Matt O’Brien | The Associated Press

September 16, 2021

Most Americans don’t believe their personal information is secure online and aren’t satisfied with the federal government’s efforts to protect it, according to a poll.

The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk shows that 64% of Americans say their social media activity is not very or not at all secure. About as many have the same security doubts about online information revealing their physical location. Half of Americans believe their private text conversations lack security.

And they’re not just concerned. They want something done about it. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they support establishing national standards for how companies can collect, process and share personal data.

“What is surprising to me is that there is a great deal of support for more government action to protect data privacy,” said Jennifer Benz, deputy director of the AP-NORC Center. “And it’s bipartisan support.”

But after years of stalled efforts toward stricter data privacy laws that could hold big companies accountable for all the personal data they collect and share, the poll also indicates that Americans don’t have much trust in the government to fix it.

A majority, 56%, puts more faith in the private sector than the federal government to handle security and privacy improvements, despite years of highly publicized privacy scandals and hacks of U.S. corporations from Target to Equifax that exposed the personal information of millions of people around the world.

Indeed, companies such as Apple have made a big push to pitch themselves as attuned to consumer privacy preferences and committed to protect them.

“I feel there is little to no security whatsoever,” said Sarah Blick, a professor of medieval art history at Kenyon College in Ohio. The college’s human resources department told Blick earlier this year that someone fraudulently applied for unemployment insurance benefits in her name.

Such fraud has spiked since the pandemic as perpetrators buy stolen personal identifying information on the dark web and use it to flood state unemployment systems with bogus claims.

“I believe my information was stolen when one of the credit bureaus was hacked, but it also could have been when Target was hacked or any other of the several successful hacks into major corporations,” Blick said.

About 71% of Americans believe that individuals’ data privacy should be treated as a national security issue, with a similar level of support among Democrats and Republicans. But only 23% are very or somewhat satisfied in the federal government’s current efforts to protect Americans’ privacy and secure their personal data online.

“This is not a partisan issue,” said Colorado state Rep. Terri Carver, a Republican who co-sponsored a consumer data privacy bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in July. It takes effect in 2023.

The legislation, which met opposition from Facebook and other companies, follows similar measures enacted in California and Virginia that give people the right to access and delete personal information. Colorado’s also enables people to opt out of having their data tracked, profiled and sold.

“That was certainly one of the pieces where we got the strongest pushback but we felt it was so important,” Carver said. “There’s great frustration that individuals have that they don’t have the tools and the legal support to establish any kind of effective control over their personal data.”

Carver said it took several years to get the law passed, and advocates had to abandon some priorities, such as the idea of enabling people to opt in if they want to allow processing of their personal data — instead of making them opt out. She hopes the efforts by Colorado and other states push Congress to set nationwide protections.

“We need a strong federal data privacy bill,” she said. “It would just make sense, given interstate commerce.”

The poll also found broad agreement in how Americans look at technology: 81% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans say they view technology as playing a major role in the country’s ability to compete globally. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats and 56% of Republicans see value in the government’s technology investments.

At least 6 in 10 adults support the federal government taking measures such as spending more on technology, expanding access to broadband internet and strengthening copyright protections to improve U.S. competitiveness.

There are some generational variations in support for government policies to safeguard data privacy and security, though majorities across age groups are in favor. While 85% of adults age 40 and older are in favor of stronger punishments for cyber criminals, 70% of younger adults say the same.

“The underlying current is that this is an area where people do see a direct role in government,” Benz said. “This is something pretty tangible for people.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,004 adults was conducted June 24-28 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

Ashraf Khalil and Cedar Attanasio | The Associated Press

September 24, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans struggling to feed their families over the past pandemic year say they have had difficulty figuring out how to get help and had trouble finding healthy foods they can afford.

A poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 23% of Americans say they have not been able to get enough to eat or the kinds of foods they want. Most of those facing food challenges enrolled in a government or nonprofit food assistance program in the past year, but 58% still had difficulty accessing at least one service.

And 21% of adults facing challenges meeting their food needs were unable to access any assistance at all. The most common challenge to those in need was a basic lack of awareness of eligibility for both government and nonprofit services.

The poll results paint an overall picture of a country where hundreds of thousands of households found themselves suddenly plunged into food insecurity due to the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. They often found themselves navigating the intimidating bureaucracy of government assistance programs and with limited knowledge of local food banks or other charitable options available.

Black and Hispanic Americans, Americans living below the federal poverty line and younger adults are especially likely to face food challenges, according to the poll.

Americans who have a hard time affording food also feel less confident than others about their ability to get healthy food. Just 27% say they are “very” or “extremely” confident, compared with 87% of those who do not face food challenges.

For homemaker Acacia Barraza in Los Lunas, a rural town outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, the challenge has been to find a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for her 2-year-old son while staying inside the family budget.

Barraza, 34, quit her job as a waitress before the pandemic when her son was born. She considered going back to work, but on-and-off child care shortages as the pandemic took hold made that impossible, she said. The family lives off her husband’s salary as a mechanic while receiving assistance from SNAP — the government program commonly known as food stamps.

Despite the government help, Barraza said she still scrambles to find affordable sources of fresh vegetables, actively scouring local markets for bargains such as a bag of fresh spinach for $2.99.

“If we don’t always have vegetables, he’s going to not want to eat them in the future. And then I worry that he’s not going to get enough vitamins from vegetables in the future or now for his growing body. So it’s really hard. It’s just really hard,” she said.

Even those who didn’t lose income during the pandemic find themselves stretching their food dollars at the end of the month. Trelecia Mornes of Fort Worth, Texas, works, as a telephone customer service representative, so she was able to work from home without interruption.

She makes too much money to qualify for SNAP, but not enough to easily feed the family.

She decided to do distance learning with her three children home because of fears about COVID-19 outbreaks in the schools, so that removed school lunches from the equation. Her work responsibilities prevent her from picking up free lunches offered by the school district. She takes care of her disabled brother, who lives with them and does receive SNAP benefits. But Mornes said that $284 a month “lasts about a week and a half.”

They try to eat healthy, but budget considerations sometimes lead her to prioritize cost and longevity with “canned soups, maybe noodles — things that last and aren’t so expensive,” she said.

Radha Muthiah, president of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington said the struggles reflected in the poll are evidence of a new phenomenon brought by the pandemic: Families with no experience with food insecurity are suddenly in need, without knowledge of charitable options or experience navigating government assistance programs.

“It’s all new to them,” she said. “Many individuals and families — especially those experiencing food insecurity for the first time — are unaware of their full range of options.”

Many are leery of engaging directly with government programs such as SNAP and WIC — the parallel government food-assistance program that helps mothers and children. Muthiah said that reluctance often stems from either frustration with the paperwork or, among immigrant communities, fear of endangering their immigration status or green card applications.

The poll shows that overall, about 1 in 8 Americans regularly get their food from convenience stores, which typically offer less nutritious food at higher prices. That experience is more common among Americans facing food challenges, with about 1 in 5 frequenting convenience stores.

The dependence on convenience stores is a particularly troubling dynamic, Muthiah said, because the options there are both more expensive and generally less nutritious. Part of the issue is simply habit, but a much larger problem is the lack of proper grocery stores in “food deserts” that exist in poorer parts of many cities.

“Sometimes they are the only quick efficient option for many people to get food,” she said. “But they don’t get the full range of what they need from a convenience store and that leads to a lot of negative health outcomes.”

The poll shows half of Americans facing food challenges say extra money to help pay for food or bills is necessary for meeting their food needs.

Fewer consider reliable transportation or enough free food to last a few days, such as in emergency food packages, or free prepared meals at a soup kitchen or school to be necessary resources for meeting their food needs, though majorities say these would be helpful.

Gerald Ortiz of Espańola, New Mexico, bought a 2019 Chevy pickup truck before the pandemic, then lost the office job he had held for 20 years. Now he scrambles to make the $600 monthly payment and gets by through charity and by simply eating less. His unemployment payments ended this month.

“I make sure my truck payment is done,” said Ortiz, as he sat in a line of about 30 cars waiting to pick up food from a charitable organization, Barrios Unidos, in nearby Chimayó. “After that I, I, just eat like once a day,” he said, pointing to his stomach. “That’s why you see me I’m so thin now.”

He’s applying for multiple jobs and surviving on charity and whatever produce he can grow in his backyard — chili peppers, onions, cucumbers and watermelons.

“It’s been depressing. It’s been, like, stressful and I get anxiety,” he said. “Like, I can’t wait to get a job. I don’t care what it is right now.”

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Attanasio reported from Chimayó, New Mexico. Associated Press polling reporter Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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The AP-NORC poll of 2,233 adults was conducted August 5-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Ben Fox and Will Weissert | The Associated Press

September 29, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is caught between a hard place and an even harder one when it comes to immigration.

Biden embraced major progressive policy goals on the issue after he won the Democratic nomination, and he has begun enacting some. But his administration has been forced to confront unusually high numbers of migrants trying to enter the country along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the federal response has inflamed both critics and allies.

Much of the anger is centered on the administration’s immigration point person, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“Getting hit from both sides in the matter of immigration is no surprise,” Mayorkas said on NBC last weekend. “We are in the epicenter of the country’s divide, regrettably.”

The result is that immigration has become an early and unwanted distraction for an administration that would rather focus on the pandemic, the economy and other policy priorities.

Just 35% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of immigration, down from 43% in April, when it was already one of Biden’s worst issues, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Immigration is a relative low point for Biden within his own party with just 60% of Democrats saying they approve.

Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback blocking Haitian migrants from crossing the Rio Grande only added to the angst. While the widely shared photos incorrectly suggested that agents were using their reins to whip at mostly Black migrants, Mayorkas and Biden expressed outrage at the tactics and Homeland Security is investigating.

The outcry was such that Mayorkas was asked if his department was a “rogue agency.” He responded, “I couldn’t disagree more vehemently.”

Some of Biden’s strongest supporters on Capitol Hill and among outside immigrant advocates had already been expressing outrage about the administration’s continued reliance on a Trump-era public health authority, known as Title 42, to rapidly expel migrants, including thousands of Haitians.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center and onetime co-chair of a task force on immigration meant to unite Biden supporters with more progressive primary backers of Sen. Bernie Sanders, noted that the White House “has appointed some of the best people in our movement” to help run immigration programs.

But she is among those opposed to Title 42, which the Trump administration invoked early in the pandemic, ostensibly to slow the spread of COVID-19. It prevents people from making claims for U.S. asylum.

“This is the moment when friends need to have those courageous conversations with friends,” Hincapié said. “When they’re making the wrong decision.”

The administration’s refusal to halt Title 42 — even appealing a court order to stop relying on it to expel families — along with the lack of progress in Congress on a sweeping immigration bill that Biden introduced upon taking office has prompted supporters to warn of a return to the enforcement-heavy policies of President Barack Obama.

“They’ve been there for eight months,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group backed by some of the nation’s largest tech companies. “The policies that they are actively pursuing are very different than the ones they promised. The policies they are actively pursuing are failing. Yet the continued direction is in the wrong direction.”

The Obama administration in its early years drastically increased the number of migrants it deported in hopes of showing Republicans it had stepped up enforcement while trying to get its own comprehensive immigration package through Congress. Officials ultimately expelled a record 3 million people, which led some activists to label Obama “deporter-in-chief” but still didn’t produce congressional action on an immigration overhaul.

“The calculation that the administration is making at the moment is that they will have a better chance of getting Congress to act on broader-based immigration reforms if they can get the border ‘under control,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “That was really the theory of the Obama administration.”

As did the Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden administration has been confronting an increase in the number of migrants trying to cross the border, either illegally or to present themselves to Border Patrol agents so they can claim asylum.

The total number of encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border reached just over 208,000 for August, a slight decline from July but still the highest since March 2000 and the highest since the last big increase in 2019, under President Donald Trump.

The current total is inflated by Title 42, with about a quarter of the encounters involving people who have been recaptured after they were previously expelled under the public health authority. The numbers also have been rising due to factors that include COVID-19 ravages on Latin American economies and a perception that Biden will be more welcoming than Trump.

Biden’s response has been to try to address the “root causes” of migration by increasing aid to Central America, which was cut under Trump, and restoring a program that enabled children from the region to apply for visas to join their families in the U.S.

His administration has also proposed a federal rule to protect immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

“I’m confident that the president will use every tool at his disposal, but the administrative tools are not sufficient to fix what needs to be fixed,” said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Obama. She blames staunch Republican congressional opposition, and Senate rules she says were incorrectly applied, for the expectation that immigration reform will not pass Congress as part of the budgeting process.

Legislative efforts aside, the administration has stopped the Trump-era practice of expelling children crossing alone from Mexico under Title 42, and has allowed thousands of migrant families to remain in the U.S. while they pursue asylum claims — a process that frequently ends in denial but can take years for a final decision.

It has, however, continued to use Title 42 to expel many families and nearly all solo adults, with Mayorkas repeatedly insisting it is a necessary public health measure, aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19 in detention facilities.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, argues that relying on Title 42 causes more trouble than it’s worth by inflating the total number of encounters, which are still far below what they were 20 years ago.

“Title 42 has created a significant amount of churn at the border, and the end result of this churn hasn’t been a more secure border,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “It’s been a reduction in the ability of people to seek protection and an overstressed Border Patrol, which doesn’t have the capacity to deal with that level of activity.”

A federal judge, ruling in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, recently declared the reliance on Title 42 to deny people the right to seek asylum is likely illegal, and said he would issue a preliminary injunction halting its use. The Biden administration appealed, further infuriating the critics.

Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, said at a forum Monday that he is broadly supportive of administrative actions on immigration and of Mayorkas. But he said the ACLU, which filed more than 400 legal actions under Trump, won’t hesitate to keep challenging Biden on Title 42 and other matters.

“I think litigation is as important in holding the feet to the fire of our quote ‘allies’ as it is about fighting the foes of civil liberties and civil rights,” Romero said, “because that is what creates the political will.”

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Associated Press writer Emily Swanson contributed to this report.

Matt Sedensky | The Associated Press

September 29, 2021

NEW YORK (AP) — Bronwyn Russell wears a mask anytime she leaves her Illinois home, though she wouldn’t dream of going out to eat or to hear a band play, much less setting foot on a plane. In Virginia, Oliver Midgette rarely dons a mask, never lets COVID-19 rouse any worry and happily finds himself in restaurants and among crowds.

She is vaccinated. He is not.

In a sign of the starkly different way Americans view the coronavirus pandemic, vaccinated older adults are far more worried about the virus than the unvaccinated and far likelier to take precautions despite the protection afforded by their shots, according to a new poll out Wednesday from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

While growing numbers of older unvaccinated people are planning travel, embracing group gatherings and returning to gyms and houses of worship, the vaccinated are hunkering down.

“I’m worried. I don’t want to get sick,” says Russell, a 58-year-old from Des Plaines, Illinois, who is searching for part-time work while collecting disability benefits. “The people who are going about their lives are just in their own little bubbles of selfishness and don’t believe in facts.”

As the virus’ delta variant has fueled new waves of infection, the poll of people age 50 or older found 36% are very or extremely worried that they or a family member will be infected, roughly doubled since June. The increase is fueled by the vaccinated, who are especially likely to be highly worried. Just 25% of vaccinated Americans, but 61% of unvaccinated Americans, say they are not worried.

That worry is taking a toll: Those concerned about COVID-19 are less likely to rate their quality of life, mental and emotional health, and social activities and relationships as excellent or very good.

The dichotomy is at once peculiar and pedestrian: Though the unvaccinated stand most at risk of infection, their refusal of the shots shows many are convinced the threat is overblown.

Midgette, a 73-year-old retired electronics salesman in Norfolk, Virginia, sees the government as the culprit in fueling fear, but he’s not buying into it. He says “life is normal” again and the only thing he’s missing out on is going on a cruise with his wife because of vaccination requirements. It won’t convince him.

“I grew up in the old days. I ate dirt. I drank water from a hose. I played outside. I don’t live in a cage right now,” he says.

About two-thirds of people age 50 or older say they rarely or never feel isolated, but about half of those most worried about COVID-19 say they’ve felt that way at least sometimes in the last month.

Kathy Paiva, a 70-year-old retired bartender from Palm Coast, Florida, says she’s feeling the weight of staying home so much.

“My life is more limited than it ever was,” Paiva says. “I’m scared to go anywhere right now. I’d like to go out to eat, too, but I’m not going to put anyone’s life in danger, especially my own.”

Her son died of a heart attack in January. In July, she and her closest confidant, her 67-year-old sister, both fell ill with COVID-19. Paiva, who is vaccinated, survived. Her sister, who wasn’t, did not.

About 1 in 4 older adults, including roughly a third of those who are most worried about COVID-19, say their social lives and relationships worsened in the past year.

The poll found vaccinated older adults are more likely than the unvaccinated to say they often avoid large groups, wear a mask outside their home and avoid nonessential travel. Compared with June, vaccinated people were less likely to say they would travel or visit bars and restaurants in the next few weeks.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, a public health expert and founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said unvaccinated people’s fear of the virus is lower because of their “disregard for science.”

“Vaccinated people have generally bought into the scientific realities of risk. They’re reading the reports of new variants or mutations, they’re reading stories about breakthroughs,” he said.

All of that is fueling anxiety for the vaccinated, Redlener said, compounded by a loss of confidence in experts and officials and their shifting guidance, most recently on the issue of booster shots.

Lee Sharp, a 54-year-old information technology consultant from Houston, who was so seriously ill with COVID-19 last year that he made sure his wife knew how to access all his accounts, initially thought he would get vaccinated as soon as shots were available. But as the months went by, the forcefulness with which vaccines have been pushed has made him not want to get one.

“As time has passed, I have less and less and less trust. ‘Masks don’t do anything!’ ‘Masks do something!’ ‘You need two masks!’ ‘No, you need four masks!’ ‘You need disposable masks!’ ‘No, cloth masks are OK!’” he said in exasperation. “What the heck?”

Linda Wells, a 61-year-old retired high school administrator in San Francisco, says that defiance has been discouraging. She got her shots and a booster, but because of an arthritis medication she takes, has been told by her doctors she’s in the “nebulous area of not knowing whether I’m protected.”

She’d like to go to a community pool to swim or hop on a plane to see a play in Los Angeles or to visit nieces in Arizona. She’d like to dine in a restaurant or take a leisurely shopping trip. She doesn’t, for fear of infection.

“I’m dependent on what other people do and, you know, I’ve done everything I could do. I wear a mask. I got the vaccine. And for people to be so selfish to not do this, it’s ridiculous,” she says. “A stubborn point of view keeps them from resolving a health crisis.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,015 people age 50 or older was conducted Aug. 20-23, using a nationally representative sample drawn from the probability-based Foresight 50+ Panel, developed by NORC at the University of Chicago. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and at https://twitter.com/sedensky. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

Carla K. Johnson and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

September 30, 2021

A survey of Americans on President Joe Biden’s plan to require most workers to get either vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19 finds a deep and familiar divide: Democrats are overwhelmingly for it, while most Republicans are against it.

With the highly contagious delta variant driving deaths up to around 2,000 per day, the poll released Thursday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that overall, 51% say they approve of the Biden requirement, 34% disapprove and 14% hold neither opinion.

About three quarters of Democrats, but only about a quarter of Republicans, approve. Roughly 6 in 10 Republicans say they disapprove. Over the course of the outbreak, Democrats and Republicans in many places have also found themselves divided over masks and other precautions.

“I don’t believe the federal government should have a say in me having to get the vaccine or lose my job or get tested,” said 28-year-old firefighter Emilio Rodriguez in Corpus Christi, Texas. The Republican is not vaccinated.

Democrat and retired school secretary Sarah Carver, 70, strongly approves of the Biden mandate. The suburban Cleveland resident said she wants more people vaccinated to protect her 10-year-old grandson, who is too young to get the shot, and her vaccinated husband, who has breathing problems and Alzheimer’s disease.

“I believe Dr. Fauci,” Carver said, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist. Carver has had two doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Sixty-four percent of vaccinated Americans say they approve of the mandate, while 23% disapprove. Among unvaccinated Americans, just 14% are in support, while 67% are opposed. Most remote employees approve, but in-person workers are about evenly divided.

Exactly how the mandate will work is still being hammered out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Some health experts have said weekly testing is a poor substitute for vaccination but a necessary part of the policy.

“Testing is used here to make it inconvenient” to avoid vaccination, said immunologist Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The choice will be: “You can get your two doses of vaccine, or here’s what you’re going to be doing every week.”

The hope, Gronvall said, is that mandates will force people who have procrastinated to join the 56% of the U.S. population now fully vaccinated.

The testing choice makes the Biden workplace mandate more palatable to Cassie Tremant, a 32-year-old volunteer for a wildlife rescue group in Austin, Texas. She agrees with the mandate as long as people can opt out by getting tested weekly. A Democrat, she is fully vaccinated. Her grandmother was hospitalized with COVID-19.

“Personally, I would prefer everybody to be vaccinated,” Tremant said. The Biden plan “gives people an option. If they don’t comply, it’s on them to get tested. I think it’s a fair rule.”

Roughly two-thirds of Americans say they are at least somewhat worried about themselves or family members becoming infected with the virus, though intense worry has declined. About 3 in 10 are now very or extremely worried, compared with about 4 in 10 in mid-August.

About two-thirds of Americans are at least somewhat confident the COVID-19 vaccines will be effective against virus variants.

Americans remain most trusting of health professionals for information about the vaccines, largely unchanged from December. Roughly 8 in 10 trust their doctors and other health care providers at least a moderate amount.

Rodriguez, the Corpus Christi firefighter, said he distrusts government vaccine information because it appears to him to be overly rosy.

“I’ve heard nothing negative about getting it at all,” he said. “Nothing about side effects. It’s ‘No, everything’s fine. Go ahead and go get it.’”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does list common side effects of the vaccines such as tiredness, muscle pain, fever, chills and nausea. Serious problems are rare, including heart inflammation that can occur in young men.

If he is subject to a workplace mandate, Rodriguez said, he will consult his doctor, whom he trusts.

Public trust in the top U.S. science agencies for vaccine information is also relatively high. Roughly 7 in 10 trust the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration at least a moderate amount.

“They’re the scientists and they know what they’re talking about,” said Ohio retiree Carver. “They’re not quacks like some you see on the internet.”

In contrast, only about 4 in 10 Americans say they trust the news media a moderate amount or more for information about the vaccines; about 6 in 10 have little or no trust in the media.

A majority of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, though his rating is lower than it was during the first six months of his presidency. Fifty-seven percent approve, while 43% disapprove. That’s similar to his ratings last month. As recently as July, roughly two-thirds approved of Biden’s handling of the pandemic.

Close to half don’t trust the president for information about vaccines. That includes Democrat Tremant, the Austin wildlife rescue volunteer.

“Politicians say really dumb stuff,” Tremant said. “I would never trust any medical guidance or advice from any politician, even if they’re my favorite politician in the world.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,099 adults was conducted Sept. 23-27 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.