Half the country thinks the nation would be better off if Joe Biden and Donald Trump stepped away from politics, though they remain their parties’ top choices for 2024. While a new national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll finds President Joe Biden’s job approval inching up to 40% for the first time in 2022, more than half of the country say it would be better off for the nation if both he and former President Donald Trump stepped away from politics in 2024. (News Office Relations, 10/24/22)

 Assistant Professor of Political Science Paul Musgrave is interviewed for a story about survey findings that regular newspaper readers are more likely than those who get their news from television to be able to identify foreign countries on a blank map and answer basic questions about them. “It is so hard to keep track of events in this country, let alone everywhere else, and the more countries you start watching, the worse your ability to track any one of them actually gets,” Musgrave says. “But if you have somebody who can just tell you what to think, a trusted agent, it becomes more manageable.” (MorningConsult.com, 10/17/22) 

There is additional distribution of a Daily Mail article that quotes Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass Poll, about Kanye West’s assertion that BLM was a “scam,” one day after wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt at his Yeezy fashion show in Paris. Recent UMass Poll findings show support is decreasing for the Black Lives Matter movement, even among African Americans. “Kanye West in some ways is voicing a sentiment that some aspects and portions of the American public believes and supports,” Nteta says.

With the opening of the U.S. Supreme Court,  Professor Paul Collins comments in a Newsweek article about the possibility that the Court could overturn a ban on bump stocks put in place after a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. "If accepted, this case will mark the first time in almost 90 years that the justices weigh in on significant gun control measures involving regulations of particular attributes of firearms,” Collins said. (Newsweek, 10/1/22)