US Politics

“This isn’t Dallas, it’s Nashville! SING!” The desperate speaker is rhinestone-suited old-time country singer Haven Hamilton, played by Henry Gibson, in this rereleased state-of-America ensemble classic from 1975, written by Joan Tewkesbury and directed by Robert Altman. The toupee-wearing star has just been shot in the arm by a lone gunman in the crowd at a political rally featuring wholesomely patriotic country music, and the crowd is on the verge of panic. Only soothing tunes will calm them, and eventually a sprightly number called It Don’t Worry Me finally gets them singing along, forgetting all about the murder attempt they’ve all just witnessed. (Like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, from a year later, this is a movie that is attempting to deal with the trauma of the Kennedy assassination as much as, or more, than the Vietnam war.)It’s an appropriately sensational and bizarre set piece to close this unique film and, watching it again for the first time since its last revival 17 years ago, what strikes me is its complex attitude to country music itself. Nashville is of course the home of country, the home of the Grand Ole Opry; the music is not really ironised in this film, not mocked, even when the singers are at their most narcissistic and self-serving and when the songs are at their cheesiest – especially Hamilton’s toe-curling For the Sake of the Children, a mawkish song from a man to his mistress, piously saying he has to return to his marriage. The music, playing almost continuously, is the glue that holds the movie together. It may sound schmaltzy, but the city-slickers deriding it sound worse.This is Gerald Ford’s America, on the verge of the bicentennial in 1976 … an event everyone hopes will heal the agonies of Watergate. An independent presidential candidate is coming to Nashville, hoping to promote his new ideas: taxing churches, abolishing the electoral college, removing lawyers from government. But for some Kennedy lovers present, the final dismissal of Nixon just brings back unhappy memories of how Nixon actually won against Kennedy in Tennessee in 1960, and the Kennedy motif is an unhappy omen.So too is a public fainting fit suffered by the local country star Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), who has perhaps intuited the hysteria and anxiety in the air. Allen Garfield is great as her boorish husband-slash-manager Barnett. Geraldine Chaplin is insufferably patronising British journalist Opal, who has a fling with handsome singer Tom (Keith Carradine), who is also having an affair with Linnea (a superb Lily Tomlin), with whom Wade (Robert DoQui) is poignantly in love. Linnea is an unsatisfied married woman with hearing-impaired children whose sleazy husband Delbert (Ned Beatty) is working with visiting TV producer John Triplette (Michael Murphy) to set up a lucrative media-political deal. All these – and many more – characters’ lives crisscross, their dialogue overlapping in the middle-distance sound design while the candidate’s megaphone-van trundles around the city, blaring its choric political commentary, an ambient effect rather like the tannoy announcements in M*A*S*H.The film’s most brutal moment is the treatment of Sueleen Gay, the waitress and tone-deaf wannabe country star played by Gwen Welles, who is tricked by the unspeakable Delbert and Triplette into appearing on stage, purely because they want her to do a striptease for the braying good ol’ boys present. Poor Sueleen thinks they wanted to hear her sing. It’s an ugly moment of abuse and, perhaps tellingly, the band switch from wholesome country to traditional burlesque music for this humiliation.Altman’s control of this sprawling material is wonderful – though Tewkesbury’s screenwriting achievement should not be forgotten. This is the heart of the troubled mid-70s American zeitgeist: angry, sentimental, violent, comic, afraid. More

Last week Catholic bishops in the US voted to move forward with plans that could result in Joe Biden being banned from receiving communion because of his stance on abortion. Jonathan Freedland speaks to former congressman Tom Perriello about the decision and its potential impact on voters

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Last week the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to move foward with plans to draw up new guidance on the eucharist, which could see President Biden being banned from receiving communion due to his stance on abortion. Why are they doing this? And what impact will it actually have? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Tom Perriello, the executive director of Open Society Foundations US about a piece he wrote last week condemning the move by the bishops. Archive: Getty; CNN; YouTube Listen to Comfort Eating with Grace Dent Send us your questions and feedback to [email protected] Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

Joe Biden announced on Thursday that “we have a deal”, signaling a bipartisan agreement on a $953bn infrastructure plan that would achieve his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle.Biden made a surprise appearance in front of the cameras with members of the group of senators, Republicans and Democrats, after an agreement was reached on Thursday. Details of the deal were scarce to start, but the pared-down plan, with $559bn in new spending, has rare bipartisan backing and could open the door to the president’s more sweeping $4tn proposals later on.The president said not everyone got what they wanted and that other White House priorities would be done separately in a congressional budget process known as reconciliation.“We’ve struck a deal,” Biden then tweeted. “A group of senators – five Democrats and five Republicans – has come together and forged an infrastructure agreement that will create millions of American jobs.”The senators have struggled over how to pay for the new spending but left for the White House with a sense of confidence that funding issues had been addressed.Biden’s top aides had met with senators for back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill and later huddled with the House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.The agreement comes with a complex legislative push. Pelosi on Thursday welcomed the bipartisan package, but she warned that it must be paired with the president’s bigger goals now being prepared by Congress under a separate so-called the budget reconciliation process.“This is important,” Pelosi said. “There ain’t going to be a bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill.” The Democratic leader vowed the House would not vote on it until the Senate had dealt with both packages.The major hurdle for a bipartisan agreement has been financing. Biden demanded no new taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, while Republican lawmakers were unwilling to raise taxes beyond such steps as indexing the gasoline tax to inflation. Biden has sought $1.7tn in his American Jobs Plan, part of nearly $4tn in broad infrastructure spending on roads, bridges and broadband internet but also including the so-called care economy of child care centers, hospitals and elder care.With Republicans opposed to Biden’s proposed corporate tax rate increase, from 21% to 28%, the group has looked at other ways to raise revenue. Biden rejected their idea to allow gas taxes paid at the pump to rise with inflation, viewing it as a financial burden on American drivers.The broad reconciliation bill would likely include tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, so a tension still exists over funding for some Republicans and business groups.According to a White House readout of the Wednesday meeting with Schumer and Pelosi, the leaders talked with acting budget director Shalanda Young, National Economic Council director Brian Deese and Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice, and they discussed the two-track approach – the smaller bipartisan deal now emerging and the more sweeping plan of Democratic priorities.Schumer said the leaders “support the concepts” they have heard from the bipartisan negotiations.The Democratic leaders also insisted on the two-part process ahead, starting with initial votes in July to consider the bipartisan deal and to launch the lengthy procedure for the Democrats’ proposal, now drafted at nearly $6tn t.The Democrats’ bigger proposal would run through the budget reconciliation process, which would allow passage of Biden’s priorities by majority vote, without the need for support from Republicans to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It would require multiple rounds of voting that are likely to extend into fall.Like Pelosi, Schumer said, “One can’t be done without the other.” More

This week, the For the People Act – the most sweeping voting-rights legislation in more than 50 years – came before the United States Senate, a place known, especially to itself, as “world’s greatest deliberative body”. Yet Republican senators refused to even debate the measure. Despite having the support of every member of the Democratic majority – a group of 50 senators that represents 40 million more constituents than their Republican counterparts – the bill failed to reach the 60-vote threshold for breaking a filibuster. It didn’t even come close.Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that some have rushed to portray For the People Act’s failure to pass the Senate as a political setback, a strategic misstep, or a presidency-defining blunder.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance, it’s important to consider three major developmentsBut such doomsday thinking ignores the big picture. Of course democracy advocates are disappointed – in theory, the Senate just blew a big chance to protect the republic from the greatest onslaught of authoritarianism the United States has ever faced. In practice, however, no voting-rights bill was ever going to pass the Senate on the first try. The important question has never been whether the For the People Act will win over 10 Republicans. The question is whether 50 Democrats can be convinced to end or alter the filibuster and then pass the For the People Act via a simple majority vote.Seen through this lens, this week’s vote was a step forward, not backward. Major voting-rights legislation has never been closer to becoming law.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance – and better-than-ever odds of prevailing – it’s important to consider three major developments, none of which was guaranteed when Democrats took the Senate with the slimmest of majorities six months ago.The first is that, despite President Trump’s attempt to overturn a legitimate election, his party’s unwillingness to stop him, and a well-funded campaign to turn voters against the For the People Act, democracy remains popular with the American people. According to one recent poll, 71% of Americans believe in-person early voting should be made easier, 69% support establishing national guidelines for voting, and a majority support expanding vote-by-mail as well.Thanks to a smart compromise proposal from Senator Joe Manchin, Democrats have even robbed Republicans of their one popular (if disingenuous) talking point in the debate over elections: support for voter ID. Mitch McConnell, the Koch political organization, and their conservative allies were hoping to turn voting rights into a political liability for Democrats, thus encouraging their members to drop the subject. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Continuing the fight to protect democracy is the right thing to do – and for Democratic senators, it’s the politically sensible thing to do as well.The moral and political case for protecting democracy has only been made more urgent by Republican overreach since the election. This wasn’t inevitable. In the wake of a closer-than-expected presidential race, and surprising strength in the House, state and local Republicans could have decided to appeal to moderate voters and enjoy their existing structural advantages, such as a rightwing majority on the supreme court and a large head start in the 2020 round of redistricting.Instead, Republicans doubled down on Trump’s authoritarian impulses. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 389 bills restricting voting have been put forward in 48 states. These bills go far beyond previous voter suppression efforts, ensuring lengthy, public court battles and risking a backlash. Already, voting-restriction laws such as the one passed in Georgia have proven so audacious and so egregious that some of America’s largest corporations – who are rarely keen to criticize the GOP’s top priorities – have come out against them.In the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracyThe business community lending its support to voting rights, even in the abstract, has in turn given on-the-fence Democrats more room to maneuver. West Virginia’s Manchin, one of the filibuster’s most ardent defenders, joined voting-rights negotiations by proposing a version of the For the People Act he believes ought to receive substantial bipartisan support – and strongly implying he’ll consider reforming the filibuster if his proposal does not receive the support he thinks it deserves. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, another filibuster holdout, has signaled a willingness to debate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, even as she defends it. That leaves open the possibility that she may, eventually, support some kind of reform.Even some Republicans have inched, however slowly and subtly, toward supporting voting rights. While the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski didn’t vote to break the filibuster against the For the People Act, she went out of her way to say that she supported certain key aspects of the bill. If the filibuster were no longer an impediment – if democracy advocates were trying to get to 51 rather than 61 – Murkowski’s vote would probably be in play. As recently as 4 January, when Republicans seemed likely to hold the Senate, the idea of a sweeping, bipartisan bill to end voter suppression and expand voting rights seemed wildly far-fetched. Today, it’s distinctly possible.Of course, just because something is possible does not make it likely. Democrats are racing against the clock. Campaign season will soon be upon us. Given the age of many in their caucus, there’s a chance Democrats’ Senate majority will be cut grimly short by a premature retirement or death. Manchin, Sinema and other lawmakers hoping to be prodded toward progress risk being too clever by half.But on the other hand, the slow-but-steady approach might just work – if activists continue to apply public pressure; if state-level GOP politicians continue to egregiously attack the vote; if public attention remains focused on the health of our democracy; if 50 Democrats reach a compromise that preserves the filibuster while allowing life-and-death legislation to pass. None of these things is certain to happen. But none of them is outside the realm of possibility. And all of them are more likely in the wake of this week’s vote.The path we’re on will never bring the sweeping, triumphant, day-one change that Democrats like me hoped for in the weeks before the election. But, in the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracy. And saving democracy would be more than good enough.
David Litt is a former Obama speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author, and writes the newsletter How Democracy Lives More

On 17 June, Joe Biden signed a bill turning Juneteenth, 19 June, into a federal holiday. Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved Black people after the formal end of the US civil war, began in Texas in 1866 and has long been observed by many Black Americans.The US government’s belated decision to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday is a testament to the impact of the current iteration of the perpetual movement for Black American liberation. Unfortunately, it may also be another step in the process to water down symbols of liberation: treating the brutalities of racism as a crime of the past instead of an ongoing project which both major political parties have helped helm. We should celebrate Juneteenth, while resisting attempts to co-opt its meaning and render it empty ceremony.Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day and Emancipation Day, is already a highly misunderstood holiday. It is often, understandably, confused with Abraham Lincoln’s issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of any enslaved Black people within the rebellious Confederate states. The proclamation was made official in 1863, at the height of the civil war, and explicitly established the war as one to end slavery. Enslaved Black people had long begun their own uprisings and escapes in the midst of the war, but the proclamation gave legal protections to the new freedmen. After Lincoln’s announcement, over 200,000 formerly enslaved people joined the Union army, playing crucial roles in the defeat of the main Confederate army on 9 April 1865. Despite the north’s burgeoning victory and the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery in the United States was far from over, and slave states that remained part of the Union did not have to acknowledge the humanity of their enslaved population.The remaining armies of the Confederacy and small rebel guerrilla groups continued to fight well after the loss of the Confederate capital and Gen Robert E Lee’s surrender in April. Slave-owning whites in fallen Confederate states fled west to Texas, bringing with them over 100,000 enslaved Black people in the process. It took the arrival of the Union army to begin the end of slavery in Texas. On 19 June 1865, Maj Gen Gordon Granger declared, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” While there have been many other dates for the holiday originally called Emancipation Day, 19 June became the dominant day of celebration.Despite Granger’s announcement, white slave owners fought to keep people in bondage, even killing Black people who fled for their freedom. Freedom had been declared in words, but it would take the military might of the Union army to enforce. This speaks volumes to how deeply the culture and economics of slavery were embedded in the United States, and to the kind of force necessary to uproot it. Of course this uprooting was in many ways incomplete; while the post-slavery Reconstruction era brought many political and economic freedoms to Black Americans in the south, much of that progress would be corrupted by the slavery-like programs of sharecropping and the establishment of the prison-industrial complex that persists today.This complicated history is what makes this holiday particularly susceptible to revisionism, in the way that highly politicized holidays in the US often are. In his proclamation to recognize Juneteenth, Biden wrote that the holiday is:
A day in which we remember the moral stain and terrible toll of slavery on our country – what I’ve long called America’s original sin. A long legacy of systemic racism, inequality, and inhumanity.
Yet the system of racial capitalism that allowed American slavery to exist still thrives today – with every Black person locked behind bars, every bullet fired by police officers into the bodies of Black children, and every Black soldier sent to murder and die to expand and maintain the country’s global system of economic domination. It is more than a little ironic that such a bill would be passed by a Congress rife with more or less open white supremacists, and signed by a president who only recently took pride in working with former segregationist politicians. For powerful American politicians to discuss Juneteenth while dismissing the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved people is profoundly hypocritical.Another holiday provides an instructive example: Mother’s Day can be traced to the work of Julia Ward Howe and Ann Reeves Jarvis, two peace activists who wanted to establish an anti-war holiday. Their work was carried on by Jarvis’s daughter, Anna Maria Jarvis, who lived to regret the holiday, which was rapidly commercialized and converted into another mechanism of corporate greed. Then there’s Martin Luther King Jr Day: a holiday that should be a call to action – a day in which people engage in civil disobedience or learn about the strategy and tactics of one of the most important radical organizers of the 20th century – has been sold as a day in which people must perform acts of service. While mostly well intended, that narrative muddles and dilutes King’s politics and feeds the American mythology that sporadic days of service, rather than the hard work of breaking down this system and building it anew, will somehow bring us closer to justice.We should be happy to popularize and celebrate Juneteenth. But we should celebrate it with the same fervor in which it was celebrated the summer of 2020, with protests, political education, and an understanding that the house of the slavemaster still stands, despite a fresh coat of paint. We must celebrate Juneteenth knowing the kind of force it took for enslaved Black people to attain emancipation – and the equivalent political force it may take to finally and absolutely uproot the American capitalist machine that seeks profit at the expense of Black freedom. More

Top Democrats in the House are investigating whether Trump justice department officials ran an unlawful shadow operation to target political enemies of the former president to hunt down leaks of classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter.The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is centering his investigation on the apparent violation of internal policies by the justice department, when it issued subpoenas against Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell in 2018.The use of subpoenas to secretly seize data from the two Democrats on the House intelligence committee – and fierce critics of Donald Trump – would ordinarily require authorization from the highest levels of the justice department and notably, the attorney general.But with the former Trump attorneys general Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions denying any knowledge of the subpoenas, Democrats are focused on whether rogue officials abused the vast power of the federal government to target Trump’s perceived political opponents, the source said.That kind of shadow operation – reminiscent of the shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that led to Trump’s first impeachment – would be significant because it could render the subpoenas unlawful, the source said.And if the subpoenas were issued without proper authorization from the attorney general level, it could also leave the officials involved in the effort open to prosecution for false operating with the imprimatur of law enforcement.The sharpening contours of the House judiciary committee’s investigation into the Trump justice department reflects Democrats’ determination to uncover potential politicization at the department.Current and former justice department officials have described the subpoenas as part of a fact-gathering effort that ensnared Schiff and Swalwell because they had been in contact with congressional aides suspected of leaking classified information.As the justice department investigated leaks, they obtained records of House intelligence committee staffers, as well as the records of their contacts. Schiff and Swalwell were not the target of the investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported.But Democrats are also concerned about the denials from Barr and Sessions and are set to look at whether they made publicly misleading representations to obfuscate the extent of their involvement.The two former attorneys general appeared to issue very carefully worded denials, the source said, which raised the prospect that they may have been at least aware of the leak inquiries into Schiff and Swalwell.Barr said in an interview with Politico that while he was attorney general, he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case”, while Sessions also told associates he was never briefed on the subpoenas.In examining the denials, Democrats could demand testimony from Barr and Sessions, as well as other Trump justice department officials. Nadler told the Guardian he would also consider deposing the former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.But the committee is not expected to issue subpoenas for their testimony for some time, in large part because Democrats and counsel on the committee are not yet certain what information they need to compel.The committee took its first step in trying to establish what testimony it needed for its investigation last week, when Nadler sent a lengthy document request to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and demanded a briefing before 25 June.Democrats on the House judiciary committee are not likely to receive a briefing until next month, the source said. But the House inquiry is sure to be the most potent investigation into the data seizure after Republicans vowed to stymie a parallel inquiry in the Senate.Although justice department investigations into leaks of classified information are routine, the use of subpoenas to seize data belonging to the accounts of sitting members of Congress with gag orders to keep their existence secret remain near-unprecedented.Justice department investigators gained access to, among others, the records of Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and now its chairman, Swalwell and the family members of lawmakers and aides. More