Nancy Pelosi Takes a Hint, Announces She Won’t Run for Reelection

Senator Ted Cruz is not handling Tuesday’s election results well, complaining to Sean Hannity that the results were “an electoral blowout.”

“The results in New Jersey were disastrous. The results in Virginia were terrible. The results in New York—comrade Mamdani is the face of the Democrat Party,” Cruz said Wednesday evening, calling New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani “an actual Communist jihadist.”

Late Monday night, as voters prepared to go to the polls, Cruz had used those exact words in a meme posted to his X profile, calling the election choice for New Yorkers “an easy one.” Since then, he seems to have been caught off guard by the results in the Big Apple, but at least he’s acknowledging what happened, unlike some of his fellow Republicans.

Vice President JD Vance tried to pretend that Republicans didn’t lose in some of the reddest districts in the country, President Trump refused to take responsibility, and House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed Republican losses as blue states and blue cities voting blue. Two days after the elections, there’s very little to suggest that Trump or the GOP will try to change their policies to avoid bigger losses next year or in 2028.

It’s month 10 of President Trump’s second term, and layoffs are the highest they’ve been in more than 20 years.

A Thursday report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows job cuts last month increased by more than 153,000, up 175 percent from October of last year. In total, companies have announced more than one million job cuts in 2025, up 65 percent from the same time period last year. This was the worst October since 2003.

“This is the highest total for October in over 20 years, and the highest total for a single month in the fourth quarter since 2008. Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape,” the report said. “Technology continues to lead in private-sector job cuts as companies restructure amid AI integration, slower demand, and efficiency pressures.” Retail, warehousing, media, and nonprofits have also been impacted sectors.

These numbers come from an independent source as the Labor Department’s September and October jobs reports will remain unreleased in the midst of the ongoing government shutdown.

Yet while workers across the country deal with rising costs and struggle to find new work, President Trump and the GOP tout affordability and the return of the domestic economy.

The government shutdown has entered day 36, making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history—but Congress seems further than ever from coming to a resolution to end it.

That’s in large part thanks to Donald Trump’s public panicking over the blue wave that swept elections across the country Tuesday night.

PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins reported Wednesday that Democrats had been considering a “vague deal” with Republicans until the president began to buckle. So far, symptoms of his desperation include: threatening to close U.S. airspace, directing Republicans to kill the Senate’s long-cherished filibuster, and openly suggesting that Republicans’ nationwide election losses were the result of the ongoing shutdown.

“If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump told Senate Republicans at the White House Wednesday morning. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans. I don’t think it was good for anybody.”

Congress’s failure to extend funding has crumbled SNAP benefits for millions of Americans and lapsed Obamacare subsidies, forcing tens of thousands of Americans to forgo their health insurance as their premiums skyrocket.

Yet Trump is continuing to live his billionaire lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense. While low-income Americans starve, Trump has opted to remodel the White House, transforming historic spaces such as the Lincoln bathroom into a gaudy, marble-plastered, Mar-a-Lago lookalike. The president is also pushing forward with plans to erect a $300 million ballroom on the fresh grave of the White House East Wing. But he’s not the only one blowing cash: FBI Director Kash Patel was caught last week using the bureau’s multimillion-dollar jet to ferry his girlfriend from state to state.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NewsHour that there’s an “unmistakable consensus” among Democrats that lawmakers should use this moment to stand up to Trump.

“I think last night’s results are having an impact,” Murphy said.

The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts is walking back his defense of Tucker Carlson.

Carlson caused a major stir on the right last week when he decided to interview Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and Hitler fan. The interview was immediately flamed by conservative Jews, who condemned the ex–Fox News host’s decision to elevate Fuentes’s talking points.

Despite the opposition, Roberts released a video on X Thursday in support of Carlson and Fuentes, noting that while he disagreed with Fuentes’s beliefs, he did not believe that the “venomous” coalition “cancelling” the Christian nationalist Holocaust-denier had an appropriate reaction to the interview.

Since then, the Heritage Foundation has been embroiled in internal controversy, with at least one staffer exiting the institution over the mess. Roberts addressed the schism Wednesday.

“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” the conservative think tank’s president told employees at an all-staff meeting, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Roberts called the assembly to explain how his response to Carlson’s interview came to be in a moment when he felt the Heritage Foundation was under pressure to “make a statement” that would cast Carlson out from the conservative movement.

“This is an explanation, not an excuse,” he said, apologizing for his use of the phrase “venomous coalition,” calling it a “terrible choice of words, especially for our Jewish colleagues and friends.”

Carlson’s interview with Fuentes gave the fringe influencer a chance to swim in the MAGA mainstream. The interview has since come under fire from several corners of the Republican Party, highlighting that the former primetime TV host threw the antisemite a string of softball questions while failing to challenge Fuentes’s radical and violent beliefs.