FiveThirtyEight’s top politics stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular In Politics] Thursday, March 2, 2023 [1. Most Americans Think House Republicans Aren’t Investigating Real Problems]( [CONG-INVESTIGATIONS-4×3]( The GOP just took control of the House of the Representatives, and there’s a Democratic president in the White House. That means House Republicans will open investigations into President Biden and his administration; the question is just how aggressive and far-reaching the probes will be. But recent polling indicates that Americans don’t seem to have much of an appetite for a slew of public hearings — at least, not the ones that Republicans have planned. [Read more]( [2. How The Cool Kid Of Progressive Politics Gambled It All Away]( [DATA-FOR-PROGRESS-4×3]( For a certain segment of the chronically online left, it was the equivalent of a blood bath. Just a few days before Christmas, the Slack channels started to disappear. Then, one by one, users were booted off of the Slack entirely. Like at many modern offices, workers at Data For Progress — a left-leaning polling firm and think tank — used Slack’s chat software for internal communication. But the Data For Progress Slack was notorious in progressive circles for having multiple public channels that included expansive membership outside of the company. And now the channels were being shuttered and non-employees were being evicted. [Read more]( [3. Why We’re Preemptively Banning A Pollster — And Not Banning Another]( [POLLSTER-BANS-2023-4×3]( FiveThirtyEight is in the business of grading and reporting on polls — so when a pollster allegedly engages in misconduct, we take it seriously. In November 2022, an anonymous interviewee in The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University’s student-run newspaper, alleged that Sean McElwee, the then-executive director of polling firm Data For Progress, was betting on elections. We immediately began our own investigation, led by reporter Kaleigh Rogers; today, we published the results of that investigation — the full story of McElwee and Data For Progress as best we could determine. [Read more]( [4. Which Republicans Could Vote For A Debt Ceiling Increase?]( [Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski]( Nothing is certain in this life, but the United States will definitely need to raise its debt ceiling later this year to avoid a potentially calamitous debt default. On one side, President Biden and Democrats want a “clean” debt limit increase, while Republicans want future decreases in spending included in any deal. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: How The War In Ukraine Could Go Nuclear]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.