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WASHINGTON Young Republicans hold significantly more liberal views of immigrants and immigration than their older counterparts, reflecting a difference consistent with white Americans regardless of which political party they identify with, according to the latest American Values Atlas, a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute survey.

While 41 percent of Republicans of all ages believe immigrants face a lot of discrimination in the United States, the percentage increases to 60 percent among Republicans between 18 and 29 years old, the survey found. That's a stark contrast to GOP voters 65 and older only a third of that group says immigrants experience discrimination.

Researchers also found that 74 percent of young whites believe that immigrants are targeted for discrimination a lot, compared to 57 percent of white Americans of all ages. However, among Republicans, only for the youngest group, between 18 and 29, is that view in the majority. Even 30-to-39-year-old Republicans are evenly split, 48 percent to 48 percent, on whether immigrants undergo a lot of discrimination.

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Poll: Younger Republicans more liberal on immigration - Minneapolis Star Tribune

INDIANA A new study from the Associated Press shows that Republicans won a greater share of seats than they did votes in many 2016 congressional and state races, a possible result of gerrymandering.

The study, which used a version of a mathematical formula created by University of Chicago law professor Nick Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee, a researcher at the nonpartisan Public Policy, also showed that Indiana Republicans enjoyed a partisan advantage in their races, although that isnt necessarily an indication of gerrymandering, McGhee said.

Gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral boundaries to give a particular political party an unfair advantage in elections.

Stephanopoulos and McGhee devised a score, called the efficiency gap, to measure how much of an advantage political parties are receiving in their races. The farther away the efficiency gap is from zero, the more of an advantage a political party enjoys.

The APs study, which McGhee said was conducted with his help, found that the efficiency gap for the 2016 Congressional races was 10.6 percent in favor of Republicans, while the efficiency gap for the state senate races was 4.76 percent.

While seemingly high, McGhee said that he prefers using an excess seat number, or the additional number of seats a party would win even if all parties were on equal vote footing, for Congressional races. McGhee and Stephanopoulos have settled on two or fewer excess seats as an acceptable advantage for a political party to hold in an election.

In Indianas case, less than one excess Republican seat, .95 of a seat, was possible in the 2016 Congressional election.

In the state races, however, McGhee cautioned against the 4.76 percent efficiency gap that the AP reported. While 8 percent is considered a worrisomely high efficiency gap by the researcher, McGhee has calculate Indianas state race efficiency gaps before and has found them to be much higher than what the AP found.

At the request of the state legislature, McGhee determined that Indiana had an efficiency gap of 13 percent in favor of house Republicans and 17 percent for senate ones in 2012. In 2014, he found that the efficiency gap was 7 percent in favor of house Republicans and 13 percent in favor of senate ones.

To make any claims about whether thats a problem requires more evidence, McGhee said.

States need to show that they cant redraw their district lines to ensure a fairer advantage for all political parties before their efficiency gap can be used as proof of gerrymandering, he said.

McGhee has not evaluated that side of Indianas districting situation.

Tom Sugar, a member of the special interim study committee on redistricting in Indiana is hopeful that using the efficiency gap as a marker could affect the future of partisan districts The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in October following a federal appeals court verdict that found Wisconsin Republicans were unconstitutional in their partisan gerrymandering.

The efficiency gap mechanism provides the test to show that the district, territories, land are being sliced and diced to ensure a particular partisan outcome, he said.

He said population and geography, not voter registration and political participation from areas should be used.

As a side project, Sugar has created a series of maps that show how the districts would look in Indiana compared to the districts drawn in 2011. They can be found on his website http://www.leadorleave.org.

Is this state more Republican than Democratic for the most part? Sure Indiana is a conservative state, he said. But it isnt 80 percent Republican.

He said the current districting system is not a fair picture of the people of Indiana.

It means that youre represented by a legislature that does not accurately affect the interest and needs of Hoosiers. It has become an out-of-whack, politically corrupt system.

He said the same is true in states where Democrats have drawn partisan districts.

The people dont pick their politicians now the politicians pick them, he said.

When you take the politics out and use population and geography and keep communities together you also enhance competitiveness. That means the people who represent those districts ... have to pay attention to something other than their primaries.

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Do Republicans in Indiana have an unfair advantage? - Newsandtribune

Younger Republicans have more liberal opinions on immigration than do older members of the GOP, according to a new poll.

Forty-one percent of all Republicans in a pollconductedby the Public Religion Research Institute says immigrants face a lot of discrimination in the United States, The Associated Press reported.

Sixty percent among Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 answered the same way, however, compared to only about one-third of voters ages 65 and older.

A slight majority of Republicans of all ages, 55 percent, say immigrants in the U.S. illegally should have a path to citizenship "if certain conditions are met."

But among younger Republicans, 62 percent responded that immigrants in the U.S. should have a legal path to citizenship.

Republicans of different ages also have opposing views on gay rights, according to the poll.

Fifty-four percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 say gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry, while just half that percentage of older Republicans responded the same way.

The poll was conducted with 40,509 interviews from May 18, 2016, to Jan. 10, 2017. The margin of error is 0.6 percentage points.

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Poll: Younger Republicans have more liberal opinions on immigration - The Hill

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter, venting about Mr. Heller and other Republicans who are not supporting the Senate bill.

On Friday, Mr. Sandoval acknowledged the obvious. Hes in the eye of the storm here, Mr. Sandoval said at a news conference in Nevada as Mr. Heller stood next to him, looking vaguely miserable as Mr. Sandoval announced his opposition to the Senate bill. The legislation could affect 210,000 Nevada residents insured through the health care laws expansion of Medicaid.

On Friday Mr. Heller said that he, too, was against the bill as it is currently drafted, leaving himself just enough wiggle room to continue his longstanding practice of being the senator in the middle, the man who wants to see the Medicaid program phased out, except when he decides he doesnt. (Mr. Heller has taken both positions publicly.) He has also voted to take away money from Planned Parenthood, but tells some select audiences that I have no problems with federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Heller, whose spokeswoman said he was not available for an interview, said at the news conference Friday that this bill thats currently in front of the United States Senate is not the answer its simply not the answer. He said, Its going to be very difficult to get me to a yes.

As early as Thursday, the Senate will take a momentous vote to repeal the health law, and for Republicans from states that expanded their Medicaid program, the options are anything but palatable.

If the effort fails, the party risks being tarred as feckless: in control of the House, the Senate and the White House, but unable to come through with a promise that Republicans have been making from the day Mr. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010.

If the effort succeeds, expansion-state Republicans face the prospects of political hellfire: blame for every potential glitch in the health care system, from premium increases to canceled health plans and benefit losses.

The fact remains that Dean Heller owns his partys destructive health care repeal effort, William McCurdy II, chairman of the Nevada State Democratic Party, said in a prepared statement. He added, The damage to Dean Hellers flailing re-election campaign was already done long before this desperate press conference. Mr. Heller did not respond through his spokeswoman.

Mr. Heller, 57, represents the sort of state, both rural and working class, that has much to lose from the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Nevada was once a national leader in the number of uninsured, but now the program has insured tens of thousands of its residents.

The state, like many around the country, has suffered a prescription drug crisis, and has among the highest rates of prescription painkillers sold and drug overdose deaths per capita. It also has a growing population of residents over the age of 55, a group particularly hammered by the Senate bill. All this has led Mr. Sandoval to take an unusually aggressive position for a Republican governor to preserve the current law.

Other Republican senators like Mr. Heller notably Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Rob Portman of Ohio come from states with similar populations and problems and have expressed skepticism about aspects of the bill.

Further complicating the matter are the four conservative Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who have already declared that they cannot support the health bill without changes to make it even more frugal. That put Senate leaders on notice that any move to placate the Dean Hellers of the Senate might only alienate other lawmakers still further.

Mr. McConnell continues to project confidence, even as the enthusiasm for the bill is largely muted. Im pleased that we were able to arrive at a draft that incorporates input from so many different members who represent so many different constituents who are facing so many different challenges, Mr. McConnell said last week. He added: There will be ample time to analyze, discuss and provide thoughts before legislation comes to the floor. And I hope every senator takes that opportunity.

In fact, on the day last week that the bill was rolled out, Mr. Heller posted on Twitter a photo of himself sitting in an ornate chair plowing through it, a considerable feat of reading given the arcana of the bills statutory language. But in spite of his earnest decoding of phrases like the applicable median cost benchmark plan, what Nevadans have to say will probably have more impact especially Mr. Sandoval, the most popular public official in the state, to whom Mr. Heller owes much.

The governor appointed Mr. Heller to the Senate seat in 2011 after the resignation of fellow Republican John Ensign and supported him during his successful run for a full term in 2012.

Here is one thing that people dont talk about a lot with Heller: He doesnt like the job, said Jon Ralston, editor of the Nevada Independent, a nonprofit news organization. He was planning to run for governor.

But Adam Paul Laxalt, the current Nevada attorney general, the grandson of former Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada and the son of former Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico is widely expected to run and has more or less pushed Mr. Heller out of the way.

Mr. Heller has never been the sort of rainmaker for the state that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader from 2015 until early this year, was. Nor has he been a legislative leader. The bottom line with Nevadans historically had been if you took care of the home issues, then how you voted in D.C. on the other stuff was less important, said Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Mr. Heller appears to be running for re-election on a dogged effort to prevent the Trump administration from restarting licensing activities at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump outside of Las Vegas. Beyond that, he has few other issues to lean on, and is stuck swatting away at critics from the left and the right as he struggles to define himself on health care, come what may.

Now he in this position of his own making, Mr. Ralston said, pressed by Trump people on one side, so he has a base problem, while the other side is running the most relentless digital protest campaign on any piece of legislation I have ever seen in this state.

The threat on Mr. Hellers right flank is real, as shown by former Representative Joe Heck, who during his race for a Senate seat in Nevada last year openly opposed Mr. Trump. Conservative voters stayed home and Mr. Heck lost to a Democrat.

Democrats have already recruited a Nevada freshman, Representative Jacky Rosen, to take Mr. Heller on. Representative Dina Titus is also looking at a possible run. This is probably going to be the last decision I make in my political career, Ms. Titus said. I want it to be the right one.

In the meantime, Mr. Heller has a long week in Washington awaiting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Senator With No Place To Take Cover.

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Health Law Repeal Leaves Nevada Republican Torn Between Lawmakers - New York Times

No one seems to like the Senate health care bill. Liberal wonks detest it. At least four Republican senators claim they arent prepared to support it, while other colleagues grumble about it. The White House, whose chief executive promised he wouldnt cut Medicaid, as this bill does, is balking.

But the Senate bill is very similar to the bill passed last month by the House. And the reason for that similarity is pretty basic: Both bills accomplish what Republicans want.

Despite the periodic dramas of reactionary versus conservative factions, Republicans are united around a couple of key goals. Both versions of the Republican health care legislation accomplish those goals, albeit in slightly different ways along slightly different timelines. Thats why, all the wailing aside, Congress will probably put a bill on President Donald Trumps desk that grievously damages Obamacare, if not precisely repealing it.

Both Senate and House versions will transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from poor and middle-class people, in the form of health care, to rich people in the form of tax cuts.

The wealthiest Americans, who have a disproportionate role in managing the economy, have famously awarded themselves a gargantuan share of its gains in recent decades. But Republicans continue to insist that gargantuan is less than sufficient. According to the liberal (and reliable) Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the House health care bill would provide the 400 highest-income families in the U.S. with tax cuts worth about $7 million annually.

Thus health care legislation is a vehicle to achieve a preeminent goal of the Republican Party transferring more wealth to the wealthy. In addition, by changing the baseline for federal revenues, the legislation will facilitate another round of tax cuts later this year.

Another paramount goal is destroying Barack Obamas presidency. Since Republicans were unable to accomplish that in real time, they hope to do it retroactively. The Republican legislation keeps much of the architecture of Obamacare. But by cashing in its funding base, Republicans can seriously damage it.

The third goal the Republican legislation accomplishes is the rollback of an entitlement and a reversal of the trend toward universal health care.

Government support Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid tends to go on and on. Historical Republican opposition to all three of those programs long precedes their obsession with high-end tax cuts. If Obamacare laid the track for universal health care, Trumpcare promises to blow up the railroad bridge and send the whole enterprise plunging into a ravine, albeit in slow motion.

The Republican senators currently expressing their displeasure with the plan could easily thwart it. But will they? Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows his troops. He knows what they want and, more important, what they will settle for. Opioid treatment funding, maybe, for Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, whose states have serious addiction problems. Perhaps a more aggressive retreat from Obamacare regulations for Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

The chorus of boos heightens the political drama but it doesnt stop the play. Concessions are made. Victories are claimed. The legislation moves toward conclusion.

How many Republicans will really abandon the twin pillars that have upheld the GOP for nearly a decade tax cuts for the rich and the repudiation of Obama? How many will walk away from the cause of multiple generations of Republicans rolling back the welfare state?

Im betting fewer than three.

Francis Wilkinson is a columnist for Bloomberg View.

Published June 24, 2017, midnight in: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, entitlements, medicaid, Obamacare, Sen. Mitch McConnell, trumpcare, welfare

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Wilkinson: Republicans will pass Trumpcare - The Spokesman-Review