By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have been a legendary figure within the Republican Party, but for President Donald Trump, he was part of a long list of people he viewed as political opponents.

While White House flags were lowered to half-staff in remembrance of Cheney on Tuesday, there was no fanfare, and Trump made no comment about Cheney’s death on social media. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not mention his passing in a press briefing until she was asked by a reporter — and then made only perfunctory comments.

“I know the president is aware of the former vice president’s passing. And as you saw, flags have been lowered to half-staff in accordance with statutory law,” Leavitt said.

Trump was not so quiet about Cheney on the campaign trail last year, speaking regularly about him and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former member of Congress who bucked most of her party to become a leading critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to retain power after he failed to win reelection in 2020. Dick Cheney backed his daughter, and in a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, ultimately said he would vote for Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.

While campaigning in Traverse City, Mich., Trump told Arab and Muslim voters that Dick Cheney’s support for Harris should give them pause, saying he “killed more Arabs than any human being on Earth. He pushed Bush, and they went into the Middle East.”

Trump told conservative media personality Tucker Carlson that he was “never a fan of Cheney” but said he thought that the former vice president would back him, anyway. “I was a little surprised because I actually thought that Dick Cheney would go with me over his daughter, and he didn’t,” Trump said at a Oct. 31, 2024 campaign event with Carlson.

In his first term, Trump had granted Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, a pardon for his 2007 conviction of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.

“When I became president, I actually called Dick Cheney. I said, ‘Let me ask you about Scooter Libby,’” Trump told Carlson, saying he thought former President George W. Bush “didn’t have the courage” to pardon Libby.

“I released him. Cheney called me, he said, ‘it’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen done in politics,’” Trump said.

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Trump’s public antipathy to the former vice president was sparked by excoriating criticism from Liz Cheney. She was vice chair of the Democratic-led special House committee that spent months investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and concluded that it was an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” Liz Cheney, who at the time represented Wyoming in the House, said during one of the committee’s public hearings. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”

The elder Cheney later cut a television campaign ad for his daughter as she sought reelection to the House. That bid failed, largely due to her anti-Trump stance.

A conservative, Dick Cheney sounded an alarm about returning Trump to high office.

“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in the 2022 television ad. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”

Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Former Vice President Dick Cheney battled heart disease for most of his adult life, a life extended thanks in part to a heart transplant in 2012.

Cheney, who died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, had his first heart attack at the unusually young age of 37. He would go on to survive four more before his heart declined enough to qualify for that transplant.

Heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer and Cheney’s decades of health problems illustrate how heart trouble can accumulate — as well as the varied treatments.

Cheney’s heart history

Over the years, Cheney underwent quadruple bypass surgery to reroute blood flow around clogged heart arteries as well as less invasive artery-clearing angioplasties. He had a pacemaker implanted to monitor his heartbeat. He also experienced blood vessel problems in his legs.

Heart attacks damage the heart’s muscle, eventually making it harder to pump properly. After Cheney’s fifth heart attack in 2010, he acknowledged “increasing congestive heart failure.” He received another implant, a small pump called a “left ventricular assist device” or LVAD. That device took over the job of his heart’s main pumping chamber, powered by batteries worn in a fanny pack.

Cheney had a heart transplant in 2012

Then in March 2012, at the age of 71, Cheney received a heart transplant. Like him, more than 70% of heart transplant recipients live at least five years, many longer. Cheney was older than a typical heart transplant recipient; most are 50 to 64 years old. But he was one of 362 people age 65 or older who received a new heart in 2012, according to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, or OPTN.

Heart transplants are increasing, but not fast enough

There’s a huge need for more transplantable hearts. Hundreds of thousands of adults suffer from advanced heart failure yet many are never placed on the transplant list, in part because of the organ shortage. According to the organ network, 4,572 people received a heart transplant last year. That number of has grown gradually since Cheney’s — there were 2,378 transplants in 2012. So have the number of recipients 65 or older — 905 last year.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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DULUTH — U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber said he supports a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that would allow federal immigration enforcement officials to use motorized vehicles and build roads, surveillance equipment, fences and structures in federally designated wilderness within 100 miles of the U.S. border, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The Republican from Hermantown, whose district includes the BWCAW, did not answer a question on whether he would introduce a companion bill in the House of Representatives.

But in a statement to the News Tribune, Stauber said on his trip to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona in 2024, he “saw America’s federal lands suffer from environmental damage due to left-behind trash, human waste, illegal trails, and abandoned campfires.”

“(This) bill will give the Department of Homeland Security the power to protect our most precious spaces, like the Boundary Waters, from similar destruction,” Stauber said. “This could become especially relevant to Minnesota because with our southern border completely closed, our northern border could become the next target for illegal immigration into the U.S.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune first reported Stauber’s support of the bill.

With few exceptions, the Wilderness Act of 1964 bans motorized vehicles, chainsaws, roads and other activities and infrastructure that would ruin federally designated wilderness, which it defines, in part, as “undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.”

In addition to the 1.1 million-acre BWCAW, Northland wilderness areas within 100 miles of the border include parts of Isle Royale National Park and Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. More than 99% of Isle Royale is federal wilderness, and 80% of the Apostle Islands are covered by the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness.

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Although the BWCAW is not a conduit for undocumented immigrants or drugs illegally entering the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security agencies, like the U.S. Border Patrol, have long monitored the BWCAW and its border with Canada.

Agents typically patrol by foot, canoe or aircraft, and while a 2013 report by the environmental group Wilderness Watch said low-flying helicopters, presumably flown by border enforcement, were ruining the wilderness experience of BWCAW campers, the agents’ actions have generally not disrupted visitors.

However, the new Senate bill , introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, earlier this month, would substantially increase what border agents could do in wilderness areas.

The bill calls for the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to allow Homeland Security greater access to wilderness areas so it can take actions to deter illegal immigration like adding “tactical infrastructure” which it defines as “infrastructure for the detection of illegal southern border and northern border crossings, including observation points, remote video surveillance systems, motion sensors, vehicle barriers, fences, roads, bridges, drainage and detection devices.”

Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director for Wilderness Watch, said Lee’s bill, if passed, could damage the BWCAW “almost beyond recognition.”

“Lee’s bill could overturn more than a century of conservation work to protect the wild character of the Boundary Waters Wilderness by landing aircraft and deploying remote video surveillance systems and motion sensors throughout this Wilderness,” Proescholdt said in a news release. “You only have to look at the devastation DHS has wreaked on wildlands on the southern border to appreciate the devastating impacts Senator Lee’s bill could have on the Boundary Waters Wilderness.”

Wilderness Watch said the language in the bill appears to also open the door to logging and other related activities aimed at “fuels management.”

Minnesota’s Democratic senators — Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar — both oppose the bill.

Smith described the BWCAW as “one of this country’s great natural treasures” and vowed to fight any legislation that threatened it.

“Americans want to see our public lands protected, but Senator Lee’s bill overwrites important protections in the original Wilderness Act and could result in serious harm to our wild places, including the Boundary Waters,” Smith said in a statement to the News Tribune.

In a separate statement, Klobuchar said, “I oppose Senator Lee’s bill, which would allow harmful development in federal wilderness areas, while also requiring the government to waste resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.”

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By LISA MASCARO and MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Signs of a potential end to the government shutdown intensified Tuesday with behind-the-scenes talks, as the federal closure was on track to become the longest ever disrupting the lives of millions of Americans.

Senators from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are quietly negotiating the contours of an emerging deal. With a nod from their leadership, the senators seek a way to reopen the government, put the normal federal funding process back on track and devise some sort of resolution to the crisis of expiring health insurance subsidies that are spiking premium costs from coast to coast.

“Enough is enough,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, as he opened the deadlocked chamber.

On day 35 of the federal government shutdown, the record will be broken after midnight, this funding lapse surpassing the longest in modern times. With SNAP benefits interrupted for millions of Americans depending on federal food aid, airports grounding flights, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay and federal contracts being delayed, many on and off Capitol Hill think it’s time for the shutdown to end. Labor unions have stepped up pressure on lawmakers to reopen the government.

Election Day is seen as a turning point

Tuesday’s elections provide an inflection point, with off-year governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, along with the mayor’s race in New York that will show voter attitudes, a moment of political assessment many hope will turn the tide. Another test vote Tuesday in the Senate failed, as Democrats rejected a temporary government funding bill.

“We’re not asking for anything radical,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said. “Lowering people’s healthcare costs is the definition of common sense.”

Unlike the earlier shutdown during President Donald Trump’s first term, when he fought Congress in 2018-19 for funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall, the president has been largely absent from this shutdown debate.

Trump threatens to halt SNAP food aid

But on Tuesday, Trump issued a fresh threat, warning he would halt SNAP food aid unless Democrats agree to reopen the government. That would be potentially in defiance of court orders to release the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program contingency funds.

Trump said on social media that SNAP benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

With House Speaker Mike Johnson having sent lawmakers home in September, most attention is on the Senate. There, the leadership has outsourced negotiations to a loose group of centrist dealmakers from both parties have been quietly charting a way to end the standoff.

“We pray that today is that day,” said Johnson, R-La., holding his daily process on the empty side of the Capitol.

Contours of a potential deal

Central to any endgame will be a series of agreements that would need to be upheld not only by the Senate, but also the House, and the White House, which is not at all certain in Washington where Republicans have full control of the government.

First of all, senators from both parties, particularly the powerful members of the Appropriations Committee, are pushing to ensure the normal government funding process can be put back on track.

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Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, along with several Democrats, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Chris Coons of Delaware, are among those working behind the scenes.

“The pace of talks have increased,” said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who has been involved in conversations.

Among the goals is guaranteeing upcoming votes on a smaller package of bills where there is already widespread bipartisan agreement to fund various aspects of governments, like agricultural programs and military construction projects at bases.

“I certainly think that that three-bill package is primed to do a lot of good things for the American people,” said Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala, who has also been in talks.

More difficult, a substantial number of senators also want some resolution to the standoff over the funding for the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end.

White House won’t engage on health care until government reopens

The White House says its position remains unchanged and that Democrats must vote to fund the government until talks over health care can begin. White House officials are in close contact with GOP senators who have been quietly speaking with key Senate Democrats, according to a senior White House official. The official was granted anonymity to discuss administration strategy.

With insurance premium notices being sent, millions of Americans are experiencing sticker shock on skyrocketing prices. The loss of federal subsidies, which come in the form of tax credits, are expected to leave many people unable to buy health insurance.

Republicans, with control of the House and Senate, are reluctant to fund the health care program, also known as Obamacare. But Thune has promised Democrats a vote on their preferred proposal, on a date certain, as part of any deal to reopen government.

That’s not enough for some senators, who see the health care deadlock as part of their broader concerns with Trump’s direction for the country.

“Trump is a schoolyard bully,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, in an op-ed. “Anyone who thinks surrendering to him now will lead to better outcomes and cooperation in the future does not understand how a power-hungry demagogue operates.”

Moreover, Democrats, and some Republicans, are also pushing for guardrails to prevent the Trump administration’s practice of unilaterally slashing funds for programs that Congress had already approved, by law, the way billionaire Elon Musk did earlier this year at the Department of Government Efficiency.

With the Senate, which is split 53-47, having tried and failed more than a dozen times to advance the House-passed bill over the filibuster, that measure is out of date. It would have funded government to Nov. 21.

Trump has demanded senators nuke the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires a 60-vote threshold to advance most legislation, which preserves minority rights in the chamber. GOP senators panned that demand.

Both Thune and Johnson have acknowledged they will need a new temporary measure. They are eyeing one that skips past the Christmas holiday season, avoiding what often has been a year-end crunch, and instead develop an agreement that would keep government running into the near year, likely January.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Seung Min Kim and Matt Brown contributed to this story.