Brendan Nyhan

New Medium: The Trump backlash on immigration

From my new column:

Intweets and campaign rallies in recent days, President Trump has returned to his signature cause of immigration, inveighing against drug traffickers and a caravan of immigrants.

Trump’s strategy makes perfect sense politically. He hopes to prod the Republican base to turn out in the midterms in November. One of the most effective ways to motivate political action is to stoke fears among your supporters.

Strikingly, however, public opinion data suggest that Trump has failed to convince the public on immigration and has even helped to turn the public against his positions — an effect that may grow stronger as his anti-immigration campaign intensifies.

New Monkey Cage: Court legitimacy post-Kavanaugh

From my new Monkey Cage post on the potential consequences of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination for public attitudes toward the Supreme Court:

Could Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination undermine the public standing of the Supreme Court? Observers such as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein think so. “Every time [Chief Justice John] Roberts would lean on Kavanaugh to construct a majority,” Brownstein writes, “the chief justice could further erode the Court’s already eroding public confidence.”

In general, public support for the court tends to be relatively stable. But this time could be different. Increased ideological and partisan divisions and pressure from the #MeToo movement could dent the court’s image, especially since the coalition backing the prospective new justice has such narrow support.