We begin with a clip from New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech in Brooklyn, New York, on November 4, 2025, one of five critical victories for Democrats that day.

Representative Mikie Sherrill campaigning in Morristown, NJ, October 14, 2025. Photo credit: Ben Von Klemperer/Shutterstock

News Summary:

* On Election Day, former Vice President Dick Cheney died in Northern Virginia at 84 from pneumonia, cardiac and vascular disease. The ultimate Washington insider, CNN characterized him as a “polarizing Washington power player” and The New York Times as “a singular figure: more powerful and less ambitious for higher office than any vice president in modern times.” The architect of the Bush Administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which may have laid the ground for the MAGA movement, he died a Republican in exile, having cast his last presidential vote for Kamala Harris.

* On Wednesday, the government shutdown became the longest in history: the previous record was set in Donald Trump’s first term. On Election Day, Trump—now under court order to restore SNAP benefits that were suspended this week—said he would partially restore them but that didn’t seem to reassure voters. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has declined to suspend the filibuster to reopen the government. Twelve Senate Democrats have signaled they are ready to talk in exchange for a vote on restoring healthcare subsidies, but the Trump administration has decided to apply more pressure by reducing flights to 40 major airports. A poll released on Monday shows that 52% of voters hold the Republicans responsible for the shutdown; only 42% blame Democrats.

* Also on Wednesday, SCOTUS heard arguments in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, a case filed by small businesses and states that challenges President Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The case is broadly understood as a test for the conservative majority as to whether they will support the authority of Congress, as well as the power of the judiciary over constitutional interpretation. Both conservative and liberal judges were skeptical about the Trump administration’s case, both in its specifics and in its potentially precedent setting power to allow presidents to veto legislation retroactively. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claims that if the tariffs are overturned, the government may have to return as much as $750 billion in revenue.

Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

On May 5, 2025, supporters of Representative Abigail Spanberger link their vote for governor to Donald Trump’s corruption. Photo credit: The Old Major/Shutterstock

Our focus: Democrats ran the table on Tuesday night. Why? And what does it mean looking forward to 2026?

* Democrats won four major contests last night, as well as a slew of minor races. While Republicans are making excuses, many Democrats saw the outcome as a combination of great campaigning, great candidates and buyer’s remorse. Trump blamed the shutdown; Fox News’s Brett Baier thinks that Trump’s policies are alienating voters. In other words, Trump wasn’t on the ballot—but he was on the ballot.

* Turnout in some places was historic, and appears to have won back some Trump voters—particularly Latinos. In New York City, over 2 million people voted by mail or in-person, the most since Republican John Lindsey defeated Abe Beame in 1965.

* New York City: it took less than 30 minutes to declare 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York: he will be the first Muslim mayor of the city, and defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo; Republican Curtis Sliwa’s voters left him in the dust. Here are the numbers; here is the road ahead. And breaking: former FTC Chair Lina Kahn is co-chairing the all-woman Mamdani transition team.

* As expected, Abigail Spanberger will be the next governor of Virginia, and the first woman governor. Less predictably, Democrats ran the table, expanding representation in the House of Delegates, winning the Lieutenant Governor’s position (Ghazala Hashimi will be the first Muslim and first Indian American to win statewide office in Virginia); and Jay Jones, pilloried for sending texts that were at worst violent and at best in execrable taste, will be the next Attorney General.

* Again, less predictably, Mikie Sherrill will be the next governor of New Jersey. In a race that was supposed to come down to the wire, she beat Jack Ciaterrelli by a blistering 13 points. Former Governor Jim McGreevey goes to a December 2 runoff with City Councilman James Solomon.

* Pennsylvania voted by 23 points to retain three Democratic justices on the state Supreme Court, ensuring that the court will stay out of Republican hands through the 2028 general election.

* Californians turned out in droves to approve the temporary Congressional redistricting proposed by Gavin Newsome to counter redistricting in Texas. In a surprise move, Kansas Republicans just turned back an effort to redistrict their state.

* In Maine, voters rejected a shorter early voting period and a photo i.d. requirement, and approved a red-flag gun control law.

* Colorado voters approved a tax on high earners to fund free meals for all public school students.

* In Mississippi, Democrats have secured two more seats in the State Senate, ending a decade-long Republican supermajority.

* Some of the factors that went into Democrats’ big night—and why we should be hopeful going into 2026.

What we want to go viral:

* Neil wants you to go to your phone and follow The Alabama Murders (Pushkin Studios, 2025), a riveting podcast hosted by Malcom Gladwell about the ripple effects of a murder and how it illuminates our national debate about the death penalty.

* Claire wants you to think about David Gauvey Herbert, “She Was Ready to Have Her 15th Child. Then Came the Felony Charges,” (New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2025) about Mary Beth Lewis’ determination for more babies—into her 60s.

Short takes:

* You might want to watch what you eat: according to ProPublica’s Annie Waldman and Brandon Roberts, because of Trump cuts, safety inspections of food imported from abroad are at historic lows. “The stark reduction marks a dramatic shift in oversight at a time when the United States has never been more dependent on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit,” Waldman and Roberts report. “The gutting of the workforce coincides with other actions the administration has taken that are poking holes in the nation’s food safety net. In March, the FDA announced it was delaying compliance with a rule to speed up the identification and removal of harmful products in the food system, to give more time for companies to follow the rules. The next month, it suspended a quality control program that ensured consistency and accuracy across its 170 pathogen and contaminant labs as a result of staffing cuts.” (November 6, 2025)

* It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s—a government plane, to be exact, taking FBI Director Kash Patel to visit his girlfriend! “Facing criticism for taking a government jet to see his country-singer girlfriend perform at a wrestling match in Pennsylvania—then taking the jet to her home city of Nashville,” Will Sommer writes at The Bulwark, Patel “chose to fire a veteran FBI official in charge of the bureau’s planes,” presumably for not hiding the trips efficiently. “What’s fairly clear is that Patel has been using the jet for events that have no real overlap with the actual responsibilities of the FBI. It’s an issue that came up in a September Senate hearing. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) showed blown-up pictures of Patel hobnobbing ringside with celebrities at UFC matches in Las Vegas and Miami, and chatting with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky at a New York hockey game—all trips Patel took on the government jet.” (November 6, 2025)

* Here it is: Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) “has confided to colleagues that she wants to run for president, according to four sources familiar with the matter, including one who has spoken with her directly about it,” Reese Gorman reports at NOTUS. “One source says her conversations have centered around her belief she is ‘real MAGA and that the others have strayed,”’ adding that she believes she has ‘the national donor network to win the primary.’” Greene has contested NOTUS’s reporting—but not denied it. (November 5, 2025)

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