IT’S POLITICAL:  President Trump gave former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo a last-minute endorsement in his run for mayor of New York City, a gift to front-runner Zohran Mamdani as New Yorkers go to the polls today.

  “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!” Trump said that if the “Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani” is elected he will withhold federal funds from the city.

  Elections in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, and California today are in part a referendum on the Trump presidency. 

  In races for governor, both Virginia and New Jersey voters have a tendency to elect governors who are not a member of the president’s party. 

  In California, voters are being asked to approve a proposition that would allow five republican House districts to be re-jiggered to become Democrat. That’s in response to President Trump’s demand for redistricting in Texas and other Republican states. California’s Proposition 50 looks likely to pass.

  Acting on Trump’s continuing false claims about election fraud, the Justice Department sent federal monitors to polling locations in New Jersey and California. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney who served with President George W. Bush and was considered the most powerful vice president in US history, has died at age 84.

  Cheney had a long history of heart disease and ultimately died of pneumonia and heart failure.

  The terse and gravel-voiced Cheney was a devout Republican who broke with his party endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president in 2024, declaring Donald Trump was unfit for office and a threat to the American democracy. “We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” he said. His daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, was voted out of office because she opposed Trump. 

  Cheney was considered the ultimate Washington insider, working first for the Nixon administration and then becoming chief of staff for Gerald Ford. He served 10 years as a member of Congress from Wyoming and then was named Secretary of Defense overseeing the 2001 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq’s  Saddam Hussein. As vice president he pushed for the invasion of Iraq to topple Hussein in 2003.  The no-nonsense Cheney who advocated torture of terror suspects following the 9/11 attacks was nicknamed “Darth Vader.”

  Despite being such a man of Washington, Cheney managed to be an outdoorsman of Wyoming, a lifelong fly fisherman.

  Cheney had three heart attacks and a quadruple bypass operation before he was 50. Heart problems plagued him for the rest of his life. He had a heart transplant in 2012, leading to the joke that provided proof he actually had a heart. 

THE HUNGER GAMES: Following orders from a federal court., the Trump administration said it would send 50 percent of food benefits this month to 42 million Americans who depend upon them. 

  The food program known as SNAP ran out of money at midnight Friday because of the federal government shutdown. A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the administration to dip into SNAP emergency funds, but the administration is not committing all the money to which it has access. They have also said it might take weeks to get the money out there while traffic is increasing at food banks across the country.

 THE REGIME:

— As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fills the Pentagon press room with right wing influencers and outlets, a press credential has been issued to conspiracy monger and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer, who wrote on social media that she looks forward to “breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security.” 

  Loomer has never worked as a reporter. Just to let you know who and what she is, she has claimed that the Parkland and Santa Fe high school shootings were staged by crisis actors. 

— Former Special Counsel Jack Smith said he would welcome being investigated and even prosecuted by the Trump administration because it would give him the opportunity to show the President’s guilt in the dismissed cases for holding classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election. 

  Smith has said he had “tons of evidence” that Trump had willingly retained the classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago and tried “to obstruct the investigation.”

THE SPIN RACK: An estimated 90 percent of the homes in Black River, Jamaica were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Melissa. The courthouse, the library, schools, the downtown shopping district, and the hospital are largely destroyed. — The judge in the case of actor/director Justin Baldoni’s $400 million defamation and extortion countersuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds has thrown out the case. Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and accused him of running a defamation campaign following their work together on the movie, “It Ends With Us.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Under new ownership, the Hooters restaurant chain where grandfathers take their gay grandsons in an effort to convert them, is returning to somewhat more modest uniforms for the waitress staff. They say they are returning to a more “family friendly” atmosphere for the chain that’s never been known for its food.  Neil Kiefer, the 73-year-old lawyer now running the operation, said, “I don’t think you’re going to see a bunch of butt cheeks hanging out.”

-30-