LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Eight Senate Democrats broke with their party late yesterday to vote for an end to the government shutdown, now in its 41^st day. 

  It will not be instant. The deal to re-open and fund the government into January must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President.

THE HUNGER GAMES: Forty-two million Americans today entered their second week without federal food aid. News reports feature stories of people with empty kitchens depending on friends, neighbors, food banks, and even dumpster diving behind a Walmart for food.

  Yesterday the Trump administration threatened economic penalties for states that go ahead and fund food benefits without federal approval.

  While the Trump administration fights a court order to immediately and fully fund food aid known as SNAP, President Trump over the weekend suggested on his Truth Social feed that Americans be given money to buy their own health insurance: “NO MORE MONEY, HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, TO THE DEMOCRAT SUPPORTED INSURANCE COMPANIES FOR REALLY BAD OBAMACARE,” he wrote. 

  Doing that would require an act of Congress.

GROUND HOLD:  The FAA ratcheted up flight cancellations, bringing the number to 1,743 this morning with 881 delays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN that as the Thanksgiving travel crush approaches. “You’re going to see travel reduced to a trickle.”

  Duffy says air travel is being reduced for safety because of the shortage of controllers during the federal shutdown, but skeptics say it’s to pressure Democrats to re-open the government.

CONSERVATIVE HERITAGE: The political right wing and its brain trust, the Heritage Foundation, are in a meltdown over the two-hour interview that conservative YouTube host Tucker Carlson conducted with the white supremacist antisemite Nick Fuentes.

 Five million people have watched the Carlson interview with the man who once called Adolph Hitler “awesome.” Carlson is not a journalist, but he plays one on YouTube. 

  Fuentes launched the trope about Jewish control of the media and said, “organized Jewry has too much influence.” He admires the late Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, who murdered millions of his own people. Not a peep out of Carlson.

  Fuentes said, “We do need to be right-wing. We do need to be Christian. We do, on some level, need to be pro-white, not to the exclusion of everybody else, but recognizing that white people have a special heritage here as Americans.” Carlson never challenged.

  Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, at first denounced the “globalist class” for criticizing the interview. Jewish groups, along with Heritage staffers and conservative figures, said the phrase played on antisemitic conspiracy theories. Roberts later backed off, merely calling Fuentes “an evil person.” But the conservative rift remains.

THE REGIME:

— Federal Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote in an essay in The Atlantic magazine that he’s quitting the bench to be able to speak against President Trump, warning of an “existential threat to democracy.” Wolf accuses the President of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”

  The Massachusetts judge appointed by Ronald Reagan wrote, “I resigned in order to speak out, support litigation, and work with other individuals and organizations dedicated to protecting the rule of law and American democracy.”

— As Americans struggle with higher prices because of President Trump’s trade tariffs, the President over the weekend on his social media feed promised everyone a tariff bonus: “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion.” He wrote, “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” 

BET ON IT: Pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians have been charged with giving bettors advance word of their performance.  

  In one instance, Clase, considered one of the best relievers in MLB, threw a wild dirt ball making bettors $58,000 on that one bad pitch. The indictment charges that bettors made hundreds of thousands of dollars on inside information from Clase and Otiz.

THE OBIT PAGE: John Cleary, who was shot in the chest by the Ohio National Guard in the infamous Kent State University massacre in 1970, has died at age 74 of pancreatic cancer. A photo of Cleary on the ground arched in pain and being tended by fellow students was featured on the cover of Life Magazine, becoming one of the iconic images of the age.

  The Republican Governor of Iowa had sent 100 National Guardsmen to Kent State to quell protests against the Vietnam war expanding into Cambodia. Not a protester, Cleary had gone to observe and take pictures. He later said that the formation of guardsmen suddenly wheeled and fired a volley. He said it was like getting hit by a sledgehammer. Four students were killed and nine wounded. 

  From a conservative family, it was years before Cleary spoke about it. He later said that when his son was born he decided: “You cannot bury this. You cannot pretend it did not happen to you. You cannot put it behind you. It is something that you need to confront.”

THE SPIN RACK: The head of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the chief of the news division resigned following a report in which the speech Donald Trump gave on the Ellipse preceding the January 6^th insurrection was misleadingly edited to make it sound like the President had encouraged the Capitol attack. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Grocery titans Walmart, Target, and Aldi are crowing about their Thanksgiving meal deals being more affordable than ever. What they’re not saying is that their list of items is shorter with cheaper substitutes. 

  President Trump has been bragging that he’s made Thanksgiving cheaper, but when told it’s a comparison of apples to oranges, he denounced it as “fake news.”

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