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Another recent paper suggested that American party leaders have exerted increasing control over the voting choices of their peers in Congress.Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Wednesday, July 7. The authors found that other Western countries where polarisation increased also spent relatively little on public-service television (allowing cable services to dominate) and experienced rapid growth in the share of the population that is not white. An academic paper published last year noted that AmericansвЂ™ animosity towards opposition voters began rising in the early 1990s.

Long-term cultural and political trends have been pushing the parties further apart. The gap in partisan evaluations of the president is not really Mr BidenвЂ™s fault he has only just begun his job. Polling conducted for The Economist by YouGov also reveals that Mr BidenвЂ™s gap is larger than Mr TrumpвЂ™s was at the end of his divisive presidency. This is even wider than the 76 points faced by Donald Trump at the start of his presidency (see chart). In a poll released February 4th, Gallup found that 98% of Democrats and only 11% of Republicans approved of Mr Biden, a gulf of 87 points. In February 1953, 84% of self-identified Republicans and 60% of Democrats approved of the newly inaugurated Dwight Eisenhower-a difference of 24 percentage points. The gap between each partyвЂ™s approval ratings for Mr Biden is the largest ever recorded for an incoming president. Historical polling by Gallup shows that the deck is stacked against him from the start. That bodes ill for Mr BidenвЂ™s less popular policies. The two sides are at loggerheads about something that most Americans favour: handing out large cheques. (Mr McConnell and other Republicans used the same strategy to pass tax cuts in 2017.)

Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has decried it as вЂњa totally partisan pathвЂќ. Republicans complain that Mr Biden has immediately broken his promise to compromise with them. This would avoid a filibuster, which requires 60 to be overcome. Democrats may use a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation, under which budget bills can pass with 51 votes.

Trumps animosity shows sign letting