You ever notice that every year around Halloween, someone forgets to turn off the spooky music in Washington? Because right now, 27 days into the government shutdown, it feels less like politics and more like a haunted house no one wants to tour. The halls of Congress are full of cobwebs, everyone’s pointing at ghosts that aren’t there, and the only thing scarier than the budget impasse might be the cafeteria food still sitting uneaten in the Senate dining room. Meanwhile, here in The Update studio, things couldn’t look more alive. We’ve turned this place into a Halloween wonderland—cobwebs (the decorative kind), fake spiders, a skeleton that looks suspiciously like one of my old producers, and a fog machine that has set off the fire alarm twice already. The place is decked out like the world’s weirdest mix between “Meet the Press” and “Monster Mash.”

In the headlines on #TheUpdate this Monday, we continue our coverage of The Road To City Hall. With 8 days to go until the general election, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani rallied supporters with heavyweight support from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the race enters its final stretch, telling a raucous crowd that his campaign is a “movement of the masses.” Meanwhile, polling places opened Saturday for the start of in-person voting for two of the year’s most closely watched elections: the New York City mayor’s race and the contest to pick New Jersey’s next governor.

We learned that Nick Mangold, a two-time All-Pro center who helped lead the Jets to the AFC championship game twice, has died, the team announced Sunday. He was 41.

And in Washington, The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out Nov. 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on.