You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.

The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.

More than a thousand guests saw eight military body bearers place Cheney’s flag-draped casket on a catafalque as gently as lowering a baby in a crib. Then two hours of plangent music, solemn processions and tearful eulogies beneath stained glass and a soaring vaulted ceiling amounted to a requiem for the Republican party.

Cheney used to be known as its Darth Vader and, fittingly, the neo-Gothic church’s exterior boasts a hand-carved grotesque of the Star Wars character. Vader terrorised the galaxy but saved his son and renounced the dark side of the Force on his deathbed. Cheney had imperial ambitions of his own but gained a measure of redemption by defending his daughter and democracy from Trump.

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Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, there are some very big warning signs for Republicans in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

The survey of 1,443 adults, conducted from Nov. 10-13, found:

Democrats holding their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who respondents would vote for if the midterm elections were held today;

President Trump's approval rating is just 39%, his lowest since right after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol;

A combined 6-in-10 blame congressional Republicans or Trump for the government shutdown; and

Nearly 6-in-10 say Trump's top priority should be lowering prices — and no other issue comes close.

"I don't think rent prices or food prices are at the forefront like they should be," said Nicole Stokes of Dallas, Texas, who participated in NPR's poll and voted for Trump last year. "You know — the American people — it's our pockets that are getting ripped apart to fund things."

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Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, will stop teaching at the school while it investigates his connection to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for Summers said on Wednesday.

Emails recently released by the US House oversight committee reignited questions about Summers’ relationship with Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors. Many of the messages indicated a friendship that lasted well into 2019. Contact only ceased shortly before Epstein was arrested in July of that same year.

The Harvard Crimson was first to report the news.

Steven Goldberg, the spokesperson for Summers, told the newspaper that Summers, an economist and former US treasury secretary, is not scheduled to teach next semester, and that his co-teachers will take over the remaining classes of the current semester.

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President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday night directing the Justice Department to release all files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, completing a dramatic reversal after fighting the proposal just last week.

Trump announced on Truth Social that he signed the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, which cleared both chambers of Congress on Tuesday with only one Republican lawmaker voting against it.

"Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES," the president said in the announcement on his social media platform. Trump has pointed to Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, proclaiming: "This latest Hoax will backfire on the Democrats just as all of the rest have!"

With the legislation signed, the Justice Department has 30 days to publicize "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" from the investigation into the disgraced financier and indicted sex trafficker who died by suicide in 2019.

“We'll continue to follow the law with maximum transparency while protecting victims,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier in the day.

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