(NEW YORK) — With the midterm elections three months away, Americans maintain a sour view on the state of the economy and are pessimistic about its future course, with President Joe Biden’s approval rating across a range of issue areas continuing to suffer, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.

More than two-thirds (69%) of Americans think the nation’s economy is getting worse — the highest that measure has reached since 2008, when it was 82% in an ABC News/Washington Post poll. Currently, only 12% think the economy is getting better and 18% think it is essentially staying the same.

Americans’ views of Biden’s handling of the economic recovery remain overwhelmingly negative — and are virtually unchanged from the same poll in early June, with only 37% of Americans approving of the job the president is doing and 62% disapproving in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.

The president’s rating on inflation is even worse, with 29% of Americans saying they approve, while 69% disapprove. This number is also unchanged since June.

The only area where Biden sees some improvement in this poll is on his handling of gas prices. Just over one in three Americans (34%) approve of the president’s handling of gas prices — up seven points since June.

This comes as the country has seen the average cost for a gallon of gas come down — price drops celebrated by the White House.

The low confidence in Biden’s handling of the economy and inflation comes on the heels of Friday’s jobs report, which showed that 528,000 jobs were added in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Americans also saw the unemployment rate go down to 3.5%.

In a statement released Friday, Biden touted the July jobs report, saying that it shows that his administration is “making significant progress for working families.”

When asked how enthusiastic they were about voting in November, the poll found that 75% of Republicans are either very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting, compared to 68% of Democrats and 49% of independents. In ABC News/Ipsos polls conducted in April and June this year, Republicans were more likely to report that they were very enthusiastic about voting than Democrats. That gap has narrowed to five points in this August poll.

There are other glimmers of hope for the Democrats in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll when it comes to the potential impact abortion could have on how voters cast their ballots this November.

The poll asked voters which candidate they would support if one favored keeping abortion legal and available and the other candidate supported limiting abortion except to protect the mother’s life. About half of Americans (49%) would be more likely to support the candidate who would keep access to abortion legal compared to the 27% of Americans who would be more likely to support the candidate who favors limiting abortion. Meanwhile, 22% of Americans say that abortion would not have an impact on how they would vote.

This comes after voters in the deep red state of Kansas voted to preserve the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, shocking the country in the first state-level test since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In a statement from Biden on the defeat of Kansas’s abortion amendment, he called on Congress to “listen to the will of the American people and restore the protections of Roe as federal law.”

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs‘ KnowledgePanel® August 5-6, 2022, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 665 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.2 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 29-25-40 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.

ABC News’ Ken Goldstein and Dan Merkle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Nearly uniform Republican opposition in the Senate on Sunday stripped a proposed cap on insulin prices in private insurance from Democrats’ party-line climate, health and tax bill.

Democrats had sought to overrule a decision from the Senate rules official, the parliamentarian, that a $35-per-month limit on insulin costs under private insurances did not comply with the budget reconciliation process, which allowed Democrats to pass their bill with a bare majority.

The cap, which was proposed by Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., needed 60 votes to pass and remain in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It ultimately failed by a 57-43 vote.

Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan voted for the measure with Democrats. All 43 “no” votes came from Republicans.

The cap’s scrapping was quickly seized on by Democrats and stirred controversy beyond them, with critics of the GOP citing the sometimes startling cost of needed insulin for diabetics.

Republicans, in turn, accused Democrats of being misleading about a vote that they said amounted to a technicality rather than a policy difference.

“Lying Dems and their friends in corporate media are at it again, distorting a Democrat ‘gotcha’ vote. In reality, the Dems wanted to break Senate rules to pass insulin pricing cap instead of going through regular order,” Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson tweeted afterward, noting that he previously “voted for an amendment, that Dems blocked, to provide insulin at cost to low-income Americans.”

While the proposed cap was not expected to get the 10 Republicans needed to have the measure preserved as part of the Democrats’ sprawling reconciliation deal — the 60-vote threshold would have overcome the parliamentarian’s objections about using the 51-vote reconciliation — the process allowed the party to put GOP senators on the record on a popular policy.

Republicans used a similar tactic in voting on Biden’s immigration policy as part of possible amendments to the IRA.

The parliamentarian had said the insulin cap would violate the Byrd Rule, which requires that a measure have an effect on the federal budget that is not “merely incidental” in order to qualify to pass through reconciliation.

The parliamentarian, meanwhile, did allow Warnock’s $35 insulin cap to apply to those covered under Medicare.

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(WASHINGTON) — Basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan should hopefully be released from Russia as part of a “two-for-two” prisoner swap, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson said Sunday.

“My view is optimistic, I think she’s gonna be free. There’s gonna be a prisoner swap — I think it’s gonna be two-for-two. Can’t forget about Paul Whelan,” Richardson, who is an outside adviser involved in Griner’s case, said in an exclusive interview with ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Griner has been detained since February and was sentenced last week to nine years in prison after she was found guilty of drug charges in a Moscow-area court; she has said she accidentally traveled with vape cartridges containing hashish oil.

Whelan, who worked in corporate security after the Marines, was convicted of espionage — which he and the U.S. deny.

Late last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed the administration had made a “substantial proposal” to release Griner and Whelan, which sources told ABC News included freeing notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S.

Richardson said Sunday that he didn’t fully agree with the Biden administration’s messaging strategy. “I wouldn’t have gone public as much as they did,” he said.

But, he said, sometimes comments about prisoner negotiations are made strategically when talks stall: “You want to throw a little bit of a bomb, and I think that’s what they did.”

Richardson described himself as a “catalyst” working on Griner’s case, along with other detainees. “I’ve been talking to the Russians. I talked to the White House,” he said, though he would not detail specifics of his communications.

The founder of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement — which “promotes global peace and dialogue,” according to the center’s website — Richardson recently helped free U.S. journalist Danny Fenster in Myanmar, he said. He was also involved in helping free ex-Marine Trevor Reed, who was released by Russia in April in another prisoner exchange.

Stephanopoulos questioned Richardson about why, in its comments on Griner and Whelan, the White House has publicly omitted Marc Fogel, an American educator held in Russia since August 2021.

“He’s facing a prison sentence right now. His infraction was similar to Brittney Griner’s. Shouldn’t he be included in this?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“All of these that are wrongfully detained need to come home. And our objective should be, despite prisoner exchanges that are not popular, to bring American hostages home,” Richardson said. “Some of these prisoner exchanges are not good. They don’t — the optics are not good. But we have to do it sometimes.”

Stephanopoulos followed up to ask if such trades “will encourage America’s adversaries to actually detain more Americans”?

“There’s no data that supports that,” Richardson said. He cited the case of Fenster: “All they wanted was a photo-op. So data doesn’t support that prisoner exchanges are always the case. Yes, they’re increasing, especially with countries like Iran, Venezuela, Russia. But as unpleasant as they are, we have to bring American hostages home.”

Blinken said in late July he had spoken with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to try and push forward on negotiations.

Richardson on Sunday complimented Lavrov’s role in the issue.

“Lavrov, he and I were U.N. ambassadors together at the same time,” Richardson said. “And I’m pleased that he’s pragmatic, that he’s sort of in charge and sent a good signal. I think the negotiations are going to be undertaken.”

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