Senator Chris Murphy’s incisive new book on the cultural consequences of hyper-capitalism — and how to revive the common good
By Anand Giridharadas
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, set out some time ago on an unlikely project: to diagnose America’s ailments beyond the usual-suspect answers.
Politicians are paid to enact policies. So typically when they describe what’s wrong, they speak of policies that got us into our messes and policies to get us out.
Murphy’s inquiry took him somewhere else — beyond the familiar territory of prescription-drug prices and block-grant funding, into the substrate of our inner life.
What he found in his interactions with constituents and conversations with scholars and reading was a spiritual rot, a death of relationship, a connection recession.
To be clear, in his analysis and that of others, the causes of much of this affliction are very much political, very much in the realm of policy. But what Murphy’s thinking and now writing make clear is that what happens in politics and policy doesn’t stay there. It ultimately trickles down into our relationships, our marriages, our stress hormones, our childhoods, our neighborhood vibes, our hangouts, our conversations with the barista, our block parties, our friendships.
This week Senator Murphy pushed “Crisis of the Common Good,” a book-length investigation of how capitalism and other forces in American life have cut into our civic dance with each other and wormed their way into every last fiber of our culture.
It is a project I’m fascinated by, because it involves someone in a position of political power widening the scope of inquiry to ask how the things he works on affect other things not typically regarded as political.
So I was thrilled to have this conversation with the senator today. We talked about:
— Why he thinks America’s real problem is much deeper than Trump
— How private equity is coming between married couples
— Whether Republicans or Democrats will be first to pull off a potential political realignment that is there for the taking
— Whether Bernie Sanders was right all along (and where he fell short)
— Why the Democratic Party refuses to introspect
— And whether he will run for president (cameo: the other presidential contenders who have been texting him this week
‘It’s about loneliness, really. It was the total opposite of that “It’s Friday night, let’s have sex” macho mentality that was in most rock music at the time’
Tom Greenhalgh, guitar
Most of the people who started the Mekons and Gang of Four were on the same fine art course at Leeds University. In December 1976 we went to see the Anarchy tour at the nearby polytechnic. I liked the Sex Pistols but the Clash, in their paint-spattered clothes, sounded particularly great. It was the first time I saw a band and thought: “That could be me up there.”
Soon afterwards, Jon King and Andy Gill started Gang of Four, rehearsing at the university’s film society, and whenever they took a break, we started messing around on their equipment. At our first gig – well, half a gig really – we didn’t have a rhythm section so Andy played drums. Then after one and a half gigs Bob Last from the Fast Product label said he wanted to do something with us. We told him, “You should record Gang of Four, not us” – which he would do later. But he was adamant: “You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
We recorded our first single, Never Been in a Riot, on a two-track tape recorder in a living room, but for Where Were You? Bob put us in Spaceward in Cambridge, a proper studio getting a reputation for recording unconventional stuff. Where Were You? came together very quickly in rehearsal. Kevin Lycett strummed two chords, I played the choppy counter-melody and Jon came in on drums. Mark White wrote the lyrics, Andy Corrigan sang them, and that was it.
John Peel played it a lot and it sold more than 27,000 copies straight away. It was a huge amount for an independent label, but we certainly didn’t think we were at the forefront of postpunk DIY culture, or that we’d be playing the song live almost 50 years later. It started to become kind of a classic after David Bowie played it on a Radio 1 programme called Star Special and compared us to the young Marc Bolan. Bowie comparing us to T Rex? You couldn’t get any better, really.
Jon Langford, drums
I missed the first gig because I’d gone home to Wales for the weekend, but legend has it they had a sofa with a spaceship drawn on it and were called Dan Dare and the Mekons. After Tony Parsons in the NME said the name was shit, we became the Mekons. They wanted me in the group because I had a drum kit. Where Were You? was probably written in the first three days of the band’s existence. We thought we had funnier, crazier and more elaborate songs, so it was going to be the B-side, but when we slowed it down it had more of a groove and really clicked.
Spaceward studio had great old amplifiers, so Kevin spent a lot of time getting the first chord to sound like a death knell. For the drum roll, the soundman had to stand next to me to slow me down, so we played it over and over again until I was less eager to speed up. It’s a freakishly good performance from us, considering, and a really good cut. It jumps out of the speakers.
Mark’s lyrics were very influenced by Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley’s confessional love songs. Where Were You? is about loneliness, really. “I was buying you a drink, where were you?” Then he goes back to his flat and cries. We’ve always had women in the Mekons – Mary Jenner, a classically trained violinist, played bass on Where Were You? – and feminism was important to us. Where Were You? was the total opposite of that “It’s Friday night, let’s shag” macho mentality that was in most rock music at the time.
For the sleeve, I cut up an old Gary Glitter annual: the gold discs on the cover are Glitter’s, not ours, but wisely enough I Tipp-Exed his name out. The gold discs were meant to be ironic – we certainly weren’t celebrating our millions of sales! But after it was single of the week in all the music papers and became our best selling record, the joke was on us.
About 10 years ago, we received a fairly substantial amount of money after it was used in an advert for Honda’s Acura cars. Mark said: “The only reason we’ve got this is because you guys [the current lineup including Greenhalgh and Langford] have kept playing it.” And so the original lineup shared some of the money with the current band. It was really nice because it linked everyone together: Merry Christmas from Where Were You? Horrorble, a dub version of the Mekons’ album Horror, is released on 5 June
Yesterday the Department of Justice announced it is creating a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate what it calls victims of the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden. Acting attorney general Todd Blanche said the fund was “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
First of all, the insistence of Trump cronies that the Department of Justice and federal judges “weaponized” the law against them under former president Joe Biden—or under former president Barack Obama—is another example of regime officials blaming others for what they, themselves, are doing as Trump’s appointees try to manufacture criminal cases against those Trump considers his enemies. Trump’s attacks on the justice system are designed to convince his followers that he hasn’t really committed the crimes for which he has been indicted, and sometimes convicted, and they help to undermine faith in the rule of law, weakening our democracy.
Second of all, though, what this agreement is not, is a settlement of Trump’s case against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), although that term is being widely used to describe it. Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for damages after a contractor leaked his tax information—along with that of more than 400,000 other taxpayers—during his own first term after it became clear that the judge to whom the case was assigned seemed inclined to say that the case could not move forward because Trump could not be in charge of both sides of the suit.
The recognition that this is not a legal settlement is important. The Trump administration maintains it is doing what the Obama administration did in establishing a compensation fund to settle the case of Keepseagle v. Vilsack, when the Department of Justice established a $760 million fund as a settlement of a long-running class action suit charging that the Department of Agriculture had systematically discriminated against Indigenous farmers and ranchers.
Unlike the Keepseagle settlement, though, Trump’s fund is not part of a legal settlement.
In her order dismissing the suit, Judge Kathleen Williams noted that because Trump’s dropping of the suit “does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement, there is no settlement of record. Additionally, Defendants—federal agencies represented by the Department of Justice, which has an independent obligation to uphold the ‘public’s strong interest in knowing about the conduct of its Government and expenditure of its resources’ and the ‘fair administration of justice,’ neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”
Judge Williams was not alone in her skepticism about the deal. Andrew Duehren of the New York Times reported today that career lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service thought the agency should fight Trump’s suit, noting that the statute of limitations for such a suit had run out, the Justice Department has previously taken the position that people cannot sue the IRS for the actions of a contractor, and the Justice Department settled a similar case from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin with a public apology rather than a monetary payoff.
The document that purports to be a “settlement” has the words “settlement agreement” written in capital letters across the top of it, but the important word is “agreement.” It is not the settlement of a legal case: Trump dropped the case when it looked like the judge would throw it out.
It is simply an agreement between Trump and his own appointees at the Department of Justice.
And what an agreement it is. It says that Trump and his older sons who also brought (and dropped) the suit “will receive a formal apology from the United States, but will not receive any monetary payment or damages of any kind.” The agreement sets up a fund made up of five people, four of whom Trump’s hand-picked attorney general will choose. The fifth will be chosen “in consultation with congressional leadership,” but Trump can remove any one of them “without cause.”
That group has complete say over how it decides to grant or deny claims, but what it does will be confidential, overseen only by the Department of Justice. The fund ends in December 2028, just after the 2028 presidential election. If all the money isn’t spent by then, Trump gets to decide to which federal account it goes.
In essence then, the settlement gives Trump full control over almost $2 billion of taxpayer money to spend however he wants, without oversight. The Department of Justice document establishing the fund declares that “[o]nce the funds are deposited into the Designated Account, the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.”
On the agreement, the signature of the lawyer representing the United States is not that of acting attorney general Todd Blanche, but rather that of Stanley E. Woodward Jr., who has been a key defense attorney for people in Trump’s orbit accused of committing crimes, including Kash Patel, now FBI director; Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro; and Walt Nauta, the Trump aide indicted for his actions surrounding Trump’s retention of classified documents. Woodward also has represented a number of those charged with crimes relating to the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
With the announcement of the agreement, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer, Brian Morrissey, resigned.
The agreement says the amount dedicated to the fund “does not represent the value of any current claim by [Trump], but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims” and thus “is not taxable income” for the Trumps, “who receive no economic benefit” from the agreement. But the number the Justice Department released for the establishment of the fund puts the lie to the idea the number was random. It is $1.776 billion, linking the fund directly to the attempt of Trump and his cronies to destroy American democracy and begin it again, on their terms.
Famously, on January 6, 2021, newly-elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted, “Today is 1776.” During the attack, the rioters shouted “1776.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Greg Sargent of The New Republic that Trump and his loyalists “are figuring out a way to refund the January 6 militia, presumably to get them ready for the next round of battle.”
As political scientist Jonathan Ladd noted, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits compensation for those who engaged in insurrection. It says that “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States…, but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.” In his comments to Sargent, Raskin noted that if the fund pays off the January 6 rioters, the government will be doing precisely that: “using federal taxpayer dollars to compensate people who participated in insurrection.”
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today, facing senators for the first time since taking over for fired attorney general Pam Bondi. He refused to rule out paying money to rioters who had attacked police officers.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) noted that “an individual who after being pardoned by the president went on to molest two children, and that person actually tried to buy the silence of these children by saying that he would pay them some of the funds that he was hoping to get from your slush fund. Can you commit to making the rule so that that person is not eligible for a payout under this fund?” Blanche accused Van Hollen of “obviously lying” because no such fund existed until yesterday.
But, in fact, administration officials have talked about paying off the January 6 rioters since at least December 2024, and in June 2025 the Justice Department paid close to $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, killed by police as she tried to break into the House of Representatives.
Apparently based on those signals, Florida’s Andrew Paul Johnson, a January 6 rioter pardoned by Trump, was convicted earlier this year of sexually abusing two twelve-year-olds and trying to buy their silence by saying he would share some of the millions of dollars in restitution money he expected the Trump administration would pay him for his January 6 case. Van Hollen went on to read a series of news stories reporting that January 6 rioters expected payments.
Since Trump’s blanket pardon of nearly 1,600 of those convicted of crimes related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many of them have been rearrested for crimes. At the time of Johnson’s sentencing, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that Trump’s support has made the January 6 rioters “think they’re untouchable.”
Then, today, the plot got even thicker.
A document—this time signed by Blanche himself—amended the previous agreement to add: “The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES” Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization, “and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims” that, as of yesterday, “have been or could have been asserted” by the IRS against them or “related or affiliated individuals” or companies. In other words, Blanche is asserting a blanket promise to stop all IRS audits of Trump’s taxes and not to prosecute any crimes Trump, his family, his businesses, or his associates might have committed that crossed the IRS.
In 2024, Russ Buettner and Paul Kiel reported in the New York Times that Trump had been double-dipping his tax breaks for years. In her Civil Discourse, legal analyst Joyce White Vance called the document from the Department of Justice “a pardon on steroids.”
Vance commented that “[t]he optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal.” It’s probably worth remembering that, after years of pursuing the gangster Al Capone, the government finally managed to convict him of tax evasion. It appears Blanche and Trump’s loyalists are trying to make sure that can’t happen again, declaring any such investigations the “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
Holly Baxter of The Independent reported today that in the midst of all the chaos—including his war on Iran and rising fuel and food prices—Trump called a sudden, urgent press conference today as Blanche was testifying. But what was on his mind was not Iran, or prices, or his corrupt agreement with the Department of Justice. He wanted to talk about his ballroom.
Trump’s comments in that press conference have invited commentary suggesting he is turning the White House into a fortress. Describing the ballroom, he said: “Between the drone-proofing, the missile-proofing, we have ah, and the drone capacity upstairs, we can have all sorts of military—I hate to use the word snipers—but we have great sniper capacity. It’s built for our snipers, not enemy’s snipers, our snipers. And because of the height we get a very clear view of everything all over Washington.”
Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
