Richard “Dick” Cheney, the 46th vice president of the United States and one of the most influential and divisive figures in modern American politics, remains in the news more than six months after his death. On June 1, 2026, CNN published a report based on once-confidential Supreme Court documents revealing that Justice Antonin Scalia had privately maneuvered to bring Cheney’s energy task force case before the high court in 2003 — just weeks before the two men embarked on a now-infamous duck-hunting trip that sparked one of the most enduring ethics controversies in Supreme Court history.
Cheney died on Nov. 3, 2025, at the age of 84, from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. His passing came just over a year after he stunned Washington by endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race — a decision that cemented his late-in-life break from the Republican Party he once helped define.
The White House lowered its flags to half-staff on the morning of Nov. 4, 2025, in accordance with federal law, but the gesture was notably muted. President Donald Trump, whose feud with the Cheney family stretched back years, issued no public statement on the death of the former vice president and did not attend the funeral, held Nov. 20, 2025, at Washington National Cathedral.
The Break With Trump and the Harris Endorsement
Cheney’s most surprising chapter came at the end. After the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, he and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, became among the most vocal Republican critics of Trump. Liz Cheney was one of just two Republicans in Congress to join the select committee investigating Jan. 6, serving as vice chair. She was defeated in a 2022 primary election by a Trump ally in Wyoming, but continued her crusade, campaigning for Harris in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign.
Dick Cheney’s own endorsement of Harris was historic. In a statement released in September 2024, he declared: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.”
Trump responded by calling Cheney “an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!” He also blasted the former vice president as “the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris.”
A Family’s Farewell
In their statement announcing his death, the Cheney family struck a tone far removed from the political battles of his final years. They described him as a “noble giant of a man” who taught his children and grandchildren “to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing.”
Former President George W. Bush, who served alongside Cheney for eight years, released a statement calling his death “a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends” and describing him as “among the finest public servants of his generation.” Bush wrote that Cheney “brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held.”
Schmuhl, reflecting on Cheney’s complicated legacy, said that “historians will write that his was a consequential life that raised questions about the proper role of a vice president in the American system of government.” For better or worse, the office he occupied — and reshaped — will not soon be the same.
Cheney’s name remained in the news cycle months after his death. On June 1, 2026, CNN reported that once-confidential Supreme Court documents — drawn from the papers of the late Justice John Paul Stevens — revealed that Justice Antonin Scalia had privately driven the court to accept Cheney’s energy task force case in 2003, persuading colleagues to reverse an initial vote to reject the appeal. The disclosure renewed attention to one of the most enduring judicial ethics controversies of the Bush era: Scalia’s duck-hunting trip with Cheney, which took place just weeks after the court agreed to hear the case.