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Chamber of Commerce Makes Bipartisanship Part of Its Scorecard

A small push on Thursday to narrow the Capitol's partisan breech could have some lasting significance given its unlikely source: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, traditionally the most influential lobbying force for the Republican establishment.

The chamber said it will start considering bipartisanship and collaborative legislating, not just a pro-business voting record, when deciding its endorsements for Congress. The group will make each of those characteristics count for 10 percent on its annual scorecards, which have had enormous influence in steering campaign contributions toward incumbents with the top numbers.


"This new approach reflects our belief that many of Washington's troubles — including dysfunction, division, and incivility — could be helped by rebuilding the political center and restoring responsible governing," the chamber's president, Thomas Donahue, said in announcing the first change to the scorecard system in four decades. "Lawmakers should be rewarded for reaching across the aisle, not punished."

To this point, the chamber has spent overwhelmingly on Republican candidates and endorsed them almost exclusively. It has only endorsed two Democrats this decade, and both lost: Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas in 2010, when she was defeated for a third term, and veteran Connecticut politician Mary Glassman in 2018, when she lost an open-seat primary to Jahana Hayes, now a freshman House member.

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Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

This fact brief was originally published by EconoFact. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

Yes.

The rise in housing costs has been a major source of overall inflation, which was 2.9% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' shelter index, which includes housing costs for renters and homeowners, rose 5.1% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

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Fidelum conducted similar celebrity and politician election studies just prior to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Each of these found that perceptions of warmth, competence and admiration regarding the candidates are highly predictive of voting intentions and election outcomes. Given this, The Fulcrum and Fidelum decided to partner on a 2024 celebrity and politician election study to build upon the findings of prior research.

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Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words once weaponized principally against marginalized communities.

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Harris’ nomination ‘hit a reset button’ for Latinas supporting Democrats

As the presidential race entered the summer months, President Joe Biden’s level of support among Latinx voters couldn’t match the winning coalition he had built in 2020. Among Latinas, a critical group of voters who tend to back Democrats at higher levels than Latinos, lagging support had begun to worry Stephanie Valencia, who studies voting patterns among Latinx voters across the country for Equis Research, a data analytics and research firm.

Then the big shake-up happened: Biden stepped down and Vice President Kamala Harris took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket fewer than 100 days before the election.

Valencia’s team quickly jumped to action. The goal was to figure out how the move was sitting with Latinx voters in battleground states that will play an outsized role in deciding the election. After surveying more than 2,000 Latinx voters in late July and early August, Equis found a significant jump in support for the Democratic ticket, a shift that the team is referring to as “the Latino Reset.”

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