is on the decline, according to surveys. Also, the military’s image has declined in the eyes of conservatives who think it’s “gone woke.”

The left vs. right divide on college educated voters is only getting bigger and is likely to play a role in the 2024 presidential election.

The data:

• The percentage of Americans with at least a bachelor's degree has risen nearly 30 points over the last 50 years. More than 50% of Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree.

• In the past decade, women have overtaken men in completing four-year degrees, and as of 2021, 39.1% of women held degrees compared to 36.6% of men.

• Women generally lean more towards the Democratic Party, while men lean more towards the Republican Party.

• President Biden won women and college-educated voters by double digits in 2020, when he faced off against Donald Trump.

Ink Stained Wretches co-host Eliana Johnson on Trump’s weakness with college-educated Americans: “There's a real diploma divide between the Trump voters and the [Nikki Haley] voters that I actually think will hurt Trump in the general election. The question basically that Republicans are facing, can they turn up the volume on working class voters, including a significant number of Hispanic and black, non-white working class men to make up for the losses that they are going to experience with college-educated suburbanites.”