Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 19

Caitlyn Jenner announces bid for California governor

Polls show only 40% favor recalling Newsom, but McConaughey might become the next Texas Governator.

It's not just young white liberals leaving religion

The nones aren’t just young, highly educated, liberal white people.

Compared to the U.S. population overall, nonreligious Americans are younger and more Democratic-leaning. But the number of Americans who aren’t religious has surged in part because people in lots of demographic groups are disengaging from religion — many nones don’t fit that young, liberal stereotype. The average age of a none is 43 (so plenty are older than that). About one-third of nones (32 percent) are people of color. More than a quarter of nones voted for Trump in 2020. And about 70 percent don’t have a four-year college degree.

The decline over the last decade in the share of Black (-11 percentage points) and Hispanic adults (-10 points) who are Christians is very similar to the decline among white adults (-12 points), according to Pew. The number of college graduates leaving the faith (-13 points) is similar to those without degrees (-11 points).

Nones have three distinct cohorts.
The nones can generally be broken down into three groups: agnostics, atheists and a third bloc that is much larger than the first two and doesn’t ascribe to a label — the “nothing in particular” bloc. According to CCES data from 2020, about 6 percent of American adults are atheists and 5 percent are agnostics, while 21 percent of Americans describe their religious beliefs as “nothing in particular.” Agnostics and atheists in particular tend to be disproportionately male, white, college-educated and Democratic-leaning. Atheists in particular have fairly negative views about churches and religious organizations.

In contrast, the “nothing in particular” bloc is more diverse — more people of color, more women, more Republicans, fewer people with college degrees. They tend not to have strongly negative views about churches and religious organizations. Also, people in this “nothing in particular” group, unlike the overwhelming majority of atheists and agnostics, sometimes join (or rejoin) religious denominations. About a quarter of those who were nothing in particular joined religious denominations from 2010 to 2014, while only about 13 percent became atheist or agnostic, according to an analysis of CCES data.

And again, these numbers help explain some things happening in American culture and politics. The BLM movement has coordinated with Black churches and Black religious people — and that collaboration is likely eased by the fact that Black nones are rarely atheists or agnostics and therefore don’t have the negative feelings about churches and religious organizations that people in those groups often do.

I'm gonna post this article by itself mainly because of how well it illustrates the US population's financial condition IMO.

How are Americans spending their 'stimulus' checks?

New $1,400 stimulus checks are helping Americans keep up with bills and other necessities, as well as pay down debt.
Recipients said they expect the funds to provide them a financial boost for less than three months, and in some cases not at all.

One year into the coronavirus pandemic, the results could point to shifting attitudes toward money.

As new $1,400 Covid stimulus checks roll in, Americans are using them to pay monthly bills, regardless of their incomes, a new survey finds.

Bankrate.com found that 45% of Americans plan to use the latest round of checks for monthly expenses, followed by 36% who plan to use the money for day-to-day essentials, 32% who want to pay down debt and 28% who intend to add to their savings. (Respondents were allowed to choose more than one use.)

Notably, just 13% of survey respondents said they will put the $1,400 payments toward discretionary activities or nonessential items.

Portland mayor urges residents to ‘unmask’ rioters after weeks of violence (Washington Post)

“Our job is to unmask them, arrest them and prosecute them,” he said, asking the public to contact the police and provide them with information about the rioters, write down their license plate numbers or film them when they commit acts of vandalism.