Dick Cheney, influential Republican vice president to George W. Bush, dies  —  Dick Cheney, America's most powerful modern vice president and chief architect of the “war on terror,” who helped lead the country into the ill-fated Iraq war on faulty assumptions, has died, according to a statement from his family.

‘People are tired’: Democrats splinter as shutdown nears record … To do that, they'll need to flip at least five more Democratic votes.  Double that number of senators met behind closed doors Monday night in a Capitol hideaway office.  —  Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) …

Heritage Foundation in revolt over Tucker Carlson defense after controversial Nick Fuentes interview: ‘Footsie with literal Nazis’  —  WASHINGTON — One of the largest conservative think tanks in Washington, DC, has been roiled by their president's embrace of Tucker Carlson …

60 Minutes Edits Donald Trump Telling Them 60 Minutes Should Edit Donald Trump Talking About How 60 Minutes Paid Him For Editing Kamala Harris  —  from the the-absurd-stupidity.-it-burns dept  —  60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect.

Trump and Musk tell New York to ‘vote’ Cuomo over Mamdani on eve of mayoral election … President Donald Trump on Monday night explicitly called on New York City residents to vote for Andrew Cuomo over Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral election.

Trump Admin Tells Judge It'll Disburse Half of SNAP Benefits for Eligible Households in November, With ‘Significant’ Delays  —  The Trump administration told a federal judge on Monday that it plans to use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) contingency fund to cover 50 percent …

Laura Loomer is now credentialed to cover the Pentagon  —  The far-right activist and former congressional candidate has repeatedly criticized defense officials on her website and social media accounts while boasting of her close ties to President Donald Trump.

The White House's Plan A is winning its Supreme Court tariff case.  It also has a Plan B. … “They're aware there are a number of different statutes they can use to recoup the tariff authority,” said Everett Eissenstat, former deputy director of the White House's National Economic Council during Trump's first term.

Medicare freeze beneficiary secretly donates $2.5 million to Trump ballroom  —  Earlier this year, Popular Information broke the news that Extremity Care - a company that sells bandages to Medicare for thousands of dollars per square inch - donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., President Trump's super PAC, on February 24.

As Condé Nast Folds Teen Vogue Into Vogue's Website, NewsGuild Condemns the Plan  —  The union, which reps staffers, says the move was “clearly designed” to blunt the journalism of the brand, which has leaned in to progressive politics.  —  The union representing writers at Teen Vogue …

Rep. Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia won't seek reelection, leaves seat for chief of staff in move panned as ‘coronation’  —  U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia will not seek reelection — leaving in place a succession plan for his chief of staff with a last-minute maneuver that critics likened to a coronation and a Chicago political machine play.

Lauren Boebert's racially charged Halloween costume sparks backlash  —  Boebert dressed as a Mexican woman and her boyfriend as an ICE agent.  —  Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., attended a Halloween party Friday dressed as a Mexican woman while her boyfriend Kyle Pearcy wore an ICE vest over military-style clothes.

The Big Smirk  —  The cruelty is the point, party edition  —  There's been plenty of scathing commentary about the lavish, Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party Donald Trump threw at Mar a Lago — a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass.

The Vacancy of the MAGA Mind  —  Introduction - The Performance of Conviction  —  There are few spectacles more revealing of the modern mind than the ritual of certainty.  The stage is crowded with the confident and the incurious, each declaiming his creed as if conviction itself were a credential.

The Battle in Virginia Over an Activist Who Protested Stephen Miller … Federal and state criminal investigations into a Virginia woman who distributed leaflets disclosing the home address of a White House official, Stephen Miller, have prompted a secret court fight over the balance between personal safety …

A Confederacy of Toddlers  —  The Trump administration is a regime of troubled children.  —  In 1949, the German historian and political philosopher Hannah Arendt visited Europe for the first time since fleeing to America during the war.  A year later, she wrote an analysis of what she called “the aftermath of Nazi rule.”

Report: Donors to Trump's White House ballroom have $279B in federal contracts  —  The list contains heavyweights in the tech, financial and defense sectors, including Google, Comcast and Lockheed Martin.  —  Most of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump's White House ballroom …

Slow rollout throttled Biden's big clean energy ambitions, former staffers say … “Three years after the first of [Biden-era] laws passed, only a handful of federally funded projects had broken ground,” the report said.  “This meant the political theory animating the administration's approach …

The Workers Left Out of Trump's Drug-Manufacturing Renaissance  —  President Trump wants pharmaceutical production to return to the United States.  A shuttered factory in Louisiana shows how hard that will be for generic medicines.  —  This year, as President Trump threatened tariffs …