Stephen Miller takes over as chief of staff
Today is Sunday, November 8, 2026
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- Good morning, and welcome to Hark News. Here's what the world got up to while you slept. First, the weather in New York. A high of 60 and a low of 46, with cloudy skies.
- Trump has replaced Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff, days after the midterm losses. Politico called Miller a wartime consigliere, and Axios described a leader who believes in near-limitless presidential power and treats the Democratic Party as an extremist organization.
- James Talarico won a Texas Senate seat by 12 points, despite Elon Musk reportedly spending at least $225 million to keep the state Republican. Heather Cox Richardson quoted his line that the real fight is top versus bottom, not left versus right.
- Beyond Congress, Democrats swept statewide offices in several states. Axios said they took attorney general seats in Texas and Georgia, and flipped secretary of state posts in Georgia, Ohio and Indiana.
- The Washington Post traced the GOP collapse to a strategy of putting Trump front and center, including taxpayer-funded ads about the Iran war and about 30 rallies in the final weeks.
- Semafor reported that Democrats now control several swing-state legislatures and governorships, but their leaders are talking moderation. The new governor-elect in Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, said she intends to govern neither left nor right.
- Axios and Politico both report that Vice President JD Vance has been running indirect talks with Iran aimed at a new ceasefire. Trump is letting diplomacy play out, but the military is ready for strikes on short notice.
- House Republicans hold leadership elections on Tuesday, and Senator Ron Johnson wants them pushed back. Politico says many Republicans are quietly angry and resigned to a clash with the White House.
- Vice President JD Vance has spent the past two weeks personally involved in indirect talks with Iran, aimed at a new ceasefire and a return to nuclear negotiations.
- Elon Musk says Tesla will stop building the Cybertruck at its Texas plant by mid-2027, to make room for the autonomous Cybercab. Morning Brew notes the truck sold only about 73,000 units in total, far short of Musk's forecast of 250,000 a year.
- The US added 165,000 jobs in October, well above forecasts, and unemployment edged down to 4.1 percent. Analysts think the Federal Reserve now has room to consider raising rates in December, which is a change of tone.
- Noah Smith says he is becoming a China bear. His main reason is AI, which he thinks China's tightly optimized system will struggle to adapt to.
- CNN reports that Benny Eisenkot will be asked to form the next Israeli government. It's a setback for Prime Minister Netanyahu, though CNN notes the path remains complicated.
- The New York Times reports Flávio Bolsonaro is in Miami, making unfounded claims that Brazil's election was stolen, even though his own party is not challenging the result.
- Pastor Paul Mackenzie has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for the mass deaths of children in his Kenyan cult, after he ordered followers to starve.
- Pope Leo has begun a 12-day tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, his longest trip yet. The Vatican says he has fully recovered from lung surgery.
- Scientists report what they call the strongest evidence yet of red blood cell remnants in a dinosaur, a 115 million year old Brazilian species. They found structures resembling blood cells and chemical traces of heme.
- Archaeologists in Siberia found more than 1,400 cannabis seeds in a nearly 3,000 year old tomb. Hair from the burial tested positive for THC, which suggests psychoactive use, possibly in rituals.
- Researchers have mapped how octopuses squeeze through tight gaps, using a coordinated sequence of arm movements. The findings could guide flexible search and rescue robots that carry more tools than today's snake-like designs.
- NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered the atmosphere over Indonesia after a failed rescue mission in July. NASA says no debris had been reported on the ground.
- A small clinical trial suggests that an intensive program of diet and exercise can help younger adults reverse type 2 diabetes. The newsletter from CNN's Life, But Better team walks through what that program involved.
- CNN Travel tells the story of David English, who planned a big contract on September 11, 2001, then left New York for Mendoza, Argentina, a year later.
- Karl Bushby completed a walk around the world that began in 1998, arriving at his mother's home in northern England after 28 years and 31,000 miles.
- An Italian chef in Queensland says he was fired for refusing to put pineapple on pizza. The tribunal threw out his claim because it was filed too late, not because he was wrong.
- Melissa Kirsch in the Times argues that humans should not hibernate through winter. She suggests borrowing from reptiles, which brumate: slowing down but staying aware, and still getting out to bask in the sun.
- And that's your world for today. The full stories and the links are waiting in the app. Tap through, bookmark what matters, and share what's worth sharing. And if you want to see what stuck, take today's quiz in the app: five quick questions. And if Hark is making your mornings a little better, share it with a friend. It's the best way to help us grow. I'll see you again tomorrow morning. Until then, have a great day.