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Welcome to Pollapalooza, our occasional polling column. Americans disapprove of Biden pardoning his son For months, President Joe Biden was clear: Despite his constitutional right to pardon people of crimes, he would not issue a pardon for his son Hunter, who was convicted earlier this year for illegally purchasing a firearm and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and filing false tax returns . But on Dec. 1, he went back on his word, issuing a " Full and Unconditional Pardon " of the younger Biden. The pardon covered not only the crimes he's been convicted of, but also any "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." Politicians on both sides of the aisle were quick to condemn the pardon as self-serving and hypocritical, and the public's reaction hasn't been much better. According to a YouGov poll conducted on Dec. 2, only 34 percent of Americans approved of the president's decision to pardon his son, while 50 percent disapproved — including 35 percent who "strongly" disapproved. Interestingly, though, that's a more divided reaction than a previous YouGov poll showed back in September 2023, when the idea of a Hunter Biden pardon was completely hypothetical. Back then, only 13 percent of Americans said they would support the president pardoning his son, and 72 percent said they would oppose it — including 56 percent who "strongly" opposed it. If you dig into the polls' crosstabs, you can see that this shift was largely caused by Democrats . In the 2023 poll, Democrats opposed a Hunter Biden pardon 64 percent to 21 percent. But in this week's poll, those numbers were exactly reversed: 64 percent of Democrats approved of the pardon, and 21 percent disapproved. Why the 180? It's possible that the election of President-elect Donald Trump caused Democrats to look at Hunter Biden's situation differently. Trump has promised to prosecute his political enemies , so Democrats may feel that Hunter Biden needs legal protection from being unfairly targeted. During his first term, Trump also pardoned several political allies and has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters during his second term, so Democrats may feel that Biden's pardon is mild in comparison. Democrats may also have been convinced by Joe Biden's argument in his pardon notice that Hunter Biden was treated more harshly just because he was the president's son. But it's also possible that Democrats have gotten on board with the Hunter Biden pardon simply because the Democratic president did. Political science research is clear that voters change their opinions about things based on the cues of trusted elites. When Joe Biden was saying that he would " respect the judicial process " with regard to his son's conviction, Democrats agreed with him. When Biden changed his mind and issued the pardon, a lot of Democrats probably followed his cue. And in this, Hunter Biden's is just like most other high-profile presidential pardons over the years. In a separate survey , YouGov asked Americans if they approved or disapproved of 18 specific pardons since the 1970s, and one consistent pattern was that Democrats tended to approve of pardons issued by Democratic presidents and Republicans tended to approve of pardons issued by Republican presidents. As it so often does, partisanship rules all — even in matters of criminal justice. —Nathaniel Rakich Do Trump voters actually like Sarah McBride? This year saw a major milestone for the transgender community: Democrat Sarah McBride was elected as the first openly transgender representative in the House, representing Delaware's at-large congressional district. In the wake of her election, South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender women from using women's restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, which she said was explicitly intended to target McBride. The issue caused some predictable controversy, with multiple members of the House issuing statements and Speaker Mike Johnson announcing a policy to bar transgender women from women's restrooms in the Capitol and House office buildings. In the wake of all this controversy, we'd typically turn to the polls to help us sort out what people think about the incident and the people involved in it. Indeed, YouGov/The Economist asked respondents how they felt about McBride and Mace in their weekly survey after the dispute. According to the poll, Mace had a net favorability of 0, while McBride had a net favorability of +2, though only about half of respondents said they had an opinion of either woman. But a look under the hood provides a bit of insight — and a note of caution — about interpreting polling data on relatively unknown public figures. Both politicians were assessed in what's known as a "favorability battery," in which a pollster shows respondents a list of people and asks if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each. The battery here included 14 people, some of whom, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are outspoken Trump allies. In fact, other than McBride and Mace, every name on the list was someone that Trump has nominated to a position in his upcoming administration. And it appears that respondents figured that out: Each person had higher favorability ratings among Trump voters than Harris voters. That included McBride, which may indicate respondents who hadn't actually heard of her before assumed she was affiliated with Trump's incoming administration, rather than a political figure who'd made the news for very different reasons. While Trump voters may have been inclined to rate all of Trump's nominees positively, Harris voters appear to have done the opposite. According to this survey, McBride's favorability is underwater by 10 points among Harris voters, while she enjoys a positive 20 point net favorability among Trump voters. In addition, 46 percent of respondents to the survey gave an opinion of McBride, an implausibly large number claiming to be familiar with a freshly elected representative from one of America's smallest states. This is just one example of a poll that appears to tell us one thing on the surface, but underneath it may be measuring something completely different. In this case, we see a significant number of respondents who appear to be answering the survey based entirely on perceived partisanship (we sometimes call this expressive responding ). And while normally we might say to just "throw it in the average," in this case we can't: This is the only national survey we've seen that asked Americans how they feel about McBride. Unfortunately for us, it looks like we still don't really know. —Mary Radcliffe Morning in America for Republicans Americans have undoubtedly been feeling down on the state of the country throughout the last election cycle, but at least some are feeling more optimistic now that the election is over. In a CivicScience poll the week after the election, 46 percent of respondents said they were optimistic about the future of the country, up from the 38 percent who said the same in the spring of 2023. That change was driven largely by a big swing among Republicans: The week after the election, 63 percent said they felt very or somewhat optimistic, compared to just 32 percent last year. In comparison, optimism increased just 4 points among independents and decreased 12 points among Democrats. Other recent polls on the national mood show even more drastic shifts within each party before and after the election, with Democrats and Republicans practically swapping positions on the same questions. For example, Trump's trademark Make America Great Again slogan fed off the increasingly prevalent idea that America's best days are in its past, but Democratic voters in a post-election YouGov/CBS News poll are now much more likely to agree with that sentiment than Republicans. For their part, Republicans seem confident Trump will make good on his MAGA pledge: In a turnabout from how they felt in October, more than two-thirds now say America's best days are in its future. In other recent polling, the share of registered voters who think things in the U.S. are "generally headed in the right direction" remained relatively low (around 30 percent) in the months before and after the election, but that feeling has risen sharply among Republicans while plummeting among Democrats , most of whom now say the country is "off on the wrong track." These patterns aren't unique to the 2024 election, though. For instance, YouGov/The Economist's regular tracking polls show that there was a huge bump in the share of Republicans who felt good about the country's direction right after Trump's 2016 victory, and an even bigger one after he took office the next January. The same was true for Democrats after Biden's win four years later. Needless to say, it's pretty normal in today's highly polarized times for Americans' outlook for the country to correlate closely with whether their preferred party holds the presidency. But there are ways that Republicans' optimism and Democrats' pessimism this year does stand out. Notably, Democrats are particularly pessimistic about the future of their own party, while Republicans are riding high. A mid-November survey by Pew Research found that Americans who identify with or lean toward the GOP felt better about their party's future than they ever have in the Trump era: A whopping 86 percent said they felt optimistic, compared to only 13 percent who felt pessimistic. In contrast, only 51 percent of Democrats said they felt optimistic about the future of their party, while 49 percent felt pessimistic. That's 10 points lower than the 61 percent who were still optimistic about the party after Trump's first win in 2016, and a drop of more than 30 points compared to 2020. So while Republicans try to put their optimism into action, Democrats look to be in for some soul searching. —Tia Yang
Asante Files Financial and Operating Results for the Quarter Ended October 31, 2024
Unlike scores of people who for the blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy to lose weight in recent years, Danielle Griffin had no trouble getting them. The 38-year-old information technology worker from New Mexico had a prescription. Her pharmacy had the drugs in stock. And her covered all but $25 to $50 of the monthly cost. For Griffin, the hardest part of using the new drugs wasn’t access. It was finding out that the didn’t really work for her. “I have been on Wegovy for a year and a half and have only lost 13 pounds,” said Griffin, who watches her diet, drinks plenty of water and exercises regularly. “I’ve done everything right with no success. It’s discouraging.” In clinical trials, most participants taking Wegovy or Mounjaro to treat obesity lost an average of 15% to 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases. But roughly 10% to 15% of patients in those trials were “nonresponders” who lost less than 5% of their body weight. Now that millions of people have used the drugs, several obesity experts told The Associated Press that perhaps 20% of patients — as many as 1 in 5 — may not respond well to the medications. It’s a little-known consequence of the obesity drug boom, according to doctors who caution eager patients not to expect one-size-fits-all results. “It’s all about explaining that different people have different responses,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital The drugs are known as GLP-1 receptor agonists because they mimic a hormone in the body known as glucagon-like peptide 1. Genetics, hormones and variability in how the brain regulates energy can all influence weight — and a person’s response to the drugs, Stanford said. Medical conditions such as sleep apnea can prevent weight loss, as can certain common medications, such as antidepressants, steroids and contraceptives. “This is a disease that stems from the brain,” said Stanford. “The dysfunction may not be the same” from patient to patient. Despite such cautions, patients are often upset when they start getting the weekly injections but the numbers on the scale barely budge. “It can be devastating,” said Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of the obesity treatment company FlyteHealth. “With such high expectations, there’s so much room for disappointment.” That was the case for Griffin, who has battled obesity since childhood and hoped to shed 70 pounds using Wegovy. The drug helped reduce her appetite and lowered her risk of diabetes, but she saw little change in weight. “It’s an emotional roller coaster,” she said. “You want it to work like it does for everybody else.” The medications are along with eating behavior and lifestyle changes. It’s usually clear within weeks whether someone will respond to the drugs, said Dr. Jody Dushay, an endocrine specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Weight loss typically begins right away and continues as the dosage increases. For some patients, that just doesn’t happen. For others, side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea force them to halt the medications, Dushay said. In such situations, patients who were counting on the new drugs to pare pounds may think they’re out of options. “I tell them: It’s not game over,” Dushay said. Trying a different version of the new class of drugs may help. Griffin, who didn’t respond well to Wegovy, has started using Zepbound, which targets an additional hormone pathway in the body. After three months of using the drug, she has lost 7 pounds. “I’m hoping it’s slow and steady,” she said. Other people respond well to older drugs, the experts said. Changing diet, exercise, sleep and stress habits can also have profound effects. Figuring out what works typically requires a doctor trained to treat obesity, Saunders noted. “Obesity is such a complex disease that really needs to be treated very comprehensively,” she said. “If what we’re prescribing doesn’t work, we always have a backup plan.” ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Jonel Aleccia, The Associated PressOver four billion years ago, the may have been red hot. A 4.45-billion-year-old grain of the in a Martian meteorite found in the Sahara Desert in 2011 indicates Mars may have been home to boiling hot hydrothermal systems similar to . The findings are detailed in a . The team analyzed meteorites from a large space rock designated as While all Martian meteorites have clues about the planet’s geologic history, most of them are like those found on Earth and others are mantle rocks. “What makes Black Beauty so special is that it’s a sample of regolith from the surface, which is similar to soil,” , a study co-author and a planetary scientist from the Space Science and Technology Centre at Curtin University in Australia, tells . “It contains hundreds of rock and mineral fragments from lots of different sources on Mars.” Roughly have been found here on Earth that are all believed to have been during the impact event that hurled the original Black Beauty stone down to Earth. The tiny grain of zircon within the meteorite was first described in a . It provided scientists with an early record of crust formation on Mars, but also preserved the damage caused by earlier impacts by meteorites. “The Black Beauty meteorites offer an extraordinary buffet of clues that help to fill in the geological puzzle of Mars,” says Cavosie. In the Cavosie and the team decided to take a closer look at the grain of Martian zircon, focusing on the trace elements within the for clues about the early history of Mars. They used nano-scale geochemistry and found elemental evidence of hot water on Mars about 4.45 billion years ago. On Earth, these types of systems were essential to the development of life and water was key during the earliest parts of crust formation. Nanoscale imaging and spectroscopy helped the team identify the element patterns in the zircon. These include iron, sodium, yttrium, and aluminum. “We could tell by the patterns of how the Fe [Iron], Al [Aluminum], and Na [sodium] are found inside the zircon that they were incorporated into the grain as it grew, like layers in an onion,” Cavosie says. On Earth, the only zircons that have patterns like these form in magmatic-hydrothermal systems. These form when water is heated by a “volcanic plumbing system.” This system of hot boiling water then moves through rocks, taking these trace elements with them. The team believes that these . This suggests that water was present during early magma-filled days on Mars. Other studies found that . “When we did the follow-up trace element study, and found that the martian zircon looks very similar to zircons from the Olympic Dam hydrothermal ore deposit in South Australia, we were very surprised, and even more excited,” says Cavosie. “It not only meant finding evidence for magmatic-hydrothermal systems on early Mars, but it also gave us an idea about what kinds of environments they form in from an Earth perspective.”TCU leading scorer Frankie Collins will miss rest of season after breaking left foot
Patriots' coaches enter bye week confident Drake Maye can be a franchise quarterback
Unlike scores of people who for the blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy to lose weight in recent years, Danielle Griffin had no trouble getting them. The 38-year-old information technology worker from New Mexico had a prescription. Her pharmacy had the drugs in stock. And her covered all but $25 to $50 of the monthly cost. For Griffin, the hardest part of using the new drugs wasn’t access. It was finding out that the didn’t really work for her. “I have been on Wegovy for a year and a half and have only lost 13 pounds,” said Griffin, who watches her diet, drinks plenty of water and exercises regularly. “I’ve done everything right with no success. It’s discouraging.” In clinical trials, most participants taking Wegovy or Mounjaro to treat obesity lost an average of 15% to 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases. But roughly 10% to 15% of patients in those trials were “nonresponders” who lost less than 5% of their body weight. Now that millions of people have used the drugs, several obesity experts told The Associated Press that perhaps 20% of patients — as many as 1 in 5 — may not respond well to the medications. It’s a little-known consequence of the obesity drug boom, according to doctors who caution eager patients not to expect one-size-fits-all results. “It’s all about explaining that different people have different responses,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital The drugs are known as GLP-1 receptor agonists because they mimic a hormone in the body known as glucagon-like peptide 1. Genetics, hormones and variability in how the brain regulates energy can all influence weight — and a person’s response to the drugs, Stanford said. Medical conditions such as sleep apnea can prevent weight loss, as can certain common medications, such as antidepressants, steroids and contraceptives. “This is a disease that stems from the brain,” said Stanford. “The dysfunction may not be the same” from patient to patient. Despite such cautions, patients are often upset when they start getting the weekly injections but the numbers on the scale barely budge. “It can be devastating,” said Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of the obesity treatment company FlyteHealth. “With such high expectations, there’s so much room for disappointment.” That was the case for Griffin, who has battled obesity since childhood and hoped to shed 70 pounds using Wegovy. The drug helped reduce her appetite and lowered her risk of diabetes, but she saw little change in weight. “It’s an emotional roller coaster,” she said. “You want it to work like it does for everybody else.” The medications are along with eating behavior and lifestyle changes. It’s usually clear within weeks whether someone will respond to the drugs, said Dr. Jody Dushay, an endocrine specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Weight loss typically begins right away and continues as the dosage increases. For some patients, that just doesn’t happen. For others, side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea force them to halt the medications, Dushay said. In such situations, patients who were counting on the new drugs to pare pounds may think they’re out of options. “I tell them: It’s not game over,” Dushay said. Trying a different version of the new class of drugs may help. Griffin, who didn’t respond well to Wegovy, has started using Zepbound, which targets an additional hormone pathway in the body. After three months of using the drug, she has lost 7 pounds. “I’m hoping it’s slow and steady,” she said. Other people respond well to older drugs, the experts said. Changing diet, exercise, sleep and stress habits can also have profound effects. Figuring out what works typically requires a doctor trained to treat obesity, Saunders noted. “Obesity is such a complex disease that really needs to be treated very comprehensively,” she said. “If what we’re prescribing doesn’t work, we always have a backup plan.” ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Jonel Aleccia, The Associated Press
Quest Partners LLC Purchases Shares of 26,146 Columbia Banking System, Inc. (NASDAQ:COLB)NEW YORK and AMSTERDAM , Dec. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Dow Jones Indices ("S&P DJI"), the world's leading index provider, today announced the results of the annual Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) rebalancing and reconstitution. The DJSI are float-adjusted market capitalization weighted indices that measure the performance of companies selected using environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. The DJSI, including the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World), were launched in 1999 as the pioneering series of global sustainability benchmarks available in the market. The index family is comprised of global, regional and country benchmarks. As a result of this year's review, the following top three largest companies based on free-float market capitalization have been added to and deleted from the DJSI World. All changes are effective on Monday, December 23, 2024 . Additions: Airbus SE, Schlumberger Ltd, BAE Systems Plc Deletions: Alphabet Inc 1 , UnitedHealth Group Inc, ASML Holding NV 2 The full results and list of DJSI constituents will be available as of Monday, December 23 2024 , at https://www.spglobal.com/esg/csa/djsi-annual-review S&P Dow Jones Indices will be renaming a number of its sustainability and ESG-related indices (see Index Announcement ). As part of this update, the family of Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) will be renamed Dow Jones Best-in-Class Indices. The changes will become effective on Monday, February 10, 2025 . The S&P Global CSA Scores will continue to be a key factor in selecting constituents for the DJSI when they are renamed Dow Jones Best-in-Class Indices in February 2025 . For more information about the DJSI methodology, please visit: www.spglobal.com/spdji . ABOUT S&P DOW JONES INDICES S&P Dow Jones Indices is the largest global resource for essential index-based concepts, data and research, and home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500® and the Dow Jones Industrial Average®. More assets are invested in products based on our indices than products based on indices from any other provider in the world. Since Charles Dow invented the first index in 1884, S&P DJI has been innovating and developing indices across the spectrum of asset classes helping to define the way investors measure and trade the markets. S&P Dow Jones Indices is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies, and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit: www.spglobal.com/spdji . 1 Still member of DJSI World Enlarged and DJSI North America 2 Still member of DJSI World Enlarged S&P DJI MEDIA CONTACTS: spdji.comms@spglobal.com View original content: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sp-dow-jones-indices-announces-dow-jones-sustainability-indices-2024-review-results-302331745.html SOURCE S&P Dow Jones Indices
