Vice President JD Vance took center stage Wednesday at the White House press briefing on the first day of the federal government shutdown, during which he insisted that Democrats were responsible for the impasse on Capitol Hill.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Vance as her special guest minutes before the briefing started, signaling Vance’s lead role in President Donald Trump’s response to the battle with Democrats. Vance spent Wednesday morning doing a heavy slate of television hits, attempting to shoulder Democrats with the blame for the shutdown.

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TRUMP’S EPIC UN ADDRESS. How to describe President Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday? Epic, extraordinary, unprecedented — whatever term you prefer, Trump’s address was a sledgehammer of a message delivered to allies and adversaries around the world.

The most striking passages were directed at allies, particularly those in Europe, and they focused on two enormously consequential and controversial issues that Trump called a “double-tailed monster”: migration and energy.

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NEW YORK ON THE BRINK. Next year will bring the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and with it, an irresistible angle for journalists and commentators: New York‘s first Muslim mayor marks anniversary of devastating radical Islamic attack on city.

That mayor will be, of course, Zohran Mamdani, the socialist candidate with a huge lead over a fractured field in the Nov. 4 mayoral election. A series of recent polls suggests that, barring some huge, incredible, world-shaking unforeseen development, Mamdani will be elected mayor less than two months from now.

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