Veterans Day.
Arlington National Cemetery is 639 acres on a hill above the Potomac River, four miles from the Capitol. The federal government seized the property in 1864 from the family of Robert E. Lee, after Mary Anna Lee couldn’t pay property taxes in person as federal law required (Arlington National Cemetery). The first burial was Private William Christman of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry, on May 13, 1864. The Union Army’s quartermaster general, Montgomery Meigs, later ordered Union officers buried close to the Lee mansion specifically to ensure the property could never be returned to the family (Arlington National Cemetery). That calculation worked. It has held for 162 years.
The cemetery now holds more than 400,000 veterans. It’s the country’s most visited national cemetery. It’s where presidents are buried, where unknown soldiers are honored with a continuous guard, and where families return year after year to leave flowers at graves that don’t answer back. That’s the place at the center of a federal lawsuit filed this week.
Nine members of the Kennedy family, including children and grandchildren of Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy, filed papers on Tuesday seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s plan to build a 250-foot triumphal arch at a traffic circle across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial. The proposed arch would be visible from the Kennedy gravesites. It would, according to the family’s filing, “permanently cast a shadow over the graves of servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice,” including the graves of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy, and JFK’s Eternal Flame.
Rory Kennedy and Maxwell Kennedy said in a statement: “A towering arch casting shadows across the graves of our father, mother, and uncles…would also cast a shadow over our democratic principles.”
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had already blocked any construction-related activity for 14 days, finding the plan is likely illegal. The National Capital Planning Commission approved the arch last week. Its members were appointed largely by the current administration. Vietnam War veterans have filed a separate lawsuit. The White House said it is “confident we will be fully vindicated” and looks forward to “seeing the completion of this magnificent Arch, a tribute to 250 years of American greatness.” The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall. This arch would be 250.
(CBS News reported the Kennedy family intervention on November 10.)
The House voted 211 to 204 on Tuesday to refer Thomas Massie’s impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Judiciary Committee, effectively killing it.
Massie voted with all Democrats against the motion. Everyone else in the Republican majority voted to refer. The resolution had accused Hegseth of launching the Iran War without congressional authorization, ordering extrajudicial killings, directing the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and other alleged abuses. Democrats needed five Republicans to support impeachment. They got one, who is retiring in January anyway.
Massie said Monday he wouldn’t file another impeachment resolution, but planned to force a vote on a war powers resolution. “My diagnosis of Congress is these people know what to do,” he said. “They just can’t bring themselves to do it.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the referral vote was “not the end of it. It’s just the beginning.” Hegseth called the effort a “farce.” President Trump posted on Truth Social that it had “miserably FAILED!”
The 1973 War Powers Resolution has never been successfully enforced by Congress against a sitting president. Every president since Nixon has denied its constitutionality. Congress has had the authority to cut off funding, force votes, and override vetoes since the act passed over Nixon’s veto. It hasn’t done those things in a sustained way in 53 years. What Tuesday’s vote changed isn’t the law. It’s the House membership, which flips to Democratic control in January, and the enforcement math that comes with it.
(CBS News reported the vote and the final count.)
British police arrested a senior U.S. Army officer on Tuesday on suspicion of espionage for Russia.
The suspect is 41 years old. He wasn’t publicly identified. A U.S. official told CBS News he is a senior officer based at Imjin Barracks near Gloucester, England, which serves as the headquarters of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. He was arrested near Gloucester and held at a London police station.
UK police arrested him under the National Security Act of 2023: obtaining or disclosing protected information, and assisting a foreign intelligence service. UK Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans said: “The allegations are serious and our investigation is very much ongoing. This activity demonstrates the strength of our UK and US law enforcement and national security partnerships.” FBI Director Kash Patel said: “This FBI has no tolerance for anyone who breaks their oath to the United States and whose actions endanger our national security.”
The Allied Rapid Reaction Corps is NATO’s primary deployable warfighting headquarters. What the suspect may have known, and what he may have shared, isn’t yet public.
The list of Americans caught spying for Russia runs long. Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence agent, sold Soviet and later Russian intelligence operational secrets for 22 years before his 2001 arrest. Because his job was catching spies, he knew how to avoid being caught. Aldrich Ames, a CIA case officer, sold agent identities to the KGB between 1985 and 1994. The pattern has been consistent enough across four decades that MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum said last month that Russia is “aggressor number one” on threats against the United Kingdom. British police noted the case is unrelated to a separate investigation involving an alleged Iranian plot at RAF Fairford.
(CBS News broke the arrest and published U.S. official confirmation on November 10.)
The fourth round of US-Russia-Ukraine peace talks continued in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, into their second day, with no breakthrough reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the discussions “constructive and quite substantive” in remarks reported Tuesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking separately, rejected European demands for an immediate ceasefire. That’s the same position Russia has held throughout four rounds of talks. The session runs through today.
Separately, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the United States sees “no need” to resume major combat operations against Iran, saying economic sanctions are working effectively. The two items aren’t formally linked, but they come from the same hour of news: the United States is managing two active conflicts through the same diplomatic instruments, trying to hold ceasefires in place with economic pressure and intermittent talks while keeping doors open in both directions.
(CBS News reported Rubio’s Iran comments on November 10.)
House Republicans elected Jim Jordan of Ohio as their new minority leader on Tuesday, the first organizational vote since last week’s midterms, in which Republicans lost more than 40 House seats.
Jordan defeated Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana 106 to 73. Speaker Mike Johnson said he is stepping down from leadership and hasn’t committed to staying in Congress. Tom Emmer of Minnesota will serve as minority whip. Lisa McClain of Michigan will chair the conference. Brian Jack of Georgia will lead the NRCC. In the Senate, John Thune was reelected as Republican leader.
Jordan: “Over the next two years, House Republicans will fight for American families. When Democrats offer more government, we’ll offer more freedom.”
A party lost more than 40 House seats in the 1974 midterm, when Watergate cost Republicans 48 seats (U.S. House History). The party spent 20 years in the minority before Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America flipped the House in 1994. That’s the historical frame. What’s different now is the timeline: Democrats hold the majority for two years, not necessarily 20. Whether the Republicans’ strategy in the next 24 months looks more like 1975 or 1993 is the question the leadership votes this week are starting to answer.
(CBS News reported the Jordan election and vote count.)
Something good.
The national average price of gasoline fell below four dollars a gallon on Tuesday for the first time in nearly four months, according to AAA. The last time the national average was below four dollars was mid-July.
Three things drove it down. Fuel retailers across the country’s northern half switched from summer-blend to winter-blend gasoline, which costs roughly ten to fifteen cents less per gallon to produce. Travel demand eased after the summer and fall travel seasons. And global oil prices dropped on optimism that U.S.-Iran negotiations could reduce the disruption the war has caused in oil-producing regions.
The October inflation report released Tuesday showed energy prices rose 0.7 percent for the month, down from 5.2 percent in September. The Federal Reserve is still expected to raise rates at its December meeting, and core inflation came in hotter than forecasters expected. Those are real headwinds. But four dollars a gallon was real money for real people over four months, and it’s not four dollars anymore.
(AAA data via the CBS News CPI report, published November 10.)
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Saturday.
