Tuesday, November 4, 2025

November 4, 2025

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Former Vice President Dick Cheney dead at 84 . . . Dick Cheney, a giant of Republican politics who was considered one of the most powerful vice presidents in US history, has died, his family announced early Tuesday. He was 84. Cheney, who served two terms as vice president under former President George W. Bush — including during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — died overnight "due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease," his family said in a statement. "His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed," the Cheneys said. New York Post

Politics

Mamdani leans into Sarsour support, Muslim faith & 'Islamophobia' claims in campaign finale . . . Mamdani would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City, and he is rallying his fellow New York Muslims to help make that happen. At the end of the day, Mamdani is playing that "race card" — and hard. One of Mamdani's final rallies in New York City centered on his Islamic identity as he rallied Muslim voters and condemned the alleged "Islamophobia" against him, while his campaign thanked a group closely linked both to the NYC mayoral hopeful and to controversial Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. Just the News

Five races to watch

Trump's shadow hangs over Virginia as Republicans try to win without him . . . The distance is partly strategic in a state where Trump remains unpopular and Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, are courting swing voters wary of his brand. Still, the tension between them lingers from 2022, when Earle-Sears questioned his leadership after Republicans' midterm losses, saying "a real leader knows when they have become a liability." Trump shot back, calling her "a phony" and saying he had "never felt good" about her. Washington Examiner

Trump tells New York 'you must vote' for Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani — and ditch Curtis Sliwa

California voters take up Democrats' push for new congressional maps that could shape House control . . . he national battle to control the U.S. House shifts to California on Tuesday as voters consider a Democratic proposal that could erase as many as five Republican districts and blunt President Donald Trump's moves to safeguard his party's lock on Washington power. The outcome will reverberate into next year's midterm elections and beyond, with Democrats hoping a victory will set the stage for the party to regain control of the House in 2026. Associated Press

Comey Boomerang: Ex-director confronted with personal emails, notes after playing victim card . . . James Comey played the victim card in fighting his indictment on charges of misleading Congress, but that strategy boomeranged when prosecutors and his old agency released an avalanche of new evidence showing the ex-FBI director hoped to please Hillary Clinton, cheered on media leaks he claimed he did not sanction, and wrote emails and notes that directly conflict with his past congressional testimony. Just the News

Kash Patel found some burn bags that weren't quite burned.

Inside Rockridge, the billionaire network shaping MAGA's post-Trump future . . . An early meeting him 2019 included Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and JD Vance, then an investor who had written a best-selling memoir, hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer, Tucker Carlson, Arizona insurance entrepreneur Chris Buskirk, and economist Oren Cass. With significant funding from tech leaders, Rockbridge aims to equip MAGA to outlive Trump. The group has no website or public-facing entity, but it has assembled pollsters, data crunchers, online advertisers and even a documentary film arm. It is gearing up to deploy its arsenal in the 2026 midterms and in the 2028 presidential contest, when many Rockbridge members hope Vance will be the nominee. Washington Post

Trump Administration Finds Path to Keep SNAP Partially Funded . . . The Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the now 34-day shutdown. More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP to pay for groceries. But two federal judges ruled it was unlawful to freeze SNAP payments. In response, Patrick Penn, the USDA official who oversees SNAP, told a Rhode Island judge that the Trump administration will use an emergency fund of $4.65 billion to cover about half the normal benefits for November. Daily Signal

George Clooney: Harris presidential candidacy 'a mistake'

Ya think?

Lawmakers hopeful Election Day will be turning point in the shutdown fight . . . Some Democrats say a wide margin of victory could push Republicans to negotiate on their health care demands. Republicans, meanwhile, are largely blaming Democrats for looking to the elections as an inflection point, while also hoping a closer-than-expected results could convince Democrats that voters aren't behind them and push them to vote "yes" on a stopgap spending bill. The Hill

I've also heard talk, which makes sense, that Democrats wanted to prolong the shutdown to keep Northern Virginia voters - many of whom work in the federal government in Washington - angry and at home to vote.

Pelosi: Trump Is a 'Vile Creature, He's the 'Worst Thing on the Face of the Earth' . . . Monday on CNN's "The Lead," Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called President Donald Trump "the worst thing on the face of the Earth." Pelosi said, "He's just a vile creature. The worst thing on the face of the Earth. But anyway." Reporter Elex Michaelson asked, "You think he's the worst thing on the face of the Earth?Pelosi said, "I do, yeah. I do." Michaelson said, "Why is that?" Pelosi said, "Because he's the president of the United States, and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States. Breitbart

Culture

Teammates Publicly Turn On Player Who Wants To Keep Men Out Of Women's Soccer . . . The captains on Angel City Football Club, a professional soccer team, have labeled their teammate Elizabeth Eddy racist and transphobic after the player called in an op-ed for stricter gender guidelines in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Sarah Gorden and Angelica Anderson claim the entire Angel City FC is disgusted with Eddy's op-ed. The piece, published in the New York Post on October 27, stated that women should be the only players competing in the NWSL in order to grow and protect the league. Daily Wire

International

Israel rocked by scandal as top military lawyer resigns, goes missing, is found and thrown into jail . . . The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi's explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison. The video shows part of an assault in which Israeli soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee. By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel's hard-line political leaders. Associated Press

Money

Big Tesla investor will vote against Musk's massive pay package . . . Norway's sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla's biggest investors, said Tuesday that it will vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay CEO Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion over a decade. "While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk's visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation," said Norges Bank Investment Management. Associated Press

America's electric car market runs out of juice with sales plunging as much as 80% . . . The electric car market looks like it ran out of juice last month. After the federal $7,500 EV tax credit expired at the end of September, sales of battery-powered cars fell off a cliff. Car companies with electric vehicles all posted massive drops in October — the first full month without the incentive that had helped prop up demand for more than a decade. President Donald Trump signed the Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, ending the program effective September 30. Daily Mail

You should also know

Diane Ladd, 3-time Oscar nominee, dies at 89 . . . Diane Ladd, a three-time Academy Award nominee and actor of rare timing and intensity whose roles ranged from the brash waitress in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" to the scheming parent in "Wild at Heart," has died at 89. Ladd's death was announced Monday by daughter Laura Dern, who issued a statement saying her mother and occasional co-star had died at her home in Ojai, California, with Dern at her side. Dern, who called Ladd her "amazing hero" and "profound gift of a mother,′ did not immediately cite a cause of death. Associated Press

Guilty Pleasures

She's always so eloquent. Second worst must be her husband Paul, who went to jail for drunk driving and has faced multiple allegations of insiders trading.

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