WASHINGTON — One of the most vexing questions about the dysfunction of Congress is why lawmakers cannot find common ground on big issues facing the country when convincing data suggests there is broad public consensus about what should be done.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox disagree on many issues but they were united Saturday in calling for less bitterness in politics and more bipartisanship.

“Politics has gotten too personally bitter,” said Biden, who has practiced politics since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. “It’s just not like it was.” The Democratic president commented while delivering a toast to the nation’s governors and their spouses at a black-tie White House dinner in their honor.

When Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, agreed to film an advertisement for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s “Disagree Better” initiative, he knew just who he would ask.

It was a Republican from the western side of his state, Mayor Jack Coburn of Lonaconing, who Moore had visited shortly after assuming the governorship. The town was having a water crisis at the time.

A headline story one day, out of sight the next – and somehow never far away. The mass shooting is a mostly American phenomenon. Most media coverage falls into a pattern of lament, debate, and repeat. 

Patrik Jonsson, a Georgia-based staff writer for the Monitor, often writes on gun culture and gun violence. He was at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, just after the deadly 2012 shooting there. 

After the Oct. 25 shootings in Lewiston, Maine, Patrik followed up on reporting by colleague Simon Montlake with a step-back story.

As world leaders feted Qatar for brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas last week, its negotiators doubled down on their mediation efforts, fearful the ceasefire was about to collapse before it started.

As the U.S. gears up for its next presidential election in 2024, the country needs a “strong middle” political ground and bipartisan cooperation, according to Ray Dalio, founder of investment company Bridgewater.

“If you bring the sides together in a bipartisan way, and you create a strong middle, that’s what the country needs in order to be healthy, I believe,” Dalio said Tuesday in conversation with CNBC’s Dan Murphy on stage at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

House Republican leaders are moving to pass a two-step stopgap government funding bill under a fast-track process that will require support from Democrats, an attempt to work around GOP opposition that threatened to tank the bill on a procedural vote.

It is one of the first major decisions of Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) tenure — and the same move that helped trigger a motion to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). It is also sure to enrage the Republican conference’s right flank.

Samara Minkin was already feeling rattled when she saw a Facebook post from one of her children’s former teachers seven days after Hamas killed or kidnapped more than 1,600 people in Israel.

“The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED,” Sanidia Oliver, 37, wrote. “I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die.”

It’s well understood that America is intensely divided today and that our divisions have worsened over time. But when did politics turn into an “us-vs-them” war? After all, America has had two major political parties for most of its history. Hard-fought elections, highly charged disagreements, and even political violence are nothing new. So, is the division we feel today exaggerated and should we just get used to it?

Since the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded constitutional protection of abortion a year ago, every state ballot measure affirming the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions has passed. Those states now include Ohio. Voters there rejected a proposal last night intended to make it harder to enshrine social issues like abortion in the state’s constitution.