On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Hurricane Beryl made landfall on the Texas coast early Monday. Lawmakers return for a pivotal week as Democrats sweat over President Joe Biden. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes talks about those working to bring civility back to politics. A left-wing alliance is projected to win the most seats in France's parliamentary elections, as the far-right underperforms. USA TODAY National Reporter Lauren Villagran explains what bridal shops can tell us about the economy.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, July 8th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Hurricane Beryl has made landfall along the Texas coast. Plus, Democratic lawmakers return this week with more questions than answers surrounding President Joe Biden. And what can bridal shops tell us about the US economy?

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Hurricane Beryl made landfall along the Texas coast as a Category 1 storm early this morning. By the time it made landfall near Matagorda, winds had increased to 80 miles an hour, according to the National Hurricane Center. Minutes after landfall, the National Weather Service in Houston issued a tornado warning for several locations, and this was the hurricane's third landfall in eight days. In the storm's path, multiple local authorities told people to evacuate, and school districts along the Texas Gulf Coast, including Houston's, said they would be closed, while several major ports were also closed. Beryl made landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Friday morning after it hit the Windward Islands and Jamaica earlier in the week. It's killed at least 11 people in its path.

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Capitol Hill is headed for a pivotal week with the trajectory of the 2024 presidential campaign on the line. Lawmakers return from their 4th of July holiday recess with Democrats facing mounting questions about whether they'll ban together and urge President Joe Biden to bow out of the presidential race amid concerns the 81-year-old incumbent is not up to the job of serving four more years. Biden continues to blame a minor illness for his poor performance in the recent debate with presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and says that he has no intention of giving up his spot on top of the Democratic ticket. There's just over a month to go before the Democratic Invention in Chicago, and that ticking clock will be especially felt in Washington this week. Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats who so far have been hedging in public over what they think Biden should do, will now be seeing their own colleagues face-to-face in the nation's capital. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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A number of candidates, political experts, and ethical leaders are pushing for a return to civility in politics. I spoke with USA TODAY National correspondent Trevor Hughes about whether it's time to disagree better.

Trevor, thanks for hopping on.

Trevor Hughes:

Hey. Good to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Trevor, let's just start with this. I think folks paying attention are aware to some extent, but just how uncivil have politics gotten in recent years?

Trevor Hughes:

Well, I'm a reporter and I cover politics, so I'm maybe a little bit of an outlier, but I get a heck of a lot of press releases and text messages from the campaigns all day every day. And boy, some of the language they use, it's pretty strong. I mean, it goes beyond salty, it's beyond coarse, and in many cases it feels a little bit like a call to violence sometimes, and a lot of Americans are tired of it. We see that in polls. We see that in interviews. People are frustrated by the language that is being used in politics today, but at the same time, politicians keep getting elected saying those things. So that's where the conflict lies.

Taylor Wilson:

Well, on that note, I mean, how do today's politics really reward extremism?

Trevor Hughes:

A lot of this, interestingly enough, goes back to gerrymandered House districts in Congress. So you have primary elections, and a lot of this, to be fair, a lot of this comes down to the Republican side. This is what experts tell me over and over, is that Republicans have really found that pushing each other further and further right really is a way to win elections in these gerrymandered House districts.

Taylor Wilson:

Can you walk us through how American politics really do have this history of incivility? Or as you put it in the piece, I like this phrasing, Trevor, they've often been rough and tumbled.

Trevor Hughes:

To be fair, we are a country founded in rebellion. The language that we used in the Declaration of Independence, when we look at it today, it doesn't necessarily sound that stark, but this was us going against the most powerful empire in history. And so we have a long history of being abrupt, being violent, frankly. President Lincoln was assassinated by a confederate sympathizer. Richard Nixon got in trouble for using money to break into the offices of his political opponents. I mean, this is not new, but this constant echo chamber that's driven by social media, and in many cases by cable television that replays soundbite after soundbite after soundbite, that is new.

Taylor Wilson:

So, some from the political world are pushing for a return to civility. Who are some of the figures you write about in the piece, and what are they doing?

Trevor Hughes:

I started writing this in part because the Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, he has this initiative called Disagree Better. It's a sentiment you actually hear around the west fairly often, which is, "We can disagree without being disagreeable." That was something that Senator Mark Udall used to say here in Colorado.

Taylor Wilson:

So Trevor, one political expert you spoke with said there's always a concern people will use polite language to maintain the status quo. That was interesting to me. Could you talk through that a bit, and what does he mean by that?

Trevor Hughes:

Martin Luther King, when he wrote the famous letter from the Birmingham Jail actually addressed this very specifically, which was that a group of white clergymen wrote to him and said, "Hey, we are on your side. We get what you're saying, but do you have to break the law to do it? Do you have to be so confrontational to do it?" He wrote back and said, "This is the problem, especially with a lot of white people, is that they are more interested in maintaining stability than they are reaching justice." And that's a really important thing. Do we want someone who is polite but takes away our rights, or do we want that really strong vicious fighter who stands up and says, "No, this is not who we are. This is not what we stand for, and I'm not going to let that happen in this country."

Taylor Wilson:

So Trevor, going forward, obviously we're in an election year. What's next here, and are experts optimistic that we can disagree better?

Trevor Hughes:

Well, one expert I talked to has been working in this space for 20 years, and he likes to say they've been a complete failure. That's not actually true, and there is a small but growing effort to push back against this language, this rhetoric. In Utah, for instance, there's a political action committee that is supporting candidates that agree to abide by certain norms when it comes to campaigning. But I think the telling will be in the primary elections and the general election in this country. As one expert said to me, "If Donald Trump wins the election again, we might as well just give up on this." But then he said, "But of course, we should never give up on trying to be better people."

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thanks, Trevor.

Trevor Hughes:

You bet.

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Taylor Wilson:

An alliance of left-wing parties was projected to win the most seats in France's parliamentary elections, according to exit polls yesterday. That marks a surprise defeat for Marine Le Pen's National Rally Party, as voters opposed to her far-right policies appeared to answer calls from other groups to block her party from power. French voters also appeared to punish President Emmanuel Macron's Centrist Party in the midst of the unexpected results, though not as much as pre-vote polls and political experts expected. The leftist New Popular Front, or NFP, came out as the dominant force in the National Assembly after yesterday's election. But with no single group winning a working majority, the NFP now could form a minority government or the building of a broad coalition.

Whatever the result, Macron's job as President is not in jeopardy. France splits its political executive role between President and Prime Minister, with the former traditionally overseeing foreign policy and defense, and the latter more domestically-focused. The election was called by Macron after his party performed poorly in European Union elections last month.

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Spending at bridal shops can tell us a lot about the US economy as a whole. I spoke with USA TODAY National reporter Lauren Villagran to learn more.

Lauren, thanks for hopping on.

Lauren Villagran:

Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So you spoke with a bride-to-be in Alabama who's working through some pretty exorbitant prices in this climate. What's her experience been like, and what solutions has she found?

Lauren Villagran:

Yeah, Taylor. So this story is part of a series that USA TODAY has, looking at how regular Americans are dealing with what could really be described as a weird economy. A lot of folks have work, but inflation is still hurting people across the spectrum, and brides are no different. So we visited a Fairhope, Alabama bridal shop where brides-to-be were coming in for tailoring and to shop for dresses. And we met with Kimberly Waldrop, who is a young bride, a third grade school teacher trying to create the wedding of her dreams on a budget.

Taylor Wilson:

So when it comes to bridal and wedding spending writ large, really, how big of a business is this and how has it been trending in recent years?

Lauren Villagran:

It's a huge business, one that took a huge hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, as listeners could imagine. Parties, especially weddings, nearly ground to a halt or were done in alternative settings like living rooms or backyards. And Katie Yellin, the owner of Bliss Bridal in Fairhope, Alabama, with locations also in Mississippi and Louisiana, said in her words, "That brides are back and forth and they're looking at more ornate gowns, bigger gowns, the kind of thing that you'd wear to a wedding with a lot of people in attendance." But as Kimberly Waldrop noted for us, prices have gone up. The average price of a wedding dress went up, according to The Knot's Annual Wedding Survey, from about $1,600 a few years ago to well over $2,000 today. And that's just the average price.

Taylor Wilson:

So Lauren, what can bridal spending tell us about the economy on the whole, right now?

Lauren Villagran:

Well, bridal spending is up, and that does show that couples in love do see enough economic strength in their own lives that they're willing to spend more on a larger wedding party and celebration. Brides, as I said, are spending more money on their wedding gowns and choosing gowns that are bigger and flashier than they have in recent years. It's interesting, the business as a model really has taken a hit in that marriages are way down from where they were 20 or 30 years ago, but the industry has sort of right-sized. You've seen some of the big box stores like Dave's Bridal, that store is going through a painful bankruptcy. But those mom and pop type shops, like the one that Katie Yellin owns in Fairhope, Alabama that's providing a real experience for brides, are optimistic for the future.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Lauren Villagran, great insight for us as always. Thank you, Lauren.

Lauren Villagran:

Thank you, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

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