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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Political stars often rise and fall but few have had a more dramatic trajectory than Dick Cheney in his home state of Wyoming.

Hours after Cheney died Tuesday at 84, the state lowered flags at the Republican governor’s order. Some politicians in the state offered at times measured praise of the former vice president.

But among a large majority of voters in Wyoming, Cheney has been persona non grata for more than five years now, his reputation brought down amid President Trump’s withering politics.

Trump has criticized Cheney for the drawn-out and costly Iraq war, and his daughter, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, for saying Trump should never be allowed back in the White House after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This resonated with many residents, including Jeanine Stebbing, of Cheyenne, whose last straw was the idea that Trump shouldn’t be reelected.

“There was no open-mindedness. Nothing about how, ‘We understand that our neighbors here are supportive of Trump.’ Just the idea that we were all stupid, is what it felt like,” Stebbing said Tuesday.

The final blow for the Cheney family in Wyoming came in 2022, when Trump supported ranching attorney Harriet Hageman to oppose Liz Cheney for a fourth term as the state’s U.S. representative.

Hageman got two-thirds of the vote in the Republican primary, a decisive win in a state with so few Democrats that the general election is considered inconsequential for major races.

Trump’s biggest gripe, ultimately, was that Liz Cheney voted to impeach him, then co-led the congressional investigation into his role in the attack. In Wyoming, a prevailing belief was Liz Cheney seemed more focused on taking down Trump than on representing the state.

“I was very disappointed that, you know, somebody who came from this state would be so adamantly blind to anything other than what she wanted to do. And he joined in as well,” Stebbing said.

Not even Dick Cheney’s endorsement of his daughter over Hageman — and of Kamala Harris over Trump last year — made a difference, as Trump’s appeal in Wyoming only grew. Trump won Wyoming by more than any other state in 2016, 2020 and 2024, the year of his biggest margin in the state.

Some expressed sadness that George W. Bush’s vice president would not be remembered well by so many in the state.

“On the 16th anniversary of my own father’s death today, I can appreciate a father who stood by his daughter, which he did loyally and truthfully,” said Republican state Sen. Tara Nethercott, who is Senate majority floor leader. “He stood by his daughter during those difficult times.”

Nethercott wouldn’t speculate if Liz Cheney might yet have a political future. Wyoming’s support of Trump “speaks volumes,” she said.

Liz Cheney has continued to live in Jackson Hole, near her parents, while traveling back and forth to Charlottesville to teach at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

For Brian Farmer — who, like Dick Cheney, grew up in Casper and went to the University of Wyoming — Cheney’s legacy will be his service to the state, no matter where people stand on issues.

“He was always somebody whose path I looked at, sought to follow. Very quiet, soft-spoken at times, Very bombastic and loud at others,” said Farmer, executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association.

Cheney had a 30-year career in politics, from serving as President Gerald Ford’s young chief of staff to representing Wyoming in Congress in the 1980s. He rose to a top GOP leadership role in Congress — one his daughter, too, would later fill — before being named President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary.

After his time in office, the CEO of oilfield services company Halliburton kept active in state politics, voicing support and even stumping for Republican candidates.

And yet Cheney was so low-key and unassuming, his mere presence was the whole point — not the nice things he had to say, for example, about former Gov. Jim Geringer, who handily won reelection in 1998.

“You talk about people walking into a room and commanding it. That man did it without even speaking a word,” said state Rep. Landon Brown, a Cheyenne Republican who met him several times including at University of Wyoming football games.

“He’s going to be sincerely missed in this state,” he said. “Maybe not by everybody.”

Gruver writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — California became center stage for the national political fight over House seats Friday when Gov. Gavin Newsom welcomed Democratic lawmakers from Texas who fled their home state to foil President Trump’s plans to redraw Congressional districts.

California lawmakers plan to respond with their own plan to gerrymander districts to favor Democrats and neutralize any Republican seats gained in Texas in 2026, with a proposed map expected to become public next week, Newsom said at a press conference after meeting with the lawmakers.

“Make no mistake, California is moving forward,” the governor said. “We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what’s happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas.”

He noted that while Democrats still support the state’s independent redistricting commission, they must counter Trump’s plan in GOP-led states to give their party a better chance in next year’s midterm election.

“They drew first blood,” he later added of Republicans.

Asked about the gathering, a Trump administration spokesperson said Newsom was seeking the limelight to further his political ambitions.

“Gavin Newsom is a loser of the highest order and he will never be president, no matter how hard he prostitutes himself to the press,” said the spokesperson, Steven Cheung.

Friday marked the second time in two weeks that Texas Democrats have stood next to Newsom at the California Governor’s Mansion and warned that Republican efforts to draw a new map in their state would dilute the power of Black and brown voters.

The Democrats hoped that their departure would leave the state Legislature with too few members present to change the map in a special session. They face $500 fines for each day of absence, as well as threats of arrest and removal from office by Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP officials. Some of the Democratic lawmakers were evacuated from a Chicago hotel where they were staying after a bomb threat on Wednesday.

“We are now facing threats — the threat that we’re going to lose our jobs, the threat of financial ruin, the threat that we will be hunted down as our colleagues sit on their hands and remain silent, as we all get personal threats to our lives,” said Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston), one of six Texas lawmakers at the press conference, who was among those evacuated from the Chicago hotel. “We as Democrats are standing up to ensure that the voices of every voter is lifted up in this next election, and that the next election is not stolen from them.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco); Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), chair of the California Democratic congressional delegation; Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg); Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and other elected officials joined the meeting in a show of unity as California Democrats attempt to convince their own state’s voters to fight back.

Pelosi noted that the state’s congressional delegation is united in backing the redistricting proposal to counter Trump.

“The President has paved over the Rose Garden. He’s paved over freedom of speech. He’s paved over freedom of education, [an] independent judiciary, the rule of law,” Pelosi said. “He’s gone too far. We will not let him pave over free and fair elections in our country, starting with what he’s trying to do in Texas.”

She fought back against an argument some have made — that two wrongs don’t make a right.

“This is self-defense for our democracy,” she said.

The California plan calls for the state Legislature to approve a constitutional amendment establishing new Congressional voting districts crafted to make GOP members vulnerable.

Passage of the bill would result in a special election on Nov. 4, with California voters deciding if the state should temporarily pause the congressional boundaries created by an independent redistricting commission in 2021 and adopt new maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.

If approved by voters, the measure would include a “trigger” specifying that it would only take effect if Texas or other Republican-led states follow through with redrawing their maps to boost GOP seats before the midterm election. California would revert to its existing redistricting law after the next census and before the 2032 election.

At least so far, California voters appear uncertain about whether they want to swap Newsom’s plan for the independent redistricting system they previously adopted at the ballot box.

An Emerson College poll found support for redrawing California’s congressional map at 33% and opposition at 25%. The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted Aug. 4 and 5, found that 42% were undecided.

Newsom has expressed confidence that California voters will back his plan, which he is casting as a rebuttal to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the midterm elections.

“I’m confident we’ll get it when people know what it is and what it’s not, and I think, at the end of the day, they understand what’s at stake,” Newsom said Thursday.

Newsom argues that California’s process is more transparent than Trump’s because voters here will see the map and decide if the state should go forward with it.

To fulfill Trump’s request for five additional seats, Abbott is attempting to redraw House districts in Texas through a state legislative process that does not require voter approval. It’s unclear what will happen in Austin, with Democrats determined to block the effort and Abbott and other Texas Republicans insisting they will keep pressing it.

The current special session ends on Aug. 19. But in an interview with NBC News Thursday evening, Abbott vowed “to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”

In addition to arrest on civil warrants, the Democrats are facing threats of being removed from office. Direct-deposit payments to the legislators have been curtailed, forcing them to pick up their checks in person at the state capitol in Austin or go without the money.

The redistricting fight has strengthened Newsom’s national platform as a potential 2028 presidential contender and bolstered his reputation as a Democrat willing to take the fight to Trump and his allies.

Since Trump took office in January, Newom had been walking a fine line between calling out the president and playing nice in hopes of being able to work together to rebuild from the California wildfires.

But the gloves came off after Trump deployed the National Guard during federal immigration raids in Los Angeles in June, prompting the governor and his administration to much more aggressively push back on the president’s conservative agenda.

Ari Aster’s “Eddington” is such a superb social satire about contemporary America that I want to bury it in the desert for 20 years. More distance will make it easier to laugh.

It’s a modern western set in New Mexico — Aster’s home state — where trash blows like tumbleweeds as Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) stalks across the street to confront Eddington’s mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), whom he is campaigning to unseat. It’s May of 2020, that hot and twitchy early stretch of the COVID pandemic when reality seemed to disintegrate, and Joe is ticked off about the new mask mandate. He has asthma, and he can’t understand anyone who has their mouth covered.

Joe and Ted have old bad blood between them that’s flowed down from Joe’s fragile wife Louise, a.k.a. Rabbit (Emma Stone), a stunted woman-child who stubbornly paints creepy dolls, and his mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), a raving conspiracist who believes the Titanic sinking was no accident. Dawn is jazzed to decode the cause of this global shutdown; there’s comfort in believing everything happens for a reason. Her mania proves contagious.

Bad things are happening in Eddington and have been for decades, not just broken shop windows. Joe wears a white hat and clearly considers himself the story’s hero, although he’s not up to the job. If you squint real hard, you can see his perspective that he’s a champion for the underdog. Joe gets his guts in a twist when a maskless elder is kicked out of the local grocery store as the other shoppers applaud. “Public shaming,” Joe spits.

“There’s no COVID in Eddington,” Joe claims in his candidacy announcement video, urging his fellow citizens that “we need to free our hearts.” His earnestness is comic and sweet and dangerous. You can hear every fact he’s leaving out. His rival’s commercials promote a fantastical utopia where Ted is playing piano on the sidewalk and elbow-bumping more Black people in 15 seconds than we see in the rest of the movie. Ted also swears that permitting a tech behemoth named SolidGoldMagikarp to build a controversial giant data center on the outskirts of the county won’t suck precious resources — it’ll transform this nowheresville into a hub for jobs. Elections are a measure of public opinion: Which fibber would you trust?

Danger is coming and like in “High Noon,” this uneasy town will tear itself apart before it arrives. Aster is so good at scrupulously capturing the tiny, fearful COVID behaviors we’ve done our best to forget that it’s a shame (and a relief) that the script isn’t really about the epidemic. Another disease has infected Eddington: Social media has made everyone brain sick.

The film is teeming with viral headlines — serious, frivolous or false — jumbled together on computer screens screaming for attention in the same all-caps font. (Remember the collective decision that no one had the bandwidth to care about murder hornets?) Influencers and phonies and maybe even the occasional real journalist prattle on in the backgrounds of scenes telling people what to think and do, often making things worse. Joe loves his wife dearly. We see him privately watching a YouTuber explain how he can convince droopy Louise to have children. Alas, he spends his nights in their marital bed chastely doomscrolling.

Every character in “Eddington” is lonely and looking for connection. One person’s humiliating nadir comes during a painful tracking shot at an outdoor party where they’re shunned like they have the plague. Phones dominate their interactions: The camera is always there in somebody’s hand, live streaming or recording, flattening life into a reality show and every conversation into a performance.

The script expands to include Joe’s deputies, aggro Guy (Luke Grimes) and Bitcoin-obsessed Michael (Micheal Ward), plus a cop from the neighboring tribal reservation, Officer Butterfly Jimenez (William Belleau) and a handful of bored, identity-seeking teens. They’ll all wind up at odds even though they’re united by the shared need to be correct, to have purpose, to belong. When George Floyd is killed six states away, these young do-gooders rush into the streets, excited to have a reason to get together and yell. The protesters aren’t insincere about the cause. But it’s head-scrambling to watch blonde Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) lecture her ex-boyfriend Michael, who is Black and a cop, about how he should feel. Meanwhile Brian (Cameron Mann), who is white and one of the most fascinating characters to track, is so desperate for Sarah’s attention that he delivers a hilarious slogan-addled meltdown: “My job is to sit down and listen! As soon as I finish this speech! Which I have no right to make!”

The words come fast and furious and flummoxing. Aster has crowded more pointed zingers and visual gags into each scene than our eyes can take in. His dialogue is laden with vile innuendos — “deep state,” “sexual predator,” “antifa” — and can feel like getting pummeled. When a smooth-talking guru named Vernon (Austin Butler) slithers into the plot, he regales Joe’s family with an incredulous tale of persecution that, as he admits, “sounds insane just to hear coming out of my mouth.” Well, yeah. Aster wants us to feel exhausted sorting fact from fiction.

The verbal barrage builds to a scene in which Joe and Dawn sputter nonsense at each other in a cross-talking non-conversation where both sound like they’re high on cocaine. They are, quite literally, internet junkies.

This is the bleakest of black humor. There’s even an actual dumpster fire. Aster’s breakout debut, “Hereditary,” gave him an overnight pedigree as the princeling of highbrow horror films about trauma. But really, he’s a cringe comedian who exaggerates his anxieties like a tragic clown. Even in “Midsommar,” Aster’s most coherent film, his star Florence Pugh doesn’t merely cry — she howls like she could swallow the earth. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that when Aster catches himself getting maudlin, he forces himself to actively wallow in self-pity until it feels like a joke. Making the tragic ridiculous is a useful tool. (I once got through a breakup by watching “The Notebook” on repeat.)

With “Beau Is Afraid,” Aster’s previous film with Phoenix, focusing that approach on one man felt too punishing. “Eddington” is hysterical group therapy. I suspect that Aster knows that if we read a news article about a guy like Joe, we wouldn’t have any sympathy for him at all. Instead, Aster essentially handcuffs us to Joe’s point of view and sends us off on this tangled and bitterly funny adventure, in which rattling snakes spice up a humming, whining score by the Haxan Cloak and Daniel Pemberton.

Not every plot twist works. Joe’s sharpest pivot is so inward and incomprehensible that the film feels compelled to signpost it by having a passing driver yell, “You’re going the wrong way!” By the toxic finale, we’re certain only that Phoenix plays pathetic better than anyone these days. From “Her” to “Joker” to “Napoleon” to “Inherent Vice,” he’s constantly finding new wrinkles in his sad sacks. “Eddington’s” design teams have taken care to fill Joe’s home with dreary clutter and outfit him in sagging jeans. By contrast, Pascal’s wealthier Ted is the strutting embodiment of cowboy chic. He’s even selfishly hoarded toilet paper in his fancy adobe estate.

It’s humanistic when “Eddington” notes that everyone in town is a bit of a sinner. The problem is that they’re all eager to throw stones and point out what the others are doing wrong to get a quick fix of moral superiority. So many yellow cards get stacked up against everyone that you come to accept that we’re all flawed, but most of us are doing our best.

Joe isn’t going to make Eddington great again. He never has a handle on any of the conspiracies, and when he grabs a machine gun, he’s got no aim. Aster’s feistiest move is that he refuses to reveal the truth. When you step back at the end to take in the full landscape, you can put most of the story together. (Watch “Eddington” once, talk it out over margaritas and then watch it again.) Aster makes the viewer say their theories out loud afterwards, and when you do, you sound just as unhinged as everyone else in the movie. I dig that kind of culpability: a film that doesn’t point sanctimonious fingers but insists we’re all to blame.

But there are winners and losers and winners who feel like losers and schemers who get away with their misdeeds scot-free. Five years after the events of this movie, we’re still standing in the ashes of the aggrieved. But at least if we’re cackling at ourselves together in the theater, we’re less alone.

President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

Beyoncé, Springsteen and the other stars singled out by Trump each touted their support for Harris during various stops on her campaign trail. The “Alien Superstar” singer backed Harris when the candidate stopped by the pop star’s home state of Texas in late October. The Boss campaigned for Harris in Georgia that same week.

Trump shared his first post, which also accused Harris of artificially beefing up “her sparse crowds” and criticized “these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’” Sunday at around 10:30 p.m. Clearly, he could not shake off his gripes after a night’s rest because on Monday morning, he doubled down.

Monday at 6:11 a.m., Trump further slammed Beyoncé, citing unidentified “news reports” that alleged the Grammy winner was paid $11 million to endorse his opponent: “AN ILLEGAL ELECTION SCAM AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.” A representative for Beyoncé did not immediately respond on Monday to The Times’ request for comment.

He said the stars he named, “AND, PERHAPS, MANY OTHERS, HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO!!!”

Trump — who has the backing of musicians including Kid Rock and Billy Ray Cyrus — last week also aimed at Taylor Swift, suggesting in a Truth Social post on Friday that the “Cruel Summer” singer’s popularity has declined since he declared “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in September 2024. Swift publicly endorsed Harris for president.

The president railed against the music stars after his four-day visit to the Middle East. . When he returned to Washington on Friday, Trump also shared his opinions on “Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen,” who criticized the “incompetent and treasonous administration” during a May 14 concert in Manchester, England. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” he added.

The “Born in the USA” rocker fired back at Trump on Saturday. “In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said.

A transcript of Springsteen’s full monologue, an introduction to “My City of Ruins,” can be found on his website.

For some folks, this summer will be a time of relaxation: picnics, barbecues, vacation. For others, a mad scramble between work and swim meets, baseball tournaments or shopping before shelves go bare and the Trump tariffs price everything beyond reach.

For Kamala Harris, it’s a time for deciding.

The former vice president is expected to spend a chunk of her summer weighing various options — whether to retire from politics after more than 20 years seeking elected office, whether to mount a 2026 bid for California governor or whether to make a third attempt at the White House in 2028.

According to several who’ve spoken with Harris, she is genuinely undecided, torn between concern and affection for her home state and an undimmed desire to be president.

Of the three options, the most pressing is whether to enter the race to replace her fellow Democrat, the term-limited Gavin Newsom, as governor.

The contest is already well underway — 10 serious (broadly speaking) candidates have so far announced their candidacies. While Harris’ near-universal name recognition and nationwide fundraising base allow her to wait longer than others, a serious gubernatorial bid will take more than a few months to mount.

That forces a decision and a public announcement sooner rather than later.

If she does run, one thing Harris must avoid at all costs is anything that bespeaks arrogance, entitlement or anything less than a 100% commitment to serving as governor. It’s not hard to imagine one of her first utterances as a candidate would be pledging to serve a full four-year term and vowing not to use the office as an interim step toward another presidential bid.

Failing that, voters have every reason to send Harris packing. California doesn’t need another governor with a wandering political eye.

Another imperative Harris faces is offering a compelling reason why she wants to be governor. Seeking the office for the same reason climbers tackle Mt. Everest — because it’s there — won’t do.

History offers a lesson.

In November 1979, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy was preparing to launch an upstart bid for president against the unpopular incumbent, Jimmy Carter. He gave a television interview that was so legendarily awful it’s become an object lesson in how not to start a campaign.

Asked why he wanted to be president, Kennedy paused at length, appearing stricken. He then unspooled a long-winded, curlicued, two-minute response that mentioned natural resources, technology, innovation, productivity, inflation, energy, joblessness and the economy, among other things. His answer was lucid as a fog bank and inspiring as a stalk of celery.

“Kennedy was on a rocket ship,” said Dan Schnur, a veteran communications strategist and political science professor, who uses the Kennedy interview as part of his curriculum at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley. Carter was in dreadful shape, Kennedy was political royalty and the enthusiasm for his candidacy at the Democratic grassroots “looked like it was going to sweep him to the nomination.

“And then he did that one interview,” Schnur recollected, “and he couldn’t answer the most basic question.”

Though Kennedy ended up giving Carter a stiff challenge, he never fully recovered from leaving that terrible impression.

Harris should take heed.

A recent poll by the L.A. Times and UC Berkeley gave her a 50% approval rating among California voters, which is not exactly a number to beat the band. Still, she would enter the governor’s race as a heavy favorite to at least make the runoff under the state’s top-two election system. If a Republican nabbed the second spot, Harris would be strongly positioned to win in November, given California’s strong Democratic leaning.

But, again, neither is a reason for Harris to be governor.

Some of those close to the former vice president wonder how much she really wants, or would enjoy, the job.

In 2015, when the governorship and a U.S. Senate seat both came open, Harris — the state’s attorney general at the time — opted to seek the latter. Her reasons were both personal, involving family considerations, and professional, given the platform and opportunities afforded a member of the Senate.

In short, Harris has never burned with a passion to be California governor.

That makes it all the more important for her to explain — clearly and convincingly — why she’d want to be elected.

“She’s got to give some affirmative reason why she’s running and why it would be good for the voters of California,” Schnur said. “And it’s not just a matter of constructing several words into a sentence.

“It’s not hard for someone as smart as Kamala Harris and her team to concoct a lab-tested phrase that tests well,” he went on. “The challenge isn’t typing out a sentence. It’s developing a core purpose that can then be explained in a sentence.”

Harris has all summer to look inward and figure that out. If she can’t, California voters should choose someone else for their next governor.