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For conservatives.
Every afternoon at 4PM.

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Here Are 3 Numbers That Show How Bad Biden’s Gas Crisis Really Is

The average price of gas rose above $4 in all 50 states for the first time ever this week – and that’s just one of the numerical signs of a growing crisis at the pump.

SO WHAT

President Biden and the Democrats look poised to pay the price in November.

THE NUMBERS

Thursday saw a geyser of bad news about rising gas prices, including these three numbers:

$4.589: The current national average price of regular fuel is the highest since AAA Auto Club began tracking the data.

$4.00: The minimum average price of gasoline in every state rose above $4 for the first time, according to AAA.

$6.00: According to analysts at JP Morgan, the price for regular gasoline will surpass $6 a gallon by the end of the summer.

(AAA Auto Club)

“The high cost of oil, the key ingredient in gasoline, is driving these high pump prices for consumers,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said. “Even the annual seasonal demand dip for gasoline during the lull between spring break and Memorial Day, which would normally help lower prices, is having no effect this year.”

FOR COMPARISON: The national average price of a gallon of gasoline was $2.38 when Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor, left office, per the Energy Information Administration.

THE POLITICS

While political observers are split on how much blame Biden deserves for the surging cost of gas, everyone agrees its a disaster for his party ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Democrats have expressed hope that a renewed abortion fight will mobilize liberal voters, but Americans have continued to name the economy, particularly inflation and rising costs, as their chief concern.

  • A Rasmussen Reports and Heartland Institute poll released in early May found that 82% of voters are worried about rising gas prices, with 60% saying they’re “very concerned” about the crisis.
  • According to a CNN poll released earlier this month, 55% of Americans believe Biden policies have worsened economic conditions in the country.

The upshot is that the Democratic Party’s midterm forecast looks grim, with internal swing state polling proffering especially bad news.

  • “During a Thursday luncheon last week with [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] Chair Sean Patrick Maloney, Frontline Democrats – the party’s most endangered lawmakers – were told that, in battleground districts, the generic Republican is beating the generic Democrat, 47-39, according to lawmakers, multiple party officials and the DCCC,” Punchbowl News reported Wednesday.
(Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

This Chart Reveals the Issues That Are Driving a Wedge Between Americans

Inflation is by far the most pressing issue for the American public, but Republicans and Democrats strongly disagree on what else matters, according to a recent survey.

SO WHAT

The findings are basically a map of the U.S. culture wars.

THE NUMBERS

Sixty-five percent of Republicans and 42% of Democrats named inflation as one the most pressing issues facing the country in the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll released Tuesday.

Immigration was the most partisan issue on the list: Only 7% of Democrats said it was a top concern, compared to 35% of Republicans, a 28% gap.

  • Climate change (24%), inflation (23%), government budget and debt (21%), race and racism (17%), election security or fraud (17%) and the pandemic (16%) were the next biggest wedge issues, in that order.

AMERICA DIVIDED

Other recent research has shown that America is exceptionally politically polarized at the moment.

  • The “2020 pandemic has revealed how pervasive the divide in American politics is relative to other nations,” Pew Research Center president Michael Dimock wrote last March.
  • Even before COVID-19, he said, “Americans were more ideologically divided than any of the 19 other publics surveyed when asked how much trust they have in scientists and whether scientists make decisions solely based on facts.”
  • In “Democracies Divided,” a 2019 collection of case studies on polarization around the world, researchers Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue found that a “powerful alignment of ideology, race, and religion renders America’s divisions unusually encompassing and profound.”
  • “It is hard to find another example of polarization in the world that fuses all three major types of identity divisions in a similar way,” they added.
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Democrats Asked These Abortion Advocates to Testify to Congress and It Was an Absolute Trainwreck

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee invited a radical group of witnesses to testify at a Wednesday hearing on abortion access — and Republicans had some questions.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Professor Wishes Own Mom Had Right to Abort Her

Melissa Falen wrote in a Wednesday op-ed for The Baltimore Sun that she wishes her biological mother, who gave her up for adoption, had had the opportunity to abort her instead.

WHAT SHE SAID

Falen, an associate professor of education at Notre Dame of Maryland University, acknowledged in the essay that she was raised by “good and loving parents” in suburbs of Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

  • But Falen said she hid that she was adopted for fear of being “stigmatized” and “grew up with no siblings” or knowledge of her heritage.
  • As an adult, she was unable to locate her mom or older brother, and her father died before they could meet.
  • Records show her dad refused to marry her mom, and both of the couple’s children were given up for adoption in 1950s Maryland, where abortion was mostly illegal.

Writing ahead of the anticipated undoing of national abortion rights by the Supreme Court, Falen lamented that her mother had not had a choice to terminate her and her brother in the womb.

  • “I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been an unmarried woman who had two ‘illegitimate’ (what they called us then) babies in the 1950s. The stigma and shame must have been tremendous,'” she wrote.
  • “I will never know how her life might have been different if she had not had me or my brother, or if she wanted to keep us. I am blessed to have been raised by good and loving parents. Still, I wish the woman who bore me had been able to make decisions about her own body, whatever those decisions might have been.”

SAME ENERGY

Similar arguments have recently been featured in the opinion pages of The Washington Post and on signs at pro-abortion protests in U.S. cities.

(Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Who’s Having a Good/Bad Day on Twitter

Our main characters on Twitter Wednesday were Jack Posobiec and George W. Bush.

HAVING A GOOD ONE

POSOBIEC: The right-wing commentator took a victory lap after The Washington Post credited him with taking down Biden’s “Ministry of Truth” with mean tweets.

HAVING A BAD ONE

BUSH: The former president was dogpiled from the left and right — and even his supporters cringed — after he accidentally condemned himself for launching the Iraq War in a videotaped gaffe that has been viewed on Twitter nearly 20 million times.

(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

THE 4PM POLL: What’s the Most Important Wedge Issue in America?

FiveThirtyEight recently charted the biggest issues dividing Republicans and Democrats.


Have more to say about this? Email us at: .
(Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN: 4PM Readers Are Divided Over Trump’s Advice to Dr. Oz

Respondents to The 4PM Poll are almost evenly on whether Dr. Oz should preemptively declare victory in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary, as former President Donald Trump suggested.

WHAT YOU SAID

In Wednesday’s poll, we asked: “Should Dr. Oz listen to Trump and declare victory?”

  • 47% of you said yes.
  • 41% of said no.
  • 12% were unsure.
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

CHASER: Welp, That Explains Why San Francisco Is Covered in Poop

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LAST ROUND

The 4PM: A highlight reel of today’s news.
For conservatives.
Every afternoon at 4PM.