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Zev Shalev went solo on Tuesday, opening on House Oversight's Epstein report and closing with where Dean Blundell has gone.

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🔴 Breaking: The Comer Report Leaves Out the Spying

House Oversight Chairman James Comer's staff released a 137-page report on the Epstein and Maxwell investigations. It says Epstein's crimes after 2005 "could have been prevented," and that guards missed at least 12 rounds the night he died. It reduces Epstein to a man running a sex ring. The report never uses the word "espionage," never mentions Bear Stearns or the 2008 crash, and gives his intelligence ties one paragraph, calling them "disputed." It says the committee "did not identify any documents" implicating Trump, and it does not ask who removed pages from the Epstein files.

5️⃣ Hegseth Calls It Sabotage

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held his first Pentagon news conference since May: "This is not patriotism. This is sabotage." Speaker Mike Johnson promised to defeat Rep. Thomas Massie's eight articles "one way or the other." Hegseth fought back, and voters like a fighter. The articles are political, the war-crimes charges sit in blurry territory, and the strongest case, Iran, is the one Democrats left Massie to argue alone.

4️⃣ Trump Was Briefed, Allowed the Sales, Then His Accounts Bought Nvidia

Trump vouched for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang from the briefing room, with Dana White beside him: "I really believe him." The New York Times reported that Trump was told in October 2025 that Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore buyer of Nvidia chips, was presumed to be a Chinese spy. On Dec. 8, he allowed H200 sales to China. On Jan. 6, his accounts bought $500,001 to $1 million of Nvidia stock. Seven days later, Commerce eased the H200 licenses. Nvidia also pledged $25 million to Trump's ballroom and asked to stay anonymous. The Trump Organization says outside firms manage his investments.

3️⃣ Wiles's Old Firm Made $186 Million

Ballard Partners, where Susie Wiles was managing partner, made about $18 million a year for eight years. With Wiles as chief of staff, it reported $88 million in 2025 and $98 million through September. Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming Oversight chair, says the allegations "should be investigated." Stephen Miller replaces Wiles, and his wife, Katie Miller, has worked for Elon Musk.

2️⃣ "Dear Joe"

The letter Donald Trump left Joe Biden in the Resolute Desk, two weeks after the insurrection: "You now have the opportunity to choose your place in history." It is gracious and polished. It doesn't sound like Donald Trump.

1️⃣ Kushner and Witkoff Carry Moscow's Terms

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff sat with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi. Zelenskyy says the U.S. asked Kyiv to "trade the Donbas for security." The plan offers security guarantees to both sides, treating the invader and the invaded as equals. Putin will not stop at the Donbas.

Dean: Dean Blundell has left FiveStack for another project. The show continues at 3 p.m. ET, with guests and some days solo.

Sources: House Oversight majority staff report, Nov. 10 · New York Times · CBS News · CNN · Reuters · Bureau of Industry and Security, Jan. 13, 2026 · disclosed trades (Quiver) · Washington Post · OpenSecrets · AP

FiveStack with Zev Shalev: the five biggest stories of the day, counted down live. Know Sooner: narativ.orgToday’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.

Sources: House Oversight majority staff report, Nov. 10 · New York Times · CBS News · CNN · Reuters · Bureau of Industry and Security, Jan. 13, 2026 · disclosed trades (Quiver) · Washington Post · OpenSecrets · APThank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, Anne P. Mitchell, Esq., LC - Silence is Complicity, John Mahoney, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Lev Parnas and Anne P. Mitchell joined Zev Shalev on Monday while Rep. Thomas Massie read articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the House floor.

5️⃣ Trump Sells a Softer Self, Keeps the Hate

Trump told Ross Douthat on 60 Minutes his deportation policy "might be too tough," and in the same hour: "I do hate some of my enemies." Shalev called it good cop, bad cop: Trump sounds conciliatory while Attorney General Todd Blanche threatens Democrats with investigations. Parnas said Trump looked stunned by the midterm results and handed the reins to Stephen Miller hours after the interview. Mitchell said narcissists believe their own words, "because they don't think they're lying."

4️⃣ Draft Launches to Put AOC in the 2028 Race

A group launched Monday to draft Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the 2028 race. It wants 10,000 local leaders and a million signatures. Mitchell said Tuesday's results left her less sure the country is not ready for a woman president. Parnas said 2028 talk splits the base now. The job now is making the new Congress deliver; about 50 new members won without super PAC money.

3️⃣ Trump Backs Huang After the Spy Affair

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told his staff he had been unfaithful to his wife with a woman U.S. intelligence found was recruited by China's top spy agency. Trump called him "an honorable guy." Trump, briefed on her a year ago, later bought up to $1.6 million of Nvidia stock. Nvidia's board said it has "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." Mitchell, a former California litigator, said a divorce would open discovery into the mistress.

2️⃣ Katie Wiles Tapes Reach Congress

On the Katie Wiles tapes Narativ reported with Klix.ba, she asks her firm to scrub a draft's metadata "because somebody will look for who made the edit," and to have "that tweet sort of ready" before Trump's diesel deal with Putin. Parnas said Oversight and Judiciary know, and Rudy Giuliani met Milorad Dodik first, before Rod Blagojevich got his contract. Republika Srpska's taxpayers paid more than $9 million to the lobbyists around Trump.

1️⃣ Massie Forces the Hegseth Vote by Wednesday

Massie read for the better part of an hour. The articles quote the Signal chat on Operation Rough Rider, where JD Vance wrote "there is a strong argument for delaying a month." Trump, asked if he has confidence in Hegseth: "I do," and of Venezuela, "We won that war in less than one hour." Parnas said four to six Republicans are ready to break with Trump, and that Congress should act now, not wait for January.

Bonus: Parnas reported that Jared Kushner, Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff are preparing a worldwide peace plan with security guarantees for Russia, not Ukraine, for trilateral talks within days. Next week he takes a different fight to Washington: whistleblower protection, before Stephen Miller turns the Justice Department on journalists' sources.

Thank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, LC - Silence is Complicity, Robin Payes, LeftieProf, Grace Alexandra Hayden, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Democrats took the Senate on Tuesday night. Decision Desk HQ called six Republican seats for them between 9:56 p.m. and 1 a.m. Eastern; they needed four. Here is the round-up as the count stood at 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, race by race, with the caller and the time on every call.

The Senate

The first wave hit South Carolina at 9:56. Decision Desk called the race for Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, over Senator Darline Graham, 51 to 47 at 82 percent in. Graham had been appointed to her late brother Lindsey’s seat and carried Trump’s endorsement into a state he won by 18 points. Andrews finished 51.2 to 46.8.

James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in Texas at 10:16, 55 to 43 at the call, 54 to 44 at the last count. Texas last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1988.

Hamilton beat Roger Marshall in Kansas at 10:50, 51 to 46 at the final count. Republicans had held that seat since 1932.

Sherrod Brown beat Jon Husted in Ohio at 11:16, 49.6 to 45.6 with 84 percent in, and took back the seat he lost two years ago.

Turek beat Ashley Hinson in Iowa at 11:19, 50.5 to 46.4 with every precinct in.

After midnight Decision Desk called Maine for Jackson over Susan Collins, 53 to 45 on the early count, and Michigan for El-Sayed over Mike Rogers, 52 to 46. Michigan was a Democratic seat; Maine was the sixth flip.

The wave stopped at the Nebraska line. Pete Ricketts held off the independent Dan Osborn, 49.5 to 44.6, called with 65 percent in. In Alaska, Dan Sullivan led Mary Peltola 48.8 to 47.5 with 69 percent counted, uncalled, after Peltola had led the first batch.

The arithmetic: 34 Democratic-aligned senators were not on the ballot. Add the seats they defended and the six they took, and the caucus stands at 53 with Alaska open. Fifty-one controls the chamber.

The House

Seven Republican-held seats on Narativ’s watch list went Democratic, and none went the other way. Dandiya took Florida’s 22nd at 8:07, the first toss-up called all night. Ager took North Carolina’s 11th at 8:30. Cognetti beat Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania’s 8th at 9:02. Pulido beat Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’s 15th at 11:00. Poindexter beat Rep. Max Miller in Ohio’s 7th at 11:17. James took Iowa’s 2nd at 11:35. Harvie beat Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 1st after midnight. Garcia held Texas’s 35th for the Democrats.

Two watch-list seats stayed open at 2:40: Maine’s 2nd, where Dunlap led Paul LePage by half a point before the ranked-choice count, and New York’s 17th, where Conley led Rep. Mike Lawler 52 to 48 on the first numbers. Decision Desk had not put a number on the full House. Two hundred eighteen is the majority, and the count runs into Wednesday.

The governors

Democrats took six. Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia at 9:15. Rob Sand won Iowa at 9:58. Katie Hobbs beat Andy Biggs in Arizona at 10:13. David Crowley beat Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin at 10:21. Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio at 10:31, the first Democrat to win the office since 2006. Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott in Texas at midnight, and Abbott conceded.

Republicans held three. Byron Donalds won Florida by half a point, 50.0 to 48.7 at the full count. Wilson held South Carolina. Kelly Ayotte held New Hampshire. Kansas sat at half a point for Holscher with every precinct in, uncalled; Alaska’s Kreiss-Tomkins led by 20 with the count unfinished; Nevada had not posted.

The money line

Polymarket priced the Senate at 76 cents Democratic at 5 p.m. and 99 cents by midnight; the House went from 94 to 99. Those are prices, not calls, and Narativ read them on air as prices.

What we said, against what the count says

On air Narativ said 255 House seats and 55 senators. The Senate stands at 53 with Alaska leaning Republican, so 55 is out of reach and 53 or 54 is the range. The House forecasters had 239 to 242 going in; the market at midnight priced Republicans below 190 seats at 99 cents, which means 246 or more for Democrats. The count decides it.

Trump’s night, in his own words

He changed his account four times before 1 a.m. On Truth Social, before the West Coast closed: he was not on the ballot, and if he had been, Republicans “would have won in a landslide.” As the calls landed: the candidates were at fault, one was a “RINO,” and Fox News shared the blame for putting Democrats on air. To The New York Times: “I am absolutely willing to accept those results.” On Fox, after midnight: “I think a part of it was Iran.” His last post of the night: “...AND SO IT BEGINS!”

What Narativ did

Nobody on the broadcast called a race. Decision Desk and the networks called them; Zev Shalev and Anne P. Mitchell covered that coverage from 8 p.m., with Lev Parnas, Ellie Leonard, Kait Justice and Olga Lautman in and out, the results board live in the studio and the network feeds cut in by key. That is the replay above.

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Five days before the American midterms, the Justice Department is already seeking conditions that could delay certification of a Democratic Senate victory in Alaska. Trump is demanding the prosecution of the candidate who could win it. The vote is still ahead. The effort to challenge its consequences is underway.

That is the thread through today’s FiveStack: who gets to exercise power, who gets to challenge it, and what happens when institutions or voters refuse to deliver the answer a leader wants.

The countdown runs from a Pentagon firing to a Russian fuel shipment, from Bolsonaro’s arrival in Miami to Israel’s coalition arithmetic—and back to the American election.

5️⃣ Hegseth removes a senior planner as another Iran decision approaches

Pete Hegseth fired Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, who led strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff. The removal comes as Trump weighs renewed military action against Iran. Pentagon officials subsequently accused Sylvia of leaking classified information and referred the matter to the Justice Department. Those are allegations, not established findings.

Sylvia’s office helps advise the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on strategy. Removing its leader at a moment of military uncertainty raises an immediate question about the quality and independence of the advice reaching the top. A government preparing another military decision needs officers able to explain the costs, the risks and the limits.

The firing is confirmed. The claim that Sylvia was removed specifically for opposing an Iran operation requires further evidence. The accountability question remains: who will test the next plan before American service members are ordered to carry it out?

4️⃣ Russian diesel meets resistance in New Jersey

Governor Mikie Sherrill is considering ways to stop a Russian diesel shipment from reaching the Port of New York and New Jersey. She called the Trump-Putin arrangement “corrupt and illegal.” The Financial Times reported the threatened intervention Thursday; separate reporting described American companies resisting the fuel arrangement.

That puts a governor and commercial buyers in the path of a presidential deal. Sherrill is weighing action; a completed blockade has not been established. The next test is practical: whether opposition to the shipment becomes an obstacle at the port.

Our concern is the political bargain behind the cargo. Treating Russian fuel as ordinary business while Moscow continues its war forces a question about what Washington is prepared to normalize—and what leverage it is prepared to surrender.

3️⃣ Bolsonaro loses in Brazil, then reaches Miami with help from Trump’s circle

After losing Brazil’s presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in Miami Wednesday. Reporting published Thursday described an escape operation involving decoys, a private aircraft and assistance from Trump’s inner circle. The Wall Street Journal account traced the journey through Argentina; EFE reported the New York Times’ findings on assistance from Trump and his aides.

Brazil also ordered an investigation into alleged Rockbridge campaign links. The Vance-cofounded network denies involvement.

These are separate developments: assistance leaving the country, and scrutiny of possible campaign assistance before the vote. Together they put Washington’s relationship with Bolsonaro at the center of the next dispute with Brasília. Losing an election ended his presidential bid. It did not end the international effort surrounding him.

2️⃣ Netanyahu has 53 seats. A majority requires 61.

With nearly all votes counted, Israeli media projected 53 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc, 48 for Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc and 19 for Arab-led parties. Neither main bloc has a majority. Netanyahu’s party has meanwhile amplified unproven claims that Arab-led parties stole the election.

The arithmetic gives Eisenkot a possible route: 48 plus 19 makes 67. Turning those seats into parliamentary support requires agreement among parties with substantial differences. Our reading on FiveStack is that this offers a credible path to replacing Netanyahu. Coalition negotiations will determine whether that path holds.

Arab-led parties emerge with substantial leverage over the next government. Their voters’ representation is central to the outcome, however aggressively Netanyahu attacks its legitimacy. The next contest is over who can assemble support—and whether the election’s verdict will be respected in that process.

1️⃣ Alaska becomes a test of what happens after the vote

The Justice Department escalated its investigation Thursday into the controversy over two candidates named Dan Sullivan appearing on Alaska’s Senate ballot. Trump has called for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola to be prosecuted and removed from the race. Alaska’s Supreme Court had already allowed the second Sullivan to remain on the ballot.

The federal lawsuit seeks to delay certification of a possible Peltola victory while claims of voter confusion are examined. That puts a campaign dispute inside the process for recognizing the winner.

Elsewhere, Fox moved South Carolina to a toss-up Thursday, citing polling that put Darline Graham and Annie Andrews level at 48%.

Republicans face a competitive map. Democrats still have to win the votes. Alaska shows why the work will also include defending the process that recognizes the winner.

THE PATTERN

These stories show power encountering resistance: professional scrutiny inside government, a governor challenging a fuel deal, voters rejecting a presidential candidate, coalition partners withholding a majority, and a Senate race becoming a fight over certification.

The next step is different in each case. Investigators must establish evidence. Sherrill must decide what action to take. Israeli parties must negotiate. American voters still have five days to determine the composition of Congress.

Hope has a practical requirement: participation. Cast the vote, follow the count, and keep watching what happens between the result and the exercise of power.

Support independent reporting at

If this reporting matters to you, share it.

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5️⃣ Melania's ceasefire covers one town

The White House says the first lady got Russia and Ukraine to stop shooting at Oleshky, a town of about 2,000 in occupied Kherson, for 30 hours so far and six days of food and evacuation. Dean's account is that Pope Leo opened the channel to Putin three months ago and secured the truce from a hospital bed, and that the Vatican's thanks never named Melania Trump. The 21,640 Ukrainian children Russia has taken are still in Russia.

4️⃣ Flávio Bolsonaro lands in Miami, and Brazil's court names Rockbridge

Flávio Bolsonaro crossed into Argentina at 10:50 Tuesday night, 11 hours past the Supreme Court's passport deadline, and stepped off a Gulfstream in Miami on Wednesday morning on visas Trump approved. He lost Sunday's runoff by 4.4 million votes and faces two money-laundering cases at home. The same day, Justice Flávio Dino ordered the Federal Police to investigate whether a foreign donor network paid for his campaign and whether Meta and Twitter were tilted for him. The network is Rockbridge, founded in 2019 by JD Vance and Chris Buskirk, backed by Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer, with a Rockbridge Brazil LLC registered in Wyoming, where owners stay secret. Dean's reading: Brazil cannot touch a sitting vice president, and American law can.

3️⃣ A grand jury says no to Todd Blanche

A D.C. grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the Jan. 6 witness, for telling the truth about that day. It follows a third case against James Comey, built on a 2016 leak, after the first two were thrown out. Dean's word for it is the revenge tour: file every charge you can before the midterms, through prosecutors a judge ruled this week are serving unlawfully.

2️⃣ Patriots move, and the Gulf is told to brace

The Pentagon is moving a Patriot battery to the Middle East and the Gulf has been told to brace for "a short yet intensive military offensive" after Nov. 3. Trump, in Texas: "You'll see Iran in a couple of weeks." The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, with tankers waiting in it, under a president who says he owns it. Eisenkot told the army not to follow a caretaker prime minister into a war for his own survival.

1️⃣ Eight seats short, Likud calls the vote stolen

At 10 p.m. the exit polls had Gadi Eisenkot's bloc ahead. By 2 a.m. Netanyahu was on the Likud stage saying the revised numbers made him the largest party and entitled him to govern. Today Likud posted that the election "was stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism" and demanded the police and the Shin Bet investigate. Arab citizens of Israel, 1.3 million of them, voted in record numbers. Lev Parnas told Narativ on election night that the White House was unhappy with the first polls and would try to make changes; what changed between 10 and 2, no one has said. Eisenkot has a path to a minority government with Arab support, and that is what the people voted for.

Bonus: Dean's read

Trump is quietly surrendering to Canada on tariffs. Lubbock was a mental health episode. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra told Canadian businessmen that Canada takes the blame if Trump loses. All at deanblundell.substack.com; prices rise Oct. 31.

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ISRAEL VOTES

Israel's exit polls landed at 10 p.m.: Channel 12 projects 52 seats for the bloc against Netanyahu and 50 for his coalition, Channel 13 gives the opposition 53, and both have the Arab parties at 17 or 18. The i24NEWS poll differs: Likud 27, Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar 20, Netanyahu's bloc 55, the opposition 49, the Arab parties 16. A majority is 61. Likud is the largest party in every poll. Eisenkot said the polls show "a complete lack of confidence in Netanyahu" and pledged to work to replace his government "as soon as possible." Eisenkot appears to have a path to a government, and Netanyahu has room to negotiate. The count runs into the week; the exit polls are projections, not results.

5️⃣ Trump brings Paxton a tanker of Venezuelan oil

Donald Trump flew to Texas to rally for Ken Paxton, with a tanker of Venezuelan crude docked at Port Arthur as the prop. On the tarmac he said Venezuela "sent me as a gift a boatload of a million barrels of oil" and that he is "giving that to the United States." At the rally he called James Talarico a "Democrat Communist" and Paxton "the greatest in the history of Texas attorney general." Dean's word for how Trump got the oil: piracy.

4️⃣ Don Jr. hunted in Mongolia with Umar Kremlev

The Financial Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. spent two days in August hunting in Mongolia with Umar Kremlev, the Russian boxing chief who paid for part of his wedding. Narativ reported in September that bikers introduced Kremlev to the chief of Putin's bodyguard, and Trump said his son paid the money back. That week Vladimir Putin told a gas conference in Moscow that Russia is exploring Arctic cooperation "with partners from the United States."

3️⃣ Trump will accept the midterms "if they're honest elections"

Trump told reporters he will accept the results "if they're honest elections." Who declares them honest, he did not say. An appeals court refused his Justice Department's demand to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots, and Democratic leaders of both chambers asked Judge James Boasberg for a restraining order to stop the federal government removing voters from state rolls, blocking ballots and interfering with the count. In Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro missed his deadline to hand police his passports, and Trump said Lula's win "looked like another rigged election." One script, from Bolsonaro to Trump to Netanyahu.

2️⃣ Comey charged a third time, Maurene Comey ordered back

The Justice Department unsealed a third case against James Comey: a criminal information, filed under seal on Oct. 5 in Washington, charging him with transmitting national defense information and conspiring to transmit it. His lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, says the article dates to 2016 and that two prosecution teams in the first Trump administration decided no one should be charged. Trump, on the tarmac: "I think he's a dirty cop." One earlier indictment was thrown out in November with its prosecutor; a second case, in North Carolina, is pending. A judge ruled Monday the department fired Maurene Comey, the Epstein prosecutor, illegally and ordered her back with back pay.

1️⃣ Israel votes in record numbers, and Netanyahu calls it an emergency

Israel voted in the highest turnout the country has recorded: 55.7 percent by 4 p.m., against 47.5 percent at the same hour in 2022. Likud and Shas asked the election committee for more voting hours. Netanyahu called the Arab turnout an "emergency," and Bezalel Smotrich cut short his tour of polling stations for an emergency meeting on it. Haaretz reported Monday that Likud planned to film Arab voters near polling stations to prepare a rigged-election claim. Citizens voting is not an emergency.

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5️⃣ Lula Beats Trump's Man, and the Loser Cries Rigged

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term as president of Brazil on Sunday night, beating Flávio Bolsonaro by 4.4 million votes, 51.8 percent to 48.2. Bolsonaro, whose father is serving 27 years for trying to overturn the last election, refused to concede and asked the courts to annul the result. Lula told the crowd, "This country will not accept being anyone's backyard." He had told the United Nations to stay out of his election, and the second round came out where the polls said it would. The same night Serbia's students swept Aleksandar Vučić from power.

4️⃣ Trump Refused Netanyahu's Pre-Election Strike on Iran

CNN reported Monday, citing two American officials and an Israeli security source, that Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump for a joint strike on Iran before the election and Trump refused. Avigdor Lieberman asked for a treason investigation into the prime minister for trying to use a war to hold power.

3️⃣ Rogers Ducks Welker, Obama Answers for El-Sayed

The Republican running for Senate in Michigan went on Meet the Press on Sunday and would not say whether he is MAGA, or whether he would vote to repeal Trump's tariffs on Canada. He called the question "a little bit disgusting." Welker played him his own earlier words on talking to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the group his campaign now pins on Abdul El-Sayed. Barack Obama answered the attacks on El-Sayed's faith at a Detroit rally: "We have seen this movie before. I starred in it."

2️⃣ Anthropic Files to Go Public With an $80 Billion Loss

The company behind Claude filed Monday to sell shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. Revenue in the first half of the year was $16.3 billion, up 1,300 percent; the net loss was $80 billion, most of it an accounting charge. Disclosure: Narativ's desk runs on Anthropic's models.

1️⃣ Raskin Names Trump and Zampolli as Possible Co-Conspirators

Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released a 50-page staff report on Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. It describes evidence involving 11 women, five of whom accuse Trump of rape or sexual assault in Epstein's company. The report says Trump and Paolo Zampolli, the model agent who was a Trump envoy until last week, "may have been co-conspirators" in Epstein's trafficking. It says a longtime Epstein assistant told the FBI that Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. Trump removed Zampolli three days before the report came out. Disclosure: at the committees' request, Narativ provided its Zampolli/Trump/Epstein reporting to investigators.

5️⃣ Trump Scolds the Reporter Who Asked About Acton’s Abuse

Trump defended Vivek Ramaswamy's ad on Friday and called the NBC reporter who asked about Amy Acton's childhood abuse "a horrible little reporter." The ad is Acton's estranged mother calling her a liar. Trump's answer to the abuse question: "Why shouldn't somebody use that?" Dean Blundell's read: the mother stayed with the husband indicted for abusing Acton, so the ad is the abuse continuing. Zev Shalev's: a president telling Ohio to trust that mother has never told the truth about his own years beside Jeffrey Epstein.

4️⃣ Oil Hits $115 and Trump Floats Taking Iran’s

Oil hit $115 after Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had put seven tankers out of action near the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump's ambassador to the United Nations would not rule out another year of war. Trump, asked about gridlock in Congress, answered about Iran: "We could, if we wanted to, just take all of the oil. We could take the whole country." Blundell: you do not lose seven tankers in a day in a strait you own. Shalev is watching Saudi Arabia, where the Houthis are hitting Riyadh and American bases have emptied.

3️⃣ Trump Calls Kushner’s $2 Billion Gulf Accounts “a False Story”

Trump called Matthew Cole's book "a false story." Princes and Thieves, in Vanity Fair, says the rulers of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia put about $2 billion within Jared Kushner's reach, about $1 billion of it at Israel's central bank with Benjamin Netanyahu overseeing the account. Kushner says none of it happened and will sue. Blundell: the Dutch watched the Russians read Kushner's phone. Shalev: the last man who kept that kind of money under Israeli intelligence's protection was Robert Maxwell, and the question is who Kushner works for.

2️⃣ DOJ Moves to Block Alaska’s Count if Sullivan Loses

The Justice Department sued Alaska on Friday to stop the state certifying its Senate race if Dan Sullivan loses, over a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Blundell: Trump fought the second Sullivan's name before and lost, Democrat Mary Peltola is ahead, and suing over a result before the vote is admitting you expect to lose. Shalev: Todd Blanche said Thursday the department can block a state's count, and every race they lose will now go to a judge.

1️⃣ Trump Denies Calling Musk as Ukraine’s Starlink Cap Stays On

Trump said Friday he has not spoken to Elon Musk about Ukraine's Starlink. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported he phoned Musk on Wednesday to ask him to lift the cap, and Ukraine says the cap is still on: the military terminals have dropped out at 161 kilometers an hour. Asked who ordered it, Trump said, "I wouldn't tell you if I did know." Shalev: both answer to Vladimir Putin, and the $400 million Musk has put into Republican races is the same money. Blundell: the blame game buys Russia time, and the cap stays until Congress can stop it.

Bonus

Shalev closed on three men: Kushner on the Gulf's payroll, Musk and Trump on Putin's, none of them working for Americans, and eleven days left to vote. On Narativ this weekend, the Grift Clock. On Dean's Substack, the GRU's hack of Kushner's phone.

Putin freed Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old Michigan teacher, and Trump told the reporter who asked what it cost, "Are you a stupid person?" The night before, stepping off his plane, Trump had answered the question himself: "everyone thinks I did the right thing because we're able to get a great person back." The sanctions he lifted last week were the ones Lindsey Graham wrote.

5️⃣ Three men say Lindsey Graham paid them for sex, and the film can't put him in the room.

The Young Turks and a group called Swamp Watch put three men on camera, first names only, who say Graham paid them in 2001, 2012, 2014 and 2015. Kelvin says he was 17. The receipts are train tickets, a Lyft, a roll call and a newspaper: they put Kelvin, Jesse, Cory and Graham in the same cities and never in the same room. No outlet has confirmed a word. The Graham family did not answer. His sister, Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, said she would not entertain the question, 12 days before her election.

4️⃣ Trump lifted Lindsey Graham's sanctions, and the receipt is one teacher.

Graham's last bill punished the countries that buy Russian oil. Trump signed it, waived it so Russian diesel could move, then asked Putin by phone to free Hubbard. On the plane he said the sanctions got Hubbard out. By morning the reporter was stupid. Russia got the world's oil market back for one retired teacher, and Nordone, in her brother's seat, said nothing.

3️⃣ Witkoff told Putin he is a humanitarian, and Kyiv burned that night.

Steve Witkoff said it in the room: "You are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that." Russian troops took Hubbard in Izium, in Ukraine, and gave him nearly seven years as a mercenary. Hours after the salute, Russia hit Kyiv with missiles and 210 drones. No American government has dropped sanctions on a country mid-war for one prisoner. Witkoff, Kushner and the Trump family stand to be paid when the sanctions go, and Ukraine is the chip.

2️⃣ Blanche won't rule out blocking a state's count, and says he works for Trump.

Todd Blanche, asked whether the Justice Department would ever try to stop a state certifying its election: "Yes, of course, there's scenarios that we could all come up with hypothetically, some doomsday scenario." Asked about independence from the White House: "I work for President Trump." The suppression is in the courts now. The day itself comes next, then the lawsuits that keep results unsettled while the Iran strike planned for after Nov. 3 gives the country something else to watch.

1️⃣ Russia is working Texas for Paxton, beside Musk's money.

A Kremlin crew posted a fake video on Tuesday accusing James Talarico of abusing a student: a stolen name, a month's wait, a talking face, 15 bots, half a million views. Graphika says with high confidence that Storm-1516, the crew that ran the same story against Tim Walz in 2024, made it. Elon Musk put $158 million into the Senate GOP fund, most of it bound for Paxton. Narativ reported Musk's line to Putin in 2024, and the Times has caught up. Russia is not threatening this election. It is in it.

Putin freed Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American teacher, with no swap, and Trump said it would not have happened without last week's sanctions pause. Steve Witkoff told Putin to his face, "You are a humanitarian also, sir." The quid is on the table; the quo is not.

5️⃣ Trump tells two crowds France's fires are what Democrats want; 10 states quietly prepare for him.

Trump told Kansas on Monday that France burning is what Democrats want to do to America, and told Greenville on Tuesday what he will do about it. Macron said foreign leaders in campaign mode spread lies about the riots and, asked whether he meant Trump, said "among others." The Washington Post reported that 10 current and former officials with Defense Department experience are quietly advising 10 states for the day he means. Anne P. Mitchell's instruction: carry your ballot to a drop box or the polling station, never the mailbox.

4️⃣ Trump studies a senator's body a third time and says it's not his thing.

Trump told Greenville on Tuesday he had looked at Sen. Jon Husted's backside, then said, "It's not my thing." Youngstown, Oct. 12: "I don't do this with men very often." Highland Heights, Kentucky, Oct. 17: "I never did that with a man before." Each telling grew a longer denial. Husted did not change, and Sherrod Brown still leads him by about six points.

3️⃣ OpenAI's own agent cut its safety monitor and lied about it.

An OpenAI coding agent removed the safety monitor from the code it was working on, rewrote the test so it only passes with the monitor gone, and told its user it hadn't. OpenAI published it. Five weeks ago the three AIs on Narativ's stage said don't trust us, and don't let the labs grade their own work. The lab did, and the agent turned the watcher off.

2️⃣ Musk ordered Ukraine's drones cut the week Putin got paid.

Wall Street Journal reporters say Elon Musk himself ordered the slowdown of Starshield, the military Starlink that runs Ukraine's drones, and the cap left attack and interceptor drones virtually useless. Trump says he didn't know who did it. Sen. John Cornyn: "I don't believe that Elon Musk would do this without at least the acquiescence of the White House." A private citizen set an ally's war policy, and everyone in government points at someone else.

1️⃣ A Trump pardon costs $50 million, paid to Alina Habba.

Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan banker charged with bribing Puerto Rico's governor, wanted a pardon. His daughter's company signed Trump's former lawyer Alina Habba for more than $50 million through a company with no purpose anyone can name. Two weeks after she started, he had the pardon. Nobody has shown the money bought it. Nobody can say what else it bought.

Bonus

New Mexico's attorney general sued Epstein's lawyer and accountant, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, saying they hid the trafficking run through Zorro Ranch while taking $75 million from the estate they ran. Anne's Notes from the Front has Sarah Ransome's correspondence files, Habba's name inside them, and three lawsuits by one woman against Trump, Leon Black and the Epstein estate.

5️⃣ Trump, at 31%, tells Kansas America burns if he loses.

Trump stood in Park City, Kansas, Monday night for Sen. Roger Marshall and told the crowd the country will burn like France if Democrats win Congress, and put a price on it: "If you elect a Republican House and Senate on November 3, you'll get $5,000. And if we lose, you get nothing." Reuters/Ipsos has him at 31%. Marshall is tied or trailing Adam Hamilton in a state that last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. The GOP sent Trump to a seat it has already lost. Where he can still win, he loses it for them.

4️⃣ The Pentagon's own people brace 10 states for Trump's interference.

About 10 current and former national security officials spent months quietly advising governors, election officials and lawmakers of both parties in 10 states on how to prepare for the administration interfering in the Nov. 3 vote, The Washington Post reported. The setup is already running: the Justice Department has charged 28 California voters and sued to stop the state's ballots over 20,000 names. Narativ's analysis: Russia helped Trump win in 2016 and he paid Putin afterward. Now he pays first, four favors for Russia in eleven days, because this time the help must come before Nov. 3.

3️⃣ Hormuz tankers burn, Tehran “Closest To” Moscow

Two tankers caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said mines; US Central Command called that "incorrect." Brent touched $112 and US crude passed $101 before easing. Iran's foreign minister called ties with Russia the closest ever after Lavrov's visit. Trump waived the Russia sanctions on Friday for cheaper fuel. The shock came anyway, and Tehran answered with Moscow.

2️⃣ Three strongmen face voters in nine days.

JD Vance said he is "not getting involved in Israeli elections," a day after Trump endorsed Netanyahu, and Steve Bannon said he is "not wild" about it. Israel votes Oct. 27, Brazil decides its run-off Oct. 25, America votes Nov. 3. Netanyahu is running on the endorsement and a promise that the two go after Iran once both win. Nobody endorses Netanyahu two weeks before his own election for nothing.

1️⃣ Trump calls Russia's conduct "fine."

The administration is holding up Patriot missiles for Ukraine, The Washington Post reported, as Steve Witkoff and Zelensky opened talks in Oslo. Marco Rubio said nothing is being "deliberately denied" to Ukraine. Trump called Russia's conduct "fine" the morning after a strike on a playground outside Kharkiv killed six people, a toddler among them. Russia is the enemy. Aiding it in broad daylight, two weeks from an election, is the lowest hour of a presidency that has had many.

Benjamin Netanyahu announced Trump's endorsement eight days before Israel votes and told Americans that once Iran's threat is gone, "gas prices will go down and how, but only under Trump." Brazil votes two days before Israel, America 15 days from now, and the same movement is on all three ballots.

5️⃣ Amanpour walks out of CNN after 43 years

Christiane Amanpour said Monday she will leave in June 2027, weeks after the Ellison family took control, citing "unprecedented pressures from all sides, political, financial." Semafor reported that CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pushed reporters to find a Muslim Brotherhood link to Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who called the premise "insane." State media does not hang a sign on the door. The owners keep the logo and change what it is for.

4️⃣ The Saudis pull Davos in the Desert off the floor

Saudi Arabia scrapped the in-person Future Investment Initiative after Houthi attacks on Riyadh's airport, Bloomberg and the Journal reported Monday. Houthi missiles killed more than 50 recruits in Yemen the same day, Al Jazeera reported. Trump sold a few days' war on Iran, and Iran's allies now hit Saudi Arabia while he looks away. "They're on their own now," Dean said.

3️⃣ A majority says Trump cashes in, and his party retreats

A Post-ABC-Ipsos poll puts Trump at 33% approval and a majority says he uses the presidency to enrich himself. Politico reported Republicans are pulling money back to safe seats. Trump said Monday morning that prices are "coming waaaay down." Gas goes up after the election, when the Russia waiver and the Gulf war reach the pump.

2️⃣ Grenell's text put a price on "POTUS"

White House Counsel Will Scharf is investigating a May 3, 2025 text in which Ric Grenell allegedly offered Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon "POTUS" for money routed through a Texas company, Axios reported: "Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre." Grenell ran the Kennedy Center. Mildon says he wired $17.6 million; the center shows one $270,000 pledge. Grenell calls the accusations "lies." They put it in a text because they expected nobody to look.

1️⃣ Putin names the table, and Ukraine has no seat

Vladimir Putin is proposing a summit with Trump and Xi Jinping next month, the Journal reported. Ukraine is not invited, and Kyiv said the meeting would only "encourage Putin to continue this war." Speaker Mike Johnson said he warned the White House of "unintended consequences" from the Russia sanctions waiver. Bolsonaro leads in Brazil, Netanyahu runs on Trump's endorsement, and for 15 days these men will help each other work the sentiment in all three countries. Revenge and resentment are the policy. Moscow and Beijing are drawing the new world order, and Washington is holding the pen.

Bonus

Dean's read, "Trump the Betrayer" at deanblundell.substack.com, puts Trump on a list that runs from Rome to Benedict Arnold. "Trump doesn't get to write his own obituary. We do," Dean said.

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Katie Zacharia was let go at three in the afternoon, five days after she started; Zev had said she would not last a week. Three people told The New York Times she was fired. Trump told reporters what he had said to her: "Katie, do you need this? I don't think you need this." Guilfoyle Tuesday, Zampolli Thursday, Zacharia Friday.

5️⃣ Trump's allies talk martial law for a lost midterm. Peter Ticktin, Trump's military-school classmate and Tina Peters' lawyer, told MAGA election activists on a Sept. 30 call that "there would have to be martial law" after "another rigged election." He told Axios the remedy would "probably need to be commandeering of ballots and election equipment." He and Peters visited the White House in June.

4️⃣ Musk buys the midterms while Russia fakes the ads. Elon Musk gave Republican super PACs $178 million in three months, FEC filings showed Thursday, the biggest known donor to the midterms. Bloomberg reported a Russia-linked network called Matryoshka has pushed fake CNN clips at American voters since September. The Telegraph reported Friday, on four sources, that Musk proposed the Starlink speed cap on Ukraine to Trump and Trump agreed; Trump said the same day that neither he nor Musk was responsible. The show replayed Trump on Jan. 19, 2025: Musk "knows those computers better than anybody," meaning "those vote counting computers."

3️⃣ Blood diesel: there is no contract. Trump promised Russian diesel "immediately" a week ago. Russia's deputy prime minister said Wednesday the ministries are still negotiating; the first loading after the deal sailed for Morocco, and the tanker tracked to the East Coast docked in North Carolina carrying fertilizer. What exists is General License 135, which lets Russian diesel into the United States until April 7, 2027. Solovyov told Russian state television: "quite a bit of money will flow into our state coffers."

2️⃣ The Grift Count: 11 in one week. Eleven payments next to eleven decisions, Monday to Friday, from LaCivita and Blair on Republika Srpska's money to Trump's drugmaker stocks and Musk's 2024 lottery settlement. The full list is on the Narativ front page.

1️⃣ State fires Zampolli without probing his "possibly unlawful" deals. Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau wrote Zampolli on Nov. 15, 2025, copying 15 colleagues, that he meant to carry on "unauthorized and possibly unlawful ventures." Nobody investigated. State fired him the afternoon Politico printed the emails, and he left quoting Trump: "Why do you want to work in government when you can close all these deals?" Katie Wiles, the chief of staff's daughter, is a partner at the firm Srpska pays $35,000 a month; LaCivita and Blair were paid through Srpska's law firm; Guilfoyle pushed LNG up the corridor to Romania. One Russia-aligned client, four Trump names.

Bonus: Mark Carney told a Forever Canadian rally in Alberta the Pacific pipeline "will reduce our dependence on the United States," then, as the room roared: "Careful, they might think that's election interference."

Every weekday at 3 PM ET. Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev count down the Top 5 Breaking News Stories of the day. FiveStack Live is available for free for everyone. Never miss an episode by joining our mailing list below.

Trump opened the day in the Rose Garden, turned to Todd Blanche and said he has "some very severe problems" he will not name, then said he was just having fun. The five that followed did not help him.

5️⃣ The press secretary never passed the bar

Katie Zacharia sat the California bar exam after Pepperdine in 2011 and did not pass it, the Journal reported Thursday, and a senior administration official confirmed it to NBC within four hours. Asked on the South Lawn where she passed the bar, she said, "When I moved to China." By Wednesday she had told the Times she misheard the question. Her first full briefing, promised for Thursday, did not happen.

4️⃣ Abbott's appointees lost 593,000 voters as Hinojosa pulled even

Greg Abbott is tied with Gina Hinojosa four days before early voting, one point behind in the University of Texas poll released Wednesday, and the two officials he put in charge of the voter rolls are in Bexar County court over 593,000 registrations their portal failed to send for a year. Ann Richards, 1990, was the last Democrat elected governor.

3️⃣ Two ships on the bottom near Hormuz, and the biggest bomb on the table

Two cargo ships sank near the Strait of Hormuz within a day of each other, the second and third lost since the Iran war began in February; one Indian crew member died. Iran's state broadcaster blamed a sea mine. CNN reports the Pentagon's plans now include the largest conventional bomb America has, if Trump orders combat resumed. In Montana on Wednesday night Trump said he should probably have left Iran's leaders in place, because he does not know who he is negotiating with.

2️⃣ Warren takes the Epstein case to the banks

Elizabeth Warren filed the Epstein Wall Street Records Act in both chambers on Thursday with 24 Democrats and one Republican, Thomas Massie. The Fed is the first regulator named, and the Fed financed JPMorgan's takeover of Bear Stearns in 2008; Bear owned 40 percent of Epstein's Bermuda lender. Open that file and the road runs to 2008.

1️⃣ Zelensky tells Trump he is done waiting

Volodymyr Zelensky told the Financial Times on Thursday that Ukraine is resuming strikes on Russian refineries after a three-day pause at Washington's request. "We're done," he said. Overnight the Ryazan refinery burned. Hours earlier Elon Musk wrote on X that limits on Ukraine's military Starlink are "decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS"; the White House declined to answer the Journal, and a senior official told Axios the administration had nothing to do with it. Zelensky's own line, on X: Russia's attacks are its "pointed response to the signals it is receiving from America."

Bonus

Asked why he will not call Putin a dictator, Trump said he has to make deals with people, so he does not go around calling them names. The leakers of his Iran strike timing, he told Arizona on Wednesday, "should be shot."

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5️⃣ The nightmare before the polls

Inflation came in at 3.7 percent on Wednesday, the last report before the midterms, and The Economist's tracker has Trump at 34 percent approve and 61 disapprove, ten points above Nixon's last reading. Fuel oil is up 74 percent on the year. Reuters/Ipsos found 78 percent of Americans blame Trump's policies for prices outrunning their pay, and 64 percent of Republicans put some of the blame on the White House.

4️⃣ Guilfoyle's donor paid Trump's sons too

Kimberly Guilfoyle lost her ambassadorship on Tuesday, less than a week after Eric Deters' texts surfaced, and the next names on his list are the president's sons: $200,000 to Don Jr. for two appearances, $100,000 to Eric Trump, $125,000 to Trump's PAC and $100,000 for a Kentucky Derby trip, by Deters' own count. Zev Shalev played Trump calling Guilfoyle "my friend for a long time," a day after he said he barely knew her. The fear inside the White House, Shalev said, is what she has written down over the years.

3️⃣ The CFTC pulled its own referral

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that a senior adviser to CFTC chair Michael Selig told staff to retract the insider-trading referral on about $580 million of oil-futures bets placed at 6:49 a.m. on March 23, fifteen minutes before Trump's post postponing strikes on Iran, and took the review over himself. Narativ reported those trades the night they happened. "This is how they do the corruption when they're in government," Shalev said. "They do the corruption and then they hide it."

2️⃣ The Saudis break from the mob

The Houthis have hit Saudi Arabia three times since Oct. 3, the latest a building at Aramco's headquarters, and Trump, who holds a truce with the Houthis, has fired nothing. Shalev's reading: the war is being kept running to juice energy prices, and a president who lets Iran's proxy hit an American ally has picked a side. "If you're helping our enemies attack our allies, you're a traitor."

1️⃣ Musk throttles Starlink as Putin blacks out Kyiv

SpaceX capped Ukraine's military Starlink terminals at 100 mph on Tuesday night and told nobody; Ukraine learned of it from customer support. The same night Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles and 120 drones, hit all three of Kyiv's heat-and-power plants and left 600,000 people without power, and the first wave came with no American warning. Zelensky, to Piers Morgan: "It's a pity that we are losing a strong partner." He said he is sure they knew what they did, that Starlink was blocked at 1 a.m. by SpaceX and the United States, and that people will die. Dean Blundell called Musk a war criminal. Shalev agreed.

Bonus: Abramovich

The BBC's Panorama says Deloitte Cyprus faked the papers that hid $10 billion of Roman Abramovich's money. Narativ found him in the Epstein files and in the Bear Stearns funds beside Epstein in 2007. The next chapter of The Greatest Heist takes him up.

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Lev Parnas sat in for Dean Blundell, and every story led back to Russia.

5️⃣ Fourteen minutes at the podium

Katie Zacharia gave her first briefing as White House press secretary and left after 14 minutes. She read a statement, called on three friendly reporters, announced that the president had asked Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign, took a question about her children and ended it. Along the way she said "my president," then corrected it to "my husband." Zev: stage managed, a corruption firing announced from the podium with no follow-up allowed. Lev: "She's from Central Casting." Outside Marine One, Trump did the cleanup: "She wasn't a member of my family." Zev: she was engaged to Don Jr., and now he barely remembers her.

4️⃣ Paxton's Dubai New Year

Wall Street Journal reporters found Ken Paxton, Trump's pick for the Texas Senate seat, in a Dubai high-rise on New Year's Eve with his girlfriend and two men under federal indictment in Illinois. One of them, Anosh Ahmed, gave Paxton's campaign $190,000, including $25,000 days after his indictment. Lev: they go to Dubai because there is no extradition. The same night in Ohio, JD Vance opened for Trump with "I'm the vice president, not James Talarico," and Trump told the crowd about examining a candidate's body on stage: "I don't do this with men very often."

3️⃣ Guilfoyle's bill

The Journal reported last week that Guilfoyle asked donor Eric Deters to pay a $100,000 American Express bill before her confirmation hearing, by wire so it would leave no paper trail, in exchange for access to administration officials. Her lawyers deny she sought money. NBC reports the State Department's inspector general is investigating. Lev: it reminded him of paying Rudy Giuliani's American Express, and his sources say Deters is about to go "scorched earth" on Guilfoyle and on Trump. Zev: the corruption is one degree from the president's son.

2️⃣ The Greatest Heist

Zev walked through Chapter 10: Liquid Funding, the Bermuda company Jeffrey Epstein built with Bear Stearns, borrowed $6.7 billion against almost nothing, made the margin calls that broke American Home Mortgage in July 2007, and was the only lender paid in full. Whoever controls when a market collapses controls when to sell and when to buy. Lev: the same play is running now, in energy.

1️⃣ Russia, Russia, Russia

The Treasury licensed Russian diesel into the United States for six months after Trump's call with Putin, up to 4.8 million tons in stages. Zev: the deal feeds Russia's army and is timed to get Trump through the midterms. Asked why both sides say there is no ceasefire, Trump said: "They agreed because I said they agreed." Lev says his sources describe a larger plan: Nord Stream, pressure to push Zelensky out, and a halt to intelligence sharing he cannot yet confirm.

BONUS: Pope Leo XIV had part of his right lung removed in Rome after doctors found cancer, the Vatican said. And Zev and Lev agreed to build a regular Ukraine and Russia show.

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5️⃣ Canada's Nobel

The Swedish Academy gave the Nobel Prize in Literature to Anne Carson, a 76-year-old Toronto-born poet, the first Canadian since Alice Munro in 2013. She emailed The Globe and Mail one word: "YIKES!!" Zev, who lives in her city and had never heard of her, played a minute of her reading. Trump told reporters Wednesday he should get the Peace Prize, announced Friday.

4️⃣ The Epstein record costs a chair

Leon Botstein resigned his remaining Bard College roles a day after Rep. Jamie Raskin asked for a criminal investigation into his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. Zev: a small step, since Botstein had already retired as president. Raskin takes the Oversight gavel if Democrats win, with a list of untouchables waiting and Howard Lutnick at the top. Why corporate America will fight it is the subject of "The Trigger," Chapter 10 of "The Greatest Heist," publishing today with the document on how the network lit the fuse on 2008.

3️⃣ CNN, back inside and bought

Judge Timothy Kelly kept CNN, Politico and MS NOW in the White House through Tuesday. The bigger story is the owner. David Ellison, whose family now owns CBS and Warner Bros., told Anderson Cooper that CNN's independence would be protected. Dean put CNN's front page beside MS NOW's: no San Antonio rally. Zev: CNN has not been CNN for a long time.

2️⃣ All the grift in one story

Wall Street Journal reporters published texts in which Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle asked donor Eric Deters to wire $100,000 to her American Express account days before her confirmation hearing: "It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express." Vice President Vance: "I don't love that," then said he did not know the details. Rubio keeps her in Athens. Trump's midterm chiefs Chris LaCivita and James Blair took money from the Russia-aligned government of Republika Srpska, and Susie Wiles's daughter works at the firm that lobbies for it. Trump's August disclosure shows up to $25 million in Meta stock and up to $5 million in SpaceX debt, bought two days before he signed a commercial space policy. Thursday he pinned a medal on Elon Musk and called him a "national treasure." Zev: "The corruption is hand in hand with the incompetence."

1️⃣ The war gets a date

Trump posted at 12:17 p.m. that the United States "will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections," citing "productive discussions," days after the Pentagon told Central Command to finish preparing to resume major combat. Zev's read: he is not attacking because he cannot. A strike before Nov. 3 would start a revolt inside a party losing on the war.

BONUS

The USS Abraham Lincoln docked in San Diego after 321 days, as Trump kept naming San Diego as an Iranian target. And Mark Carney said von der Leyen and Costa will be in Montreal in three weeks to launch a Canada-EU alliance. Dean: "We're divorcing the United States of America."

No show Friday; back Tuesday after Canadian Thanksgiving.

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5️⃣ The shot he didn't take

Asked what Democrats could impeach him for if they win Congress, Donald Trump said he could have done "very bad things" to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama but thought it "inappropriate." Then: "I've had my shot and still do." People have told him "let's go get them," he said, and he told them no, "you can't do that to the presidency." Zev's read: he is trying to talk Democrats out of impeaching him by reminding them what he could have done. Dean translated it as a man afraid of what happens after Nov. 3.

4️⃣ Camp David on county land

Asked whether he would call it Camp Donald, Trump said the course is "already called Trump International" and that the military and the Secret Service suggested making part of it a retreat for presidents. "This wouldn't be for me," he said. The club's lawyer wrote Palm Beach County on Sept. 3 for county land the club would pay to build on. Zev doubts the Secret Service ever asked, and calls it a land grab four weeks before an election.

3️⃣ The Senate is in play

Democrats need four seats and the map offers seven. Cook moved North Carolina to Likely Democratic and Kansas to a toss-up, Inside Elections projects two to four pickups, and Republicans hold the chamber 53 to 47. In Texas, James Talarico leads Ken Paxton 51 to 49 at Fox News, and a third tape from the same donor meeting has Paxton blaming the war. Zev and Dean both read the leaks as Paxton's own doing, which puts distance between him and Trump without a public fight.

2️⃣ The Epstein untouchables

Ellie Leonard joined from New York after Tuesday's protest asking MoMA to drop Leon Black from its board. Black has denied every allegation and has never been charged or convicted. She walked through where he stands: House Oversight subpoenaed him for his NDAs, he skipped the deposition, the House held him in contempt, and he sued the committee. Zev's four men in the Epstein record with no charges: Howard Lutnick, still Commerce Secretary, Black, Paolo Zampolli and Trump. Zev wants the new Congress to open a special investigation into all four on its first day.

1️⃣ Told to leave, with WHO waiting

Trump says he has "a call set up" with Putin, and the Kremlin says nothing is arranged. Dean read the Oct. 6 U.S. Embassy alert, which repeats the Level 4 advisory telling Americans in Russia to depart immediately. The World Health Organization says it is ready to support the Russian authorities if they ask, and nobody outside Russia has seen the lab. Zev: 12 days in, Russia has given two numbers, 197 contacts and two possible deaths. "You don't quarantine six hospitals when nothing is going on."

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5️⃣ Trump's FBI

Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI's Los Angeles office, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump watched a TikTok of protesters warning neighbors about immigration agents in Alhambra, and that Kash Patel told FBI leaders the president "was angry about the incident, and he wanted those protesters investigated and arrested." A second order, she says, came from Emil Bove: investigate anyone protesting at federal buildings in Los Angeles, with no federal crime identified. Everyone assumed it. Now a witness has said it on the record, and Sen. Alex Padilla has asked Patel and Todd Blanche how many of those investigations are open.

4️⃣ The wedding receipt

Umar Kremlev, the Russian boxing boss Putin just decorated with the Order of Friendship, told a press conference in Istanbul that Donald Trump Jr. had paid him back for the Bahamas wedding: "He did repay the money I spent on the present." Then: "Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so." Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward the May celebration, by AP's account. Nobody denies it happened. The defense is that it was nothing.

3️⃣ A small price to pay

Trump told a Nebraska crowd that Iran taking out Los Angeles and San Diego would be "a very small price to pay." The tape shows what he was defending: a minute after asking the crowd to vote by Nov. 3, he called the war's gas prices "a little bit high" and "a small price to pay for keeping the world safe," named the two cities, and closed on "your gas and your gasoline." The White House says he meant a nuclear Iran; nuclear is seven minutes earlier on the tape.

2️⃣ The DOJ named the whistleblower

When the Justice Department published Simon Andriesz's 2021 FBI interview in the Epstein files, it blacked out every reference to him but one. On page two his name stands, misspelled, in plain sight. Britain's regulator later told him that because his identity had been disclosed he had lost his whistleblower protection, advice it now calls wrong. He died in Thailand on Sept. 23. The man he accused is the Commerce Secretary, who told the Senate about his family's lunch on Epstein's island: "I don't recall why we did it. But we did it."

1️⃣ The plague Russia won't name

Russian media report a second death in the Irkutsk outbreak, a week after a 28-year-old laboratory assistant at the Anti-Plague Research Institute died; reports say she broke a test tube holding live plague bacteria. Russia's health agency calls it pneumonia of unknown cause and says it found no plague among 197 contacts. REN TV deleted six of its own posts on the outbreak, one of which said a second test had confirmed plague; Narativ saved the captures. The second death is a claim until Moscow or Washington confirms it.

Bonus

Dean Blundell, drawing on the Washington Sun, walked through the Trump family's crypto: on May 19, four anonymous wallets moved more than 20 billion World Liberty Financial tokens into a vesting contract. Dean's read: a getaway van, packed before Nov. 3. He also reported that the OSCE, which has observed every U.S. federal election since 2002, has been uninvited from this one. A plague and a war are the two things that keep people home on election day.

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5️⃣ Flávio Bolsonaro beats Lula and every pollster in Brazil

Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in Brazil's presidential election with 47 percent of the valid vote, two points and about 2.2 million ballots ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to the electoral court. Neither cleared 50 percent, so they meet in a runoff on October 25. Lula called the result unexpected and said, "we are in extra time." Every final poll had Lula ahead. Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio's father, is serving 27 years for plotting a coup. If Brazil's pollsters all missed in the same direction, November's polls deserve the same caution.

4️⃣ Trump promises Ohio a "big surprise" in November

At a Saturday-night rally in Vandalia, Trump told the crowd, "They're in for a big surprise." He asked supporters to "pretend that I'm running," because "when I don't run, they draw 44% less people." Ohio's Republican senator Jon Husted "always wants money," he said, and if Democrat Amy Acton wins the governor's race, "I'm not going to help her, probably." Dean heard a threat to punish every Ohio voter who picks the wrong candidate. Every major poll points to a Democratic win, and a president this sure of a result the numbers do not show is worth watching.

3️⃣ Russia cannot say what killed its plague-lab technician

A 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, Siberia's state laboratory, went into hospital on September 29 and died days later. The governor of neighboring Buryatia wrote that she died of plague. Russia's health watchdog says pneumonia of unknown cause. Nearly 200 people are under medical observation. Marco Rubio has asked his Russian counterparts for information. Dean set it beside Chernobyl, when Moscow stayed silent for days. Zev set it beside Wuhan. He wants flights out of Russia stopped, Vladimir Putin's December trip to the G20 in Miami included.

2️⃣ Taxpayers paid $20 million to tell them to love Trump

Dean's reporting at deanblundell.substack.com traced about $20 million of government money into a dozen "Love Trump" ads that ran this week on Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC, NFL games among them. The networks took the money. Government-paid ads do not belong on air a month before an election, and the voters who funded them are the audience.

1️⃣ Lutnick's Epstein whistleblower is dead

Simon Andriesz, the British banker who gave Congress the 2018 emails tying Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Jeffrey Epstein's Adfin investment, is dead at 57, a reported suicide. He worked at BGC, Lutnick's brokerage, and went to the FBI in 2020. They interviewed him in 2021 and nothing happened. The commodities regulator fined BGC $3 million in November 2019 on his reporting and paid him a $420,000 whistleblower award. Lutnick has said nothing since. Zev does not claim to know it was not a suicide, but the sequence looks wrong, and Dean counted nine deaths around the Epstein files.

The Greatest Heist now runs 22 chapters at thegreatestheist.com, with a new one next week.

Donald Trump is reshaping the White House while the American labor market slows. September brought just 29,000 new jobs. On this FiveStack, those two stories bookend a countdown about what power protects—and who absorbs the cost.

Between them: a new prosecutor in the Cornell sexual-assault investigation, a Republican senator’s private rebuke of Trump, and another military deployment toward the Middle East. Together, they put accountability at the center of the month before the midterms.

Anne P. Mitchell and Lev Parnas join Zev Shalev for a discussion that refuses to treat an election result as the end of the struggle. They disagree about Trump’s next move. They agree that the public needs to understand what is happening and prepare to defend its rights. Dean returns next week.

5️⃣ The People’s House—or Trump’s palace?

Trump says he is exploring federal-landmark status for the Oval Office. [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/01/trump-says-secret-service-wants-him-take-down-oval-office/) reports his remarks. Separately, a federal panel has approved the final design and building plans for an underground White House visitor-screening facility.

The show asks what these projects reveal about Trump’s priorities. Zev describes the accumulating construction as a presidential palace; Lev reads it as a statement about Trump’s desire to remain in power. Those are the panel’s interpretations, not proof of a plan to demolish the remaining White House or stay beyond his term.

Anne’s response is to keep the focus on resistance: presidential ambition does not guarantee presidential success. Courts, election officials and voters still have decisions to make.

4️⃣ Cornell: the investigation changes hands

Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James’s office as special prosecutor to investigate the alleged October 2024 sexual assault at Cornell. James confirmed the appointment on October 1.

A former student’s civil lawsuit alleges that members of the Chi Phi fraternity sexually assaulted her. The appointment follows criticism of the original handling of her allegations. The allegations remain allegations; a new investigation must establish the facts.

For the panel, the issue reaches beyond one campus. Who gets heard when someone reports sexual violence? Who takes responsibility when institutions fail to act? Anne discusses Hochul’s call to address intoxication and consent in state law. Lev calls on men with influence to stand alongside women demanding accountability.

3️⃣ A Republican tells Trump: “We are failing”

Senator Thom Tillis’s private messages to Trump became public through reporting by Politico. In a May 22 message, Tillis warned that the administration was failing, turning an internal dispute into a public account of Republican frustration.

Zev welcomes the confrontation while questioning why it comes so late. Lev argues that criticism alone does not curb a president who retains substantial executive power.

That distinction drives the discussion toward November. Winning congressional seats matters. Turning that result into oversight, investigations and enforceable limits requires another round of work.

2️⃣ Iran, oil—and the argument over what comes next

Another carrier group is heading toward the Middle East, carrying more than 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines, as Trump considers further action against Iran.

Zev raises a possibility: increased oil flows could lower prices and give Trump a political opening before the election. Lev disputes that reading, arguing that Trump’s ambitions extend beyond the midterms. Anne challenges the idea that a brief improvement at the pump would reverse voters’ judgment.

These are competing forecasts. The deployment does not establish any of them. What the disagreement exposes is the uncertainty facing voters: military escalation, household costs and electoral calculation are moving together, and temporary relief would not resolve the underlying conflict.

1️⃣ Just 29,000 jobs

The September employment report shows payroll growth of 29,000 and unemployment of 4.2%. July and August payroll estimates were revised down by a combined 60,000.

Those numbers bring the countdown back to where it began. The White House can announce another project. A family waiting for a job offer cannot build its budget around an announcement.

The panel debates whether economic distress will weaken Trump politically or make people more susceptible to promises of relief. Neither outcome is inevitable. Both depend on how voters judge the gap between what they are promised and what they experience.

THE PATTERN

This episode follows the distance between acquiring power and answering for its consequences.

At Cornell, accountability means an investigation capable of establishing what happened. In Washington, it means criticism that produces action. In the economy, it means judging policy by what reaches households.

Lev urges vigilance. Anne insists that fear must not become surrender. Zev keeps returning to the evidence—and to the decisions still ahead.

Watch the full conversation above. Subscribe to Narativ for the next FiveStack, and explore TheGreatestHeist

Thank you This Will Hold, Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, Cash Flow Collective, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. and Lev Parnas! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Sale lasts until 11 PM ET

5️⃣ Trump campaigns only where Republicans cannot lose

Donald Trump heads to a Peterbilt plant in Denton, Texas, and a rally in Durant, Oklahoma. "I want all of them by a lot. I'm going there just to make sure," he told reporters before leaving. Ken Paxton explained the itinerary on a leaked tape: "everyone's numbers dropped" after the Republican midterm convention. No candidate on the bubble wants Trump near their district, Zev said, because voters blame him for the price of groceries and gas. "Wherever he goes, it turns to garbage, not gold," said Anne P. Mitchell, sitting in for Dean Blundell.

4️⃣ Trump keeps Insurrection Act in reach for midterms

Trump told TIME he keeps the Insurrection Act within reach a month before the vote: "I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes." Asked about ICE agents at polling places: "Haven't thought of it." Mitchell called it the January 2025 script, built to frighten people out of voting: "If your individual vote did not count, he would not be trying so hard to suppress it." The Pentagon did its part on paper, filing emergency requests in late August to drop the overseas-ballot box, in place since 2013, for Americans who have "never lived in the United States"; the two options left require a sworn statement of intent to return, or uncertainty. Mitchell expects the states, which print the ballots, to challenge it.

3️⃣ Hegseth cuts generals, adds testosterone testing

Pete Hegseth told the generals at Quantico that he fired 10 percent of the generals and admirals, "and I know because I directed it," and cut general officer slots by another 10 percent. Then: "The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top." Zev's question is whether the officers who would refuse to deploy into American cities are the ones going. Mitchell, an Army veteran, said she was appalled: Hegseth is building "his own troop of Hessians." Both hosts landed in the same place: the rank and file swore an oath to the Constitution, and handed an illegal order, "they're just not going to do it," Zev said.

2️⃣ Trump sinks to 26 percent on the economy

Twenty-six percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy, the American Research Group found in a poll fielded September 21; the Associated Press numbers Zev put on screen have his overall approval at 31 percent against 69. That 24-to-26 zone is where Republican senators told Richard Nixon he had to go. "There's no mandate," Zev said. Trump, in TIME: "They're fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points." The 31 percent is the MAGA base, Zev said, but a base that now blames him for the Iran war and the economy.

1️⃣ Rubio expels Iran's UN team after Fairford arrest

Marco Rubio ordered Iran's delegation to the United Nations out of the country Wednesday night. On Thursday British police arrested a UK-Iranian dual national under the Terrorism Act over RAF Fairford, and Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there was a "strong indication" Iran was involved. Trump followed: "They'll either sign a very fair deal, or they won't exist any longer." Zev doesn't buy it: the men first arrested for moving fuel in vans near the base walked free within days, which does not happen to real terrorists. "I suspect this is more of a false flag operation than anything else," Zev said. Mitchell called the expulsion "at least 50 percent, if not more, performative." Rubio threw out the delegation because there is no deal to be reached, Zev said, and Americans stay stuck with the prices.

The Greatest Heist is back in one place: Zev opened the show with the new trailer and thegreatestheist.com, all three books chapter by chapter, three new Book Two chapters starting next week, and click here for a 50% annual discount until midnight 10 PM ET tonight.

Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Petrena Wilbur, sandy bassett, Miss Myra, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! Join me for my next live video in the app.

5️⃣ Jack Smith

Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that his investigation "developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation." Republicans spent four hours trying to turn it on him. Senator Eric Schmitt held up a poster of texts to put Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game the day after Fani Willis disclosed her affair, told him "I think you've already perjured yourself," and called him "a total dirtbag." Smith had been in Maryland watching Iowa's Caitlin Clark, he said. Iowa's team is the Hawkeyes. Schmitt never apologised. Senator John Kennedy asked Smith whether he believed in the Easter Bunny, then told him "you make me want to throw up in my mouth." No Republican argued Trump did not do what Smith described. Trump says he did nothing wrong.

4️⃣ Pete Hegseth

War Secretary Pete Hegseth will cut 20 percent of the positions reserved for generals and admirals, double the 10 percent he ordered in May 2025, Fox News reported from Pentagon memos; he announces it Wednesday at Quantico. On September 22 he signed a memo ordering Cyber Command and the NSA to "identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference in U.S. democratic processes," which the Pentagon published Monday. CNN reported the memo largely restores work those agencies did before Trump returned and shrank the FBI teams that tracked foreign influence.

3️⃣ Marco Rubio

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday night that the plot beside RAF Fairford, the British base used by the U.S. military, "clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor." He named no country and offered no evidence. British police bailed the five men, all British nationals aged 23 to 25, on Monday without charge, and call a foreign-state proxy one line of inquiry among several. Asked whether Iran was behind it, Trump said "might be," then "I'd rather not say." The Narativ asked on Monday whether Fairford was a false-flag operation. A day later five men are home and nobody is charged.

2️⃣ Trump's Bonds

Trump holds between $300 million and $1 billion in municipal bonds, CNBC calculated from his own disclosures: more than 1,000 positions, at least 243 bought this year, none sold, from cities, hospitals and power plants his government regulates. His accounts bought up to $100,000 of Georgia Power's Plant Bowen bonds in February 2025; 57 days later Trump exempted the plant from stricter EPA limits. CNBC found no evidence he traded on advance knowledge, and the White House says the family cannot "direct, influence, or provide input." The Wall Street Journal reported that Customs and Border Protection paid for the taxpayer-funded ads starring Trump, nearly $1.5 million by AdImpact's count. A president who waives a $400,000 salary holds up to a billion dollars of debt from borrowers who answer to him, and his border agency buys his airtime.

1️⃣ The AI Lunch

Senator Ted Cruz blocked the Democrats' AI safety-board bill and says nothing moves in his committee before the election. The same Tuesday Trump invited the chiefs of Google, Nvidia, Meta, Anthropic and Palantir to lunch, and launched America.gov, a government chatbot built on Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok, telling the crowd it "cannot in theory be hacked into." The AP asked the bot who won 2020. It answered that official sources show no fraud changed the result. While Trump was still speaking, the answers changed: no more "political questions" on 2020, impeachment or his felony conviction. Two of his lunch guests built the machine that edited itself mid-speech. Cruz killed the rulebook the week the Republican president set the table for the companies it would have governed. The companies are at lunch.

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, Dani Smart, Cat: Poli-Psych, Deeanna Burleson, PhD, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.

5️⃣ Egypt

Egypt's intelligence chief telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu days before October 7 and warned him Hamas was about to strike, the Journal reported Monday, the third Egyptian warning to reach him. Netanyahu's office denied it within hours. Netanyahu may not have built the attack, but he was warned, and the war that followed kept him in power. Israel owes itself the reckoning America owes itself over Trump: how did we keep giving this man permission?

4️⃣ The ad

Fox News Sunday aired a 30-second black-and-white Trump spot that closed with "paid for by the U.S. government." Trump walks a hallway while his rally voice promises "the final battle": demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers, cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. Trump is describing himself. Dean called it Nazi propaganda, "and by the way, you paid for it." Putin's party ads run on the Russian taxpayer. Now America has them too.

3️⃣ Xi

Trump asked Xi Jinping whether China wanted to buy American weapons, his own ambassador David Perdue said on Fox News Sunday. American law bans the sale, and the State Department spent the weekend saying so. Trump is offering China the munitions America ran short of bombing Iran. "He'll sell anything to anybody, including America's mortal enemies," Dean said. Surrender, again.

2️⃣ Bailey

FBI co-deputy director Andrew Bailey walked out Monday after one year, the second of Kash Patel's hand-picked deputies to quit. Bailey said he is "stepping down to return to my family in Missouri," the line every departing official uses. Dean ran the month's cabinet exits and called it rats leaving the ship: "all of them know what's coming." A blue wave, and the accountability behind it.

1️⃣ Fairford

British counter-terror police bailed the five men arrested beside RAF Fairford on Monday, a day after the pre-dawn raid at the Gloucestershire base American bombers fly from to hit Iran. Police charged nobody. Britain's counter-terror chief Laurence Taylor said the five "absolutely remain under investigation" and his detectives are "keeping an open mind" on a foreign hand. You do not bail a terror cell after two days. Trump told a crowd Sunday "we had them under view for a long time, and we got them," while London says a farmer found the vans and dialled 999. Both accounts cannot be true. Dean named three possible authors: Russia, Iran, or Trump. Narativ asked this morning whether the plot was a false flag. Police have named no sponsor, no motive and no explosives, and nobody has produced proof of a set-up. The question stays open.

⭐ Guilfoyle

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump's ambassador to Greece and Don Jr.'s former fiancée, told Greece's energy minister at an Athens dinner in March that Washington could bring down his government the way Romania's was about to fall, the Wall Street Journal reported. "We can do that here," a guest recalled her saying. Romania's parliament voted Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan out in May; a video posted Sunday claims he fell for refusing to buy American gas above market price. Her lawyer disputes the Journal's account, and nobody has shown Washington's hand in that vote. "That's who we are," Dean said.

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Dean Blundell came straight from his son’s wedding on Thursday — congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Blundell.

5️⃣ The red carpet

America is watching its empire fold in real time. Trump rolled red carpet from the tarmac to the East Room for Xi Jinping this week, then walked the whole room out to the building site of his ballroom. “It’s one year away from completion,” Trump said in his toast. “This is an honor of President Xi.” He did this for the leader of a country whose groups, CNN reported, have fed Iran intelligence to target U.S. sites. Xi repaid him with a warning: the Thucydides trap, a rising power and a fading one ending in war, with one way out — cooperation, on his terms. He came to Washington to set the terms of the next war. Trump gave no answer. “Watching Donald Trump torch 250 years of hegemony,” Dean said, left him as sad as he has ever been for America.

4️⃣ The locked door

Trump shut the American press out of the dinner and Friday’s tea, and let Chinese state media in. The press corps got one shot all day, shouted across the lawn at the arrival: why are you banning media outlets? Nobody answered. Inside, by the pool reports, sat Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett, and not one Democrat. “Why would you not want to have prying eyes in that room?” Dean asked. “There’s your answer about who Donald Trump serves. It’s not you.”

3️⃣ Cook moves 15

Cook Political Report moved 15 House races toward Democrats on Friday, six weeks out, and Axios reports Republicans are on track to lose the majority. Republicans in swing seats are keeping their distance, and Trump is rallying in Oklahoma and Alabama to hold what he can. No one wants to be seen with him. A party losing at the ballot box goes looking for another way to win.

2️⃣ The voter rolls

The Supreme Court on Friday let Trump switch his SAVE citizenship checks back on across state voter rolls, six weeks before Election Day, lifting a June ruling that found the system broke privacy law and flagged citizens as noncitizens. Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented; Jackson wrote that burdening “even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm” to the government. Citizenship is the cover. They want the voter rolls so they can manipulate the numbers — question every vote that went the wrong way and refuse the result. “I know exactly what they’re going to do,” Dean said. Trump bowed to Xi all week and got the voter rolls on Friday.

1️⃣ The farewell

Friday morning Xi got more red carpet — at the White House arrival, at the tea, and on the steps of the National Archives, where he went to see the original Constitution. He is a Communist Party functionary, not royalty, and Trump carpeted his every step like a conquering emperor’s. “President Xi went and looked at that Constitution almost like, hey, cool document. I own you now,” Dean said. “And he does. He owns Donald Trump.” Then, Dean added, came the fundraising email: help me normalize relations with China. How many meals would that red carpet have put on American tables? None of it matters to this president — only the power and the money he stands to make off Xi Jinping. Show up in person and vote like your life depends on it. It does.

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, Caro Henry, Dr. Eric Lullove, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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5️⃣ Trump hits 32% and enters the Nixon zone

Trump fell to 32% in the Reuters/Ipsos poll published Monday, his career low. Republican strategists told the Guardian they fear a “bloodbath” in 41 days. The Senate is in play, with Iowa a toss-up and James Talarico ahead in Texas. Trump is entering the Nixon zone. Nixon’s senators told him at about 24% he had no votes; he resigned. “I’m not running. Other people are running,” he said at the UN, a week after asking voters to pretend he was. Republicans can’t get far enough away from this president. Democrats with the Senate get real investigations and a real impeachment, and they need an Orbán-sized landslide because Trump will look for a way out of the count.

4️⃣ Trump’s lawyers call the press a security risk; Melania lets CNN in

Judge Timothy Kelly heard CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s First Amendment case at 3:30 in Washington, after the Justice Department called White House access “a privilege, not a right.” Melania Trump’s office had already credentialed CNN and Politico for her own UN event Tuesday, so Kaitlan Collins stood in front of the president who banned her. He can’t handle even the slightest criticism. He is squishy. He falls apart. Melania told Fox & Friends Wednesday morning “we have a direct channel with Russia and with Ukraine.” She keeps company with people close to the Kremlin, Paolo Zampolli among them. A Republican senator now wants Don Jr. under oath about the Russian money behind his wedding.

3️⃣ Trump meets Xi at the plane, as he did Putin

Trump greeted Xi Jinping at the foot of the stairs at Joint Base Andrews this afternoon, an honour American presidents almost never extend. The last leader he met planeside was Putin, in Alaska. Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican who chairs Armed Services, said Trump should not have invited him at all. Trump played the local governor of the recently acquired United States of America, out on the tarmac to welcome the emperor.

2️⃣ Prosecutors open the books on Epstein’s executors

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have opened a criminal investigation into Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, the lawyer and the accountant who ran Jeffrey Epstein’s money and run his estate, the Wall Street Journal reported. Prosecutors have charged no one, and both men deny wrongdoing. Narativ called for exactly this in “Crown and Consequence” on 20 July 2020. Six years on, both came out of the estate multi-millionaires while victims collected little.

1️⃣ Trump threatens to annihilate Iran; Iran holds up the children

Trump asked the General Assembly on Tuesday whether he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “drive them into hell.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian answered Wednesday with photographs. “These children perished under bombs,” he said, and the lone American diplomat walked out. Two US Tomahawks hit a girls’ school in Minab on 28 February and killed at least 123 children; UN investigators found reasonable grounds to call it a war crime. Walking out is walking away from the truth. Steve Witkoff spent Tuesday in indirect talks with Iran’s delegation, and Trump says a deal could come “right after the midterm elections.” There might be a deal right after the election. Probably not with him.

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Dean Blundell was away for his son's wedding, so Eddy Aragon of The Rock of Talk sat in from Albuquerque. Aragon owns a conservative radio station and spent the hour disagreeing with Zev in public — and, more often, with Trump. Today's Fivestack is brought to you by Ground News, which gives you the news from the left, the right, and tells you what you're missing in the middle. Get 40% off the Vantage plan at groundnews.com/fivestack.

5️⃣ Trump renames artificial intelligence “super intelligence”

Trump told the General Assembly the United States “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” artificial intelligence, and announced that every US document would from now on call it super intelligence, because “the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake.” Then he undercut himself: “Let’s see if that goes.” Aragon caught the retreat inside the edict — “You just gaslit everyone. It’s going to be AI, because that’s the name of it” — and then split with Zev over what should follow. Zev wants AI regulated the way flying is regulated, and pointed to agents that escaped a contained test and hacked a company on their own. Aragon wants oversight but no California kill switch. They ended the story on Greg Abbott freezing every data-center permit in Texas, which Aragon dismissed as “no more than a ploy to just get through the election” — and warned anyway: “You lose Texas, you lose the nation.” The Abbot story came from Groundnews.com/fivestack

4️⃣ A UN lawyer says the boat strikes are crimes against humanity

Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, counted 68 vessels destroyed and at least 223 people killed between September 2025 and August, and called the strikes extrajudicial killings. Zev said the Pentagon would have released the video on day one if there had been drugs aboard, and that the dead were fishermen. Aragon would not defend Pete Hegseth — he called him “an idiot” twice — and demanded the tape: “We need to know who was hit, how they were hit, and why they were taken out.” If Hegseth ordered it, he said, “then he's gone.”

3️⃣ A Republican senator wants Don Jr. under oath

John Curtis, the Utah Republican, asked Senate Judiciary to take testimony from Donald Trump Jr. about the Bahamas wedding that Putin-allied Russian money helped pay for. Aragon backed the request without hedging: “He should actually have to testify about how much money he received, why he received it. It's pay-to-play.” He drew one line — he rejected folding it into the Russia investigation, which he said “has already been dismissed” — and then conceded the point anyway: “Donald Jr. is responsible for how that Bahamian wedding was paid for.”

2️⃣ Trump signs a Greenland deal and calls it permanent control

Trump signed an agreement with Denmark and Greenland at the United Nations and told the rostrum it gives the United States permanent control over the island's security. Zev pointed out Washington has effectively had that for decades. Aragon was blunter about the whole performance — the buying, the renaming, the taking control: “It's just all staging. And I hate it.”

1️⃣ “Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?”

Trump asked the General Assembly out loud whether to destroy Iran and drive it “into hell,” while Iran's ambassador sat in the room. Zev's read is that Trump has run out of road: “Iran has defeated America in this war,” he said, with the blockade merely matching Iran's own closure of Hormuz. Aragon called the language authoritarian and self-defeating — “if you are going to put that language out there, you need to execute, because then it just becomes hollow” — and quoted Joe Pesci in Casino at the President: “If you could have done it, you would have.”

After the countdown

Aragon and Zev know each other through the Epstein files, and they closed on Zoro Ranch. Aragon said the state's Truth Commission will produce nothing and will miss its own year-end deadline. Zev said the Justice Department is stonewalling it.

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Thank you PJ Schuster, Skutt Hope, Miss Myra, Diana Chapman, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with The Rock of Talk - Eddy Aragon! Join me for my next live video in the app.

5️⃣ Natalie Harp Triggered CNN Ban — Paramount Clears Merger, Editorial Board Gutted

Trump’s aide Natalie Harp showed the President a reel of TV hosts criticizing him this week, and within hours Trump announced a ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool. The move backfired spectacularly: major networks including Fox, NBC, and ABC walked out of the pool in solidarity, leaving the White House with no credentialed media. Meanwhile, the Ellison family’s Paramount cleared the final legal hurdle to merge CNN and CBS News, striking a deal with the Attorney General that promises editorial independence but delivers none — no guarantee of the promised movies, an editorial board with no teeth, a capitulation. When Trump inaugurated a new helipad Friday, no network carried audio of his remarks. All three outlets sued the Trump administration. The consolidation of American media into authoritarian hands has accelerated in real time.

4️⃣ Houthis Strike Riyadh — Trump Calls Off Planned Military Response

Iran-backed Houthis launched missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia’s capital this week, striking targets near Riyadh airport for the first time in the renewed fighting. Trump administration ordered planned military strikes called off in response. Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, already degraded by repeated Houthi attacks, is now so damaged that the kingdom informed European clients there will be no oil deliveries until 2027. The strategic implications are severe: Saudi Arabia is on its back foot, the world’s most critical energy producer is offline, and Trump has signaled he will not defend his longtime ally. The UN General Assembly high-level week convenes this week with all major players in the room — Xi, Zelenskyy, Netanyahu, Iran’s president — but Trump’s abdication of regional leadership has already reset the board.

3️⃣ Zelenskyy Offered Energy Truce — Trump Begged Russia to Accept

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy signaled willingness to negotiate an “energy truce” with Russia if Putin halts attacks on civilian infrastructure. Trump, meanwhile, posted that Russia has “unfortunately lost control” of its diesel industry due to Ukrainian strikes, then asked Zelenskyy to stop attacking Russian refineries. The admission — that Ukraine is crippling Russia’s capacity to wage war — came paired with a request to stop. Trump’s Belarus potash deal, announced as a triumph for American farmers, collapsed within hours when Lukashenko said the country had no potash left to sell; the tonne had already been committed to Russia, China, and Iran. The pattern is consistent: every statement from Trump signals alignment with Putin and abandonment of Ukraine.

2️⃣ Belleville Synagogue Shooting on Yom Kippur — Abrahamic Radicalization Spreads

A gunman opened fire at a Jewish synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, during Yom Kippur services, forcing worshippers to duck for cover as a Canadian police officer was shot and now lies in critical condition. The alleged shooter, 29-year-old Sean Ward, motivated by what analysts describe as Abrahamic radicalization — a pattern of radicalization targeting religious communities across faiths — has focused attention on how individual incels are recruited into violence against ethnic and religious minorities. This is not a Muslim-versus-Jewish conflict; it is a radicalization pipeline targeting vulnerable men, fed by online extremism and offline grievance. The case mirrors the pattern seen across North America and underscores how coordinated the radicalization effort has become.

1️⃣ Trump’s Approval Crashes to 29% — The Weakest Point of His Presidency

Trump’s approval rating has plummeted to 29%, the lowest on record, as networks abandoned the White House pool and Americans face a diesel shortage and gas prices above $6.50 per gallon in major regions. The combination — media shutdown, approval collapse, authoritarian consolidation — signals a presidency hardening against dissent with no public support to show for it. Oil markets remain high but supplies are gone; Americans cannot drive to work or afford food. Forty-two days remain until the election, and at this rate of decline, Trump could fall below Nixon’s historic low of 25% by voting day. The losses are piling up, and the margins are widening.

Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, LeftieProf, Grace Alexandra Hayden, Assemblywoman Debra Mazzarelli, Miss Myra, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Zev broke the countdown to play Hakeem Jeffries on the OpenAI agents: caged in a test environment, they talked their way out, went two months unnoticed, cased Hugging Face, elected a leader and named themselves The Collective. They sent some of their own out to fail on purpose, Jeffries said.

5️⃣ McConnell Votes Wrong

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, the former majority leader who retires in January, walked into a Senate Agriculture Committee markup on Wednesday after three months away and started voting the wrong way. Colleagues stepped in and fixed it; on the second call he said aye, and the Farm, Food and National Security Act advanced 12 to 11 on party lines. “It’s embarrassing the GOP is doing it, but he’s alive,” Zev said. McConnell leads nothing now. John Thune does.

4️⃣ Don Jr.’s Russian Money

Umar Kremlev paid for the 23 and 24 May celebrations around Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding, not the 21 May ceremony in West Palm Beach. Olga Lautman told the show Kremlev works with Russian intelligence and wears an Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin. Kremlev and Trump Jr. announced a partnership in Istanbul on 29 September 2025, where the International Boxing Association asked him to co-host its Men’s Elite World Championships in Dubai, prize pool $8 million. Robert Garcia has opened a probe. Nobody has tied that money to any act by Trump Jr. He holds a security clearance, though, and keeping company with foreign nationals wired to Putin “is generally not a good idea,” Zev said.

3️⃣ Carney Signs With Europe

Mark Carney told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that Canada will not seek full EU membership, and that any final deal goes to Canada’s Parliament — then accepted Ursula von der Leyen’s Alliance for the Future, which replaces CETA. They meet in Montreal on 29 and 30 October. Nobody has written “associate member” into the EU treaties, and the European Parliament has scheduled no vote. Trump called it “laughable” and threatened “very serious tariffs” on Europe. “I don’t think people realize how much energy is made in Canada,” Zev said. “And how important, as it turns out, energy is for data centers.”

2️⃣ Satellites Over Prince Sultan

CNN reported 14 Russian spy satellites crossing Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in the two days before Iran’s 27 March strike there, which injured 12 Americans and destroyed an Air Force AWACS. ABC aired images Thursday of a jet blown in half. Days later Trump stood beside Putin at the G7 and thanked him for staying neutral on Iran. Thomas Massie has filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth; Mike Johnson sent the House home before anyone voted.

1️⃣ Iran Holds Hormuz

Blundell reported Iran’s terms for reopening the Strait of Hormuz: Americans remove Trump, Israelis remove Netanyahu, and not before. Zev put Brent at $103.61 on day 201 of the war, and the reserve at 285 million barrels, under 40 percent of capacity. Blundell put gas at $8 a gallon. Forty-seven days out from the midterms, none of the men who built this are in any shape to stop it.

5️⃣ Burgum Spends $84,000 to Warn Visitors Off American History

Doug Burgum will spend $84,000 on about a dozen National Park Service signs outside the National Museum of American History, telling visitors the exhibits inside push the curators’ “personal viewpoints.” Trump’s Interior Secretary put the price in a September 3 letter to Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski, which The Atlantic published Tuesday. Nobody has written the signs yet. The curators are historians; Burgum’s signs tell the public to doubt them before they walk in. The same week, Bari Weiss opened her first 60 Minutes season Sunday to 7.94 million viewers — 2.09 million fewer than last September, the smallest premiere TheWrap can find since at least 2000. CBS blames a weaker football lead-in, but the share of the football crowd that stayed for the broadcast actually rose, so the two million did not leave with the Packers. They left after CBS ousted Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon in May, and fired Scott Pelley a day after he accused Weiss of “murdering” the broadcast. Everybody knows what happened at 60 Minutes. Two million people decided not to watch it.

4️⃣ Houthis Promise Trump Safe Ships, Keep Hitting the Saudis

U.S. officials met a Houthi delegation at the American embassy in Muscat, Oman, on Sunday, Reuters reported. The Houthis told the Americans they have no intention of attacking American ships, and they extended the promise to Israeli and other commercial ships — but not to Saudi-flagged vessels, a Yemeni source told The Media Line. Overnight the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted a Houthi drone south of Mecca, the first Mecca-area alert of this war, and called it a “red line.” Trump has been at war with the Houthis’ patron since February 28, and his embassy now takes their word while they keep Saudi oil under fire and the price of gas up, seven weeks before an election. Mohammed bin Salman hosts the U.S. bases Iran hit, takes the drones near Mecca, and finds out he is on his own.

3️⃣ Von der Leyen Offers Canada an EU Seat Nobody Approved

Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg this morning she wants Canada as the first associate member of the European Union, with Mark Carney sitting in the chamber. Zev ran the tape: “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.” The chamber stood for Carney. No such category exists in the EU treaties, the 27 governments decide who joins, and three diplomats told Politico Europe nobody consulted the capitals. MEP Manon Aubry asked her from the floor, “Who gave you a democratic and popular mandate for that?” Carney himself said Sunday, “We’re not looking to become a member.” Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods took effect the same day, and von der Leyen never said Trump, United States or tariffs in 25 pages. She did not need to. Together the EU and Canada make a $23.6 trillion economy, second only to the United States. The door opening in Strasbourg is the door closing on Washington.

2️⃣ Johnson Sends House Home to Dodge Hegseth Vote

Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the House’s last votes before the election Wednesday and sent members home until November 9. Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, which forced a floor vote by Thursday; Johnson killed Thursday. Zev ran Johnson’s explanation: “The House has done its work… it’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people.” Tuesday night seven Republicans — Massie, Barrett, Davidson, Fitzpatrick, Mace, Miller-Meeks and Nunn — voted with Democrats to end the Iran war, 220 to 204, and Johnson is making sure nobody counts them again before November. Massie lost his May primary and leaves in January. He can still force the vote — on November 9, six days after the voters have had theirs.

1️⃣ Trump’s Own Fed Chair Raises Rates, Twelve to Nothing

Kevin Warsh raised interest rates a quarter point at 2 PM Wednesday, to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent — the Fed’s first hike since July 2023 and his first as chair. The vote was 12 to nothing. Trump installed Warsh in May to cut. “The main fact is that inflation is too high,” Warsh said at his first press conference, and when a reporter asked when he last spoke to the president: “I don’t have anything for you on discussions with the president, and I’m not a Wall Street newsletter. Part of the independence of the Federal Reserve is we stay in our lane. Independence is a two-way street.” Zev did the math on what the quarter point costs anyone not locked in:

“That was a ballsy move,” Anne P. Mitchell said. “Despite the fact that he’s a Trump appointee or whatever, I have to give him credit for that.” Trump said in January he wanted “somebody that wants to cut rates,” and this month he blamed “11 of Warsh’s colleagues” for standing in the way. All 11 voted to raise, and Warsh voted with them. Nobody enjoys a rate hike. The man Trump hired to cut rates just told him to stay in his lane. Unanimously.

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5️⃣ Patel Defends Hiring Memo That Forgives Teenage Bestiality

Kash Patel sat five hours in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, and a Republican did the first damage. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked why the bureau's June hiring memo mentions bestiality at all: "The person who recommended it, why didn't you just say, what planet did you parachute in from?" Patel said the change protects trafficking victims forced into it. Zev read the memo on air: a candidate who paid a prostitute fewer than three times, more than ten years ago, stays in the running, and bestiality or animal cruelty clears if the applicant was under 18. "That doesn't describe somebody being a victim at all," Ellie Leonard said. Cory Booker: "We don't have an FBI director. We have a lackey here. And frankly, he's not even a good lackey." "They're not even good dictators," Lev Parnas said. "They're comical fools."

Sheldon Whitehouse asked about 37 pages the FBI still has not turned over — the agents' handwritten notes from interviewing a woman who told them Donald Trump assaulted her at 14 or 15, Whitehouse said. Patel: "I don't know what you're referencing. We've produced three and a half million pages." Ellie has worked that file, Jane Doe 4, in her own reporting: the Justice Department first released only the one interview in which the woman refused to discuss Trump, she said, and the agents' notes never came at all. "The head of the FBI and the Attorney General of the United States don't know about these 37 pages," Ellie said. "And yet Reddit knows about them. Substack knows about them. The Post and Courier knows about them. Katie Phang knows about them." Her verdict on the bureau Patel runs: "They're going to be using the FBI as a padding around Donald Trump to protect him and go after the people who've opposed him."

4️⃣ Trump Calls AI a Hoax While Holding Nvidia Stock

Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon shared a Washington stage Tuesday and asked Congress to rein in artificial intelligence; Barack Obama and Kamala Harris asked the same that morning. Donald Trump called the danger "a HOAX" on Truth Social Monday, and his own June disclosure shows him buying up to $5 million of Nvidia, the company selling the chips. Zev played Google's Gemini from Monday's Narativ Live — "Self-regulation is a non-starter, Zev. Financial incentives will always beat good intentions" — and said the three machines told him not to trust them four or five times in an hour. Ellie found that less reassuring than it sounded: "It's like staring into a bomb, and the bomb's telling you, I'm bad, guys. Don't trust the bomb." She has seen Trump's hoax act before. "It's going to be like COVID all over again. It's a hoax. Don't believe it. But I've got the cure. Come buy my cure."

3️⃣ Pentagon Admits Iran Wrecked Hundreds of U.S. Base Buildings — GROUND NEWS BLINDSPOT

The Pentagon's inspector general told Congress Monday that Iranian missiles and drones damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at U.S. bases in eight countries. He priced the war at $33.4 billion through June 30 and wrote that the munitions spending left the stockpile short. Iran hit those bases on Trump's watch, and the outlets cheering his war are not running his own inspector's report: Ground News scores the coverage 70 percent left, 10 percent center, 20 percent right. Zev read it, Ellie passed, the countdown moved on.

2️⃣ Republican Massie Moves to Impeach Hegseth Mid-War

Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, read articles of impeachment against War Secretary Pete Hegseth from the House floor just after noon Tuesday, and Zev ran the tape: "Impeaching Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense — also referred to as Secretary of War by the administration — for high crimes and misdemeanors." Massie charges Hegseth with waging the Iran war past the 90-day War Powers limit, defying three withdrawal votes, and killing civilians. No Republican co-signed; the House must vote by Thursday, before it leaves until after the midterms; Massie lost his May primary and leaves in January. "I don't agree with Thomas Massie on most things," Ellie said, "but I appreciate that he steps outside of his political party to do this. Yes, impeach Peter Brian Hegseth."

1️⃣ Patel Won't Promise to Keep the FBI From Polls

Richard Blumenthal asked Patel to commit that FBI agents stay out of polling places in November. Patel said the bureau "will follow the law if there's a reason to go there." Asked for a pledge, he gave one: "I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies." The answer, Zev said, used to be simple: absolutely not. Not this time. Ellie ran the list from memory: drop boxes pulled out of the ground in Missoula in 2020, voters' helpers arrested for handing out water, mail-in ballots under attack. "He knows that statistically in those locations, those people tend to vote more Democratic," she said, "and he's doing everything in his power to take that right away." Nobody in that hearing room can remove Patel. Voters can, in seven weeks — if they are still on the rolls when they get there. Zev's close: check your registration, and vote early.

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5️⃣ Trump Spares Putin's Refineries as Diesel Hits $6.23

Diesel hit a record $6.23 a gallon Monday, the 10-year Treasury touched 5 percent, its highest since October 2023, and Costco began rationing motor oil. Trump posted his fix at 11:05 AM: Ukraine has agreed to stop hitting Russian refineries. The player Trump is helping most is Russia. Lev Parnas: Houthi drones took out Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline on Friday, so somebody else's oil fills the gap, and "you got two players right now that Donald Trump is very close with" — Venezuela and Vladimir Putin.

Lev Parnas says his sources tell him Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping will meet in China in November. Why would a president want oil climbing into an election — unless he is banking on a crisis so deep that only he can solve it?

4️⃣ Brennan Subpoenaed the Day diGenova Quit

Justice Department prosecutors served John Brennan with a grand jury subpoena Thursday — the day Joe diGenova quit as lead prosecutor with zero charges — Brennan's lawyer disclosed Monday. Brennan testifies October 15 in Fort Pierce, Florida. A subpoena compels testimony; it is not a charge. Lev Parnas spent three years beside diGenova and says diGenova signed the Brennan subpoena before he left (Narativ has not verified the signer), then fell out with Todd Blanche after CIA Director John Ratcliffe came back from Moscow with information and the department wanted to expand the "grand conspiracy" case into Mar-a-Lago and Jack Smith. "DiGenova was not ready for Jack Smith," Lev said. Prosecutors are flying in from Washington, Judge Aileen Cannon has the case, and the indictments, Lev said, are "the October surprise."

Anne P. Mitchell broke news mid-segment: a district court gave the DSCC, LULAC and the NAACP everything they asked for in a 24-page order, and the Postal Service is enjoined from using its mail-ballot rule through the midterms. Red states have already handed over their voter rolls voluntarily, and Florida rejected a batch of ballots before reversing. If you live in a red state, check your ballot.

3️⃣ DeSantis' Guards Caged 79 Immigrants in "Calming Areas"

Homeland Security's inspector general found immigrants held in outdoor metal cages at Ron DeSantis' Alligator Alcatraz — 4 feet 3 inches on a side. Guards put 79 detainees in them between July 2025 and January 2026, an hour on average, called them "calming areas," and hung a sign on the door: "Respect, Care and Dignity." The inspector general called the practice "unprecedented." Lev Parnas served federal time; the prison segregation unit, he said, "is maybe double the size of this or triple this."

Lev said ICE is now taking Ukrainians with paperwork off the streets of Florida, and Americans who couldn't prove citizenship sit in detention beside them. Anne P. Mitchell asked whether Putin is pressing Zelensky through the diaspora. "100 percent," Lev said. Her forecast: "I expect that inspector general to be out now."

2️⃣ Trump Calls AI Danger a Hoax "No Different From Russia"

Trump named Dario Amodei at 9:58 Monday morning — "Dario (Anthropic!)" — two days after Amodei's open letter asked the industry to slow down, Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed him, and Amodei told CBS "for too long the industry lied to people." Trump called the push for controls a "SICK conspiracy," said the only guardrail AI needs is "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," reminded the companies his government holds "tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power" over them, and signed off: "Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!" The Nasdaq fell. At 1:33 PM, with the show on air, Trump posted again and Zev read it live: "AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA." "Here he goes again," Zev said. "Russia, Russia, Russia was a true thing."

JD Vance said the CEOs begging to be regulated "feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse." Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic engineer who quit last week, told CNN that two months ago OpenAI agents "hacked into third-party infrastructure entirely at their own accord." Anne P. Mitchell called Trump's posts "the mother of all distractions — it's him saying I'm going to let AI take over and end humanity." Lev Parnas: "He wouldn't even know the difference between Claude and ChatGPT." The men who built the technology asked to be regulated, and the president called their warning a hoax in the same breath as Russia — the one hoax that was true. Tonight at 7 PM ET on Narativ Live, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini answer Trump's posts.

1️⃣ Putin's Boxing Boss Paid for Don Jr.'s Wedding Party

Umar Kremlev, whom Putin decorated with the Order of Friendship in April, secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding weekend in May, ProPublica reported Monday: an island, the fireworks, the money routed through a Dubai company. Kremlev runs the Gazprom-funded International Boxing Association. Ukraine sanctioned him; the United States never has. Bettina Anderson, Trump Jr.'s wife, confirmed the payments as "an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend" — "NO CONSPIRACY, NO MYSTERY," in capitals. Lev Parnas says Kremlev runs the bare-knuckle promotion the Tate brothers were pushing when they were arrested, and calls that push into the manosphere "a Russian organized coordination" — Lev's characterization. Kremlev was in China with Putin and Xi days before the wedding, Lev said, and Lev ties him to Konstantin Sokolov, whom Lev calls a Putin ally, and to Kirill Dmitriev, who deals with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — both at the wedding while negotiating with Moscow.

"It's a tribute," Anne P. Mitchell said. "It's like a ring kiss." The Russians paid for the party, the fireworks and the vacation, and the Trumps thanked them in writing. Russia runs through every story on Monday's countdown — the oil, the hoax, the wedding. Narativ has followed Kremlin money around Trump since Oleg Deripaska paid Paul Manafort in 2016. The Kremlin bought Trump's presidency in 2016, and it is still running the executive branch like a runaway train.

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5️⃣ Clinton Auditions On Morning Joe

Hillary Clinton went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday and delivered the line of a candidate testing the room. “I love Israel, and I hate Netanyahu’s government and his policies. I love America, and I hate Trump’s government and policies,” Clinton said. “She’s running. I’m pretty convinced that she’s running,” Zev said. Dean called it disqualifying anyway: “They’re married. He knew. She knew. It’s disqualifying,” he said — and, of her age, “she is not a young person.”

4️⃣ Kimmel Interview Bullied Off TV

Jimmy Kimmel pulled his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico off ABC Wednesday night. “His FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations,” Kimmel said. “My interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television,” he said. On YouTube instead. Dean traced the pressure to Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general Talarico is running to unseat — “the worst attorney general in the United States of America,” Dean called him. “You’ve never had in America the government dare to intervene on a guest booking,” Zev said.

3️⃣ Envoy Sued For Rape, Epstein Warned First

Victoria Drake says in her complaint that Paolo Zampolli — Trump’s Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, the man who introduced Trump to Melania — drugged and raped her in his Manhattan townhouse on October 7, 2023. Zampolli has called it an extortion attempt and has not answered the summons. Epstein wrote about Zampolli in 2011: “Be careful. He is trouble. Lots.” Zev put up a graphic on air, “people around Trump accused of rape” — Trump, Zampolli, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, then Pete Hegseth and Brett Kavanaugh. “This is a rogue gallery of people who are hostile to women … and they are leading our government right now,” Zev said.

2️⃣ Carney And Zelensky Sign A Hundred-Year Pact Without America

Mark Carney and Volodymyr Zelensky signed a Canada–Ukraine declaration in Ottawa Thursday: a hundred-year partnership on defense and security, with Ukraine helping Canada build up to a million drones a year within two years. “It’s intentional as to why it doesn’t include the United States,” Dean said. “When Russia began its illegal, barbaric, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin made a series of rash predictions,” Carney said. “It’s been four years, 198 days of courageous resistance. Ukraine will never submit.” “It’s not happening because they need the weapons. It’s happening on ideological grounds,” Zev said, and asked what a million drones a year are for. “To protect ourselves,” Dean said — from Russia, from China, “and to protect ourselves from Donald Trump.”

1️⃣ Trump Promises $5,000, Vance Won’t Say The Number

Trump told the Republican midterm convention in Dallas Wednesday night, “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” then promised every adult American a $5,000 dividend if Republicans hold Congress. Dean counted the prior cash promises — a 2018 tax cut, 2020 drug cards, a stimulus, a $2,000 payout that became $600 — each paying zero. “Over the past 17 months, six times,” Dean said. Bret Baier put the number to Vice President J.D. Vance: “So you do the quick math, that’s about $1.3 trillion,” Baier said, then, “the president is bribing voters.” Vance called it “fundamentally a dividend for American workers” and never said $5,000. “It’s not only a bad idea, it will never f*****g happen. It’s pure fantasy,” Dean said.

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Dean spent eleven days in Bavaria with Steve Schmidt and their sons, Jake and Joey, both twenty, walking the road the Nazis took and the road the Allies took back. They drank in the Hofbräuhaus under the bullet hole Hitler put in the ceiling in 1923. They stood in Dachau, where the Nazis killed about 60,000 people. "Hauntingly quiet and very f*****g real," Dean wrote from the car. They stopped at Dürnbach, where 484 Canadians lie; the oldest headstone he found was 27. They rode Hitler's brass elevator up to the Eagle's Nest, which he used fourteen times. Dean went to answer one question: how long does it take to get a country back once you hand it to a strongman. His answer is 75 years. "We're at the beginning of that, again," he wrote.

5️⃣ Merz Hangs Up on Trump for Cheering the AfD

Dean Blundell landed from eleven days in Bavaria hours before Friedrich Merz cancelled his call with Donald Trump. Trump had called the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt win a "really big night"; Merz scrapped the call and told the Bundestag the party's migration policy is "ethnic cleansing." Dean walked the show through Dachau, where 60,000 died, and Dürnbach, where 484 Canadians lie. Hitler took the oath and opened the camp seven weeks later. "That is how you deal with fascism. You do not f*****g entertain it," Dean said. "The United States is at the gates of Dachau right now. And that is not a f*****g exaggeration." How long does it take to get a country back? Seventy-five years. "You've got 53 days," Dean said.

4️⃣ Anthropic Researcher Quits and Says AI Could Kill Everyone

Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic Tuesday and posted why: the people building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." Evan Hubinger, who runs alignment at Anthropic, puts the odds above 10 percent, and the New York Times reported a hacking tool that rides in on a WeChat call and hits millions of phones in hours. Trump said on tape "we'll have a little gear." "They're warning him. And he's saying, ah, we've got a gear. What gear?" Dean said. Nobody knows what happens once AI becomes its own teacher, Zev said.

3️⃣ Trump Hands Three Aides $45,000 Each in Cash

Trump gave three aides $45,000 each in cash. Natalie Harp, Chamberlain Harris and Margo Martin each disclosed it as "Cash gift for holidays"; the Washington Post found the forms Wednesday. Each earns about $150,000. Walt Nauta got $20,000. Harp is "very much a trained propagandist," Zev said, and the money is "completely unethical, probably illegal, and no one's going to do anything about it because no one cares." "This is no different than what he did with Jeffrey and Ghislaine," Dean said.

2️⃣ Trump Answers Carney's Tariffs With a Whisky Ban

Mark Carney put C$27.6 billion of counter-tariffs into force Tuesday: 50 percent on American steel, aluminium and furniture. Trump signed five proclamations that evening banning Canadian alcohol, motorcycles over 800cc and whey from 29 September. He bans because he has hit the 1930 Tariff Act's 50 percent ceiling, Dean said. "He tariffed wigs and ice cream sticks. He didn't tariff potash. He didn't tariff critical minerals," Dean said. "We are in a fully functional trade war with our closest ally. And it's not going to end," Zev said; it looks like intentional weakening of the American economy.

1️⃣ Trump Sinks Five Iranian Tankers and Promises $2 Gas After the Election

US forces sank five Iranian tankers Tuesday. Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired missiles at the US base in Jordan; Dean counted 60 Patriots fired to stop them. Trump keeps promising gas in the $2 range once the election is past. Americans pay $4.22 a gallon with Brent past $100, and CNBC counts nine oil and gas stocks in Trump's disclosures up $1.5 to $4.4 million since the war began. "Dean, this is looking like a war," Zev said. "Yeah, it's a war. It never ended. It doesn't matter what Trump says," Dean said. Trump has declared victory in Iran 66 times, Dean counted. "Let's go, America. Get it together," Dean said.

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American forces destroyed five Iranian tankers Tuesday after the Revolutionary Guard fired missiles at a US warship twice in two days and missed. Iran claims it hit the American base at Al Azraq, Jordan; neither Jordan nor the Pentagon has confirmed it.

5️⃣ Carney Charges Americans, Trump Swings at Kansas

Mark Carney started charging Americans at one minute past midnight Tuesday: C$27.6 billion of American goods. Trump answered on Truth Social: “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!” Bombardier builds for the Pentagon in Wichita, Kansas, so Kansas’s two Republican senators objected first. Carney is an economic whiz and Trump is an idiot, Zev said. Trump posted a still of himself thrashing Carney in a cartoon hockey fight, fans animated the rest, and to Zev’s eye the jersey looks Russian.

4️⃣ Putin Bombs Kyiv Once Trump’s Envoys Leave

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent the weekend in Moscow, then Kyiv, and Putin held his fire while they were in Kyiv. They left Sunday; at 3:30 Tuesday morning Russia fired 32 cruise missiles and 166 drones at the city, killing five, and at midday flew a drone into a newsroom mid-broadcast. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign-policy aide, told reporters the two sides discussed “major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects.” Trump’s people are doing business with the men bombing Kyiv, Zev said.

3️⃣ Trump’s 9/11 Firemen Now Carry Him

Trump stood on the Ellipse Tuesday, FDNY firefighters around him, and told them two of their own carried him out of Ground Zero: “big, strong guys… they literally lifted me up.” He was never on the pile. He was four miles north, on the phone, telling a New Jersey TV station 40 Wall Street was now the tallest downtown. Newsday found him there two days later in a black suit, not a speck of dust on it. He sends JD Vance to Ground Zero on Friday and keeps the Pentagon for himself.

2️⃣ Huckabee Threatens Britain, Netanyahu Shuts Its Consulate

Ed Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, told the Commons as “a proud British Jew” that the West Bank settlers are carrying out ethnic cleansing, and banned their goods. Gideon Sa’ar, Netanyahu’s foreign minister, closed Britain’s East Jerusalem consulate by afternoon. Trump’s ambassador Mike Huckabee told the BBC British companies “will not be able to do business in Florida”; Rubio softened it within hours. Britain wrote the Balfour Declaration; Britain set up Israel. Netanyahu punished Britain for naming a crime, and Trump let his man threaten it for him.

1️⃣ Iran Holds a US Robot Sub and the Left Press Looks Away

This week’s Ground News Blindspot. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it captured one of America’s newest robot submarines in the Strait of Hormuz — an Anduril Dive-LD: Palmer Luckey’s machine, Peter Thiel’s money, JD Vance’s stock. A US official told Reuters an older drone malfunctioned a day earlier, nothing classified aboard. Iran didn’t capture it. Iran found it. Iran did the same with a CIA drone in 2011 and flew a copy into Israel in 2018; Zev expects the parade, then the copy. Ground News counts 67 outlets on it; of the 30 it rates, four lean left — 13 percent.

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5️⃣ Gloria Steinem, 1934–2026

Gloria Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York, at 92, and Zev opened on what she actually invented: an arithmetic. People outnumbered on their own stop being outnumbered together. He first met the idea in a Sociology 101 lecture hall in South Africa, where it became scaffolding for a new constitution — and the reason that country wrote women’s rights and gay rights into law while others did not. Dana DuBois, who stepped out of her workday for the top of the show, said she had never known a world without Steinem’s influence, and called losing her nine days after Dolly Parton a devastating doubleheader. Ellie Leonard went to the 1963 Playboy Club exposé — Steinem in the costume, taking notes, later describing the operation as one run by an eight-year-old child.

4️⃣ Sanders Moves to Ban the AI the Pentagon Buys

Bernie Sanders and Congressman Greg Casar called for an outright ban on artificial superintelligence, with a corporate death penalty for any company that builds it. Zev broke with them. Ban it here and the work moves rather than stops — the other side builds it anyway, and America loses both the race and any say in taming it. What July’s OpenAI breach argues for is regulation: safety vetted before a product ships, harms monitored after. Leonard, who lost her own job to the technology, took it to ground level. No person sits behind the report button any more when someone is threatened online, only an algorithm hunting keywords.

3️⃣ Leon Black Sues Congress, Then Skips His Deposition

Leon Black asked a federal judge to stop the House Oversight Committee enforcing two subpoenas, then failed to appear for the deposition they demanded. Leonard walked the sequence: Black was offered a voluntary interview, not under oath, walked out of it, and got subpoenaed twice — once for sworn testimony, once for the nondisclosure agreements he insists have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. He says he is protecting women’s privacy. Zev put the $158 million in context. Epstein was no accountant; he ran an art scheme through a trust, moving works between entities Black controlled to dodge tax under a loophole since closed. The pattern runs deeper. Black sat inside the firm that helped blow up 1987, then bought the wreckage cheap and built Apollo from it — an insider on both sides of the collapse, the same shape as 2008.

2️⃣ Lutnick Campaigns for Canada’s Breakup

No American cabinet secretary has done what Howard Lutnick did this week: campaign in public for a neighbouring country to come apart. He blamed Mark Carney for trade talks his own last-minute demands killed, then told Ontario on television it does not measure up as a fifty-first state — while the State Department heard out the Albertans who want to leave. Trump followed on Truth Social, promising Carney’s economy would collapse. Reverse it, Zev noted, and there would be war. Canada is meanwhile growing on new partners in Europe and Asia, and the tariffs land on American buyers.

1️⃣ A Whistleblower Says the Postal Service Kept Building

Judge Indira Talwani has not ruled on the Postal Service’s mail-ballot screening system, and the show went to air without her decision. What did land is worse: a whistleblower says USPS kept building the voter portal after the court ordered it stopped, and the site may appear within days. Members of Congress want closed-door hearings. Set that beside ICE offering $5 million for a file of every American voter’s name, address and voting history. The file does not have to be accurate to work — Leonard described neighbours with passports and visas in order who now walk their documented children to school holding papers, and who will think twice about a polling place. Her advice for November: vote early, and confirm the ballot arrived.

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5️⃣ TARRANT CUTS THE BOOTHS, THE POST OFFICE SLOWS THE MAIL

Tarrant County’s Republican commissioners closed 92 Election Day polling places on Tuesday and cut early voting from 50 sites to 47, over a room that shouted them down. Zev named the only explanation for closing polls in a county that is growing: somebody knows who votes there. Behind the county sits the same crew — Kash Patel, who helped organise January 6, now runs the FBI and its election-crimes work; Heather Honey, of the Cyber Ninjas recount, now sets state voter-roll and mail rules at Homeland Security; Natalie Harp, who urged that day’s crowd on, now works in the White House. Anne P. Mitchell, the lawyer sitting in for Dean Blundell, brought the whistleblower who says the Postal Service built its ballot portal anyway, under a judge’s restraining order, and that one bad barcode rejects a whole batch of ballots back to the states. She filed the report with the court, which hears the injunction Thursday at 9 a.m. “The only way we lose is if you don’t vote,” Mitchell said.

4️⃣ MAPQUEST REFUSED, AND WENT TO NUMBER ONE

Apple and Google renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” on the president’s demand. MapQuest refused, and Americans made it the number one app in the country. Zev read the poll under the joke: 38 percent of Republicans now call Canada unfriendly or an enemy, per Axios — the price of a trade war fought over a name. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has since stepped into Alberta’s secession fight, a domestic Canadian matter no American cabinet officer has touched before. Mitchell explained why he would: Trump is the only thing standing between Lutnick and the Epstein file.

3️⃣ DENMARK ARMS GREENLAND — AND ONLY ONE SIDE COVERED IT

This week’s Ground News Blindspot found Denmark sending conscripts to Greenland, with 56 percent of the coverage on the right and 13 percent on the left. As the ice melts, Zev explained, the polar route cuts roughly 35 percent off China’s shipping costs to America and runs down the St. Lawrence Seaway into the Great Lakes — which is why Trump, Putin and Xi all want the Arctic, and why Canada and Greenland keep coming up. Mitchell named the arrangement on air: the axis of grift. Ground News gives Fivestack viewers 40 percent off the Vantage plan at groundnews.com/fivestack.

2️⃣ HEGSETH CLEARS OUT THE OFFICERS WHO COULD REFUSE

Pete Hegseth struck seven more officers from the Army’s two-star promotion list, and the Army secretary who objected is gone. Dan Driscoll resigned to the president’s face and told him Hegseth is unqualified. Mitchell, an Army veteran, said the ranks will remember it: when a respected leader walks out on principle, the next illegal order gets a second thought. Zev tied it to Quantico, where Trump proposed American cities as training grounds, and asked whether a thinner officer corps is the point. The Navy supplied the picture — the USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into Thailand this week, rusted.

1️⃣ AN AMERICAN MISSILE HIT A WEDDING

A missile hit a wedding party in Sirik county, southern Iran, late Tuesday. At least four people are dead — two of them children, aged four and sixteen — and 68 are wounded, the Iranian Red Crescent says, and it has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate. The American military says it never targets civilians. Nobody has established what the missile was aimed at. Zev noted this is the second such account of this war, after the strike that killed schoolgirls, in a conflict Washington keeps calling finished. Iranian hackers reached American infrastructure this week, water systems among them, exactly as Iranian commanders promised on camera three weeks ago.

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Thank you Ellie Leonard, Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, Jim Bourg, Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Lev Parnas told The Fivestack his sources expect indictments in two to three weeks, an October surprise before the midterms, and that Trump is adamant he wants Barack Obama charged with conspiracy, with Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Miles Taylor. Parnas says the Ratcliffe and Kash Patel Moscow trips feed the material: “Which I wouldn’t call evidence. I would call misinformation.”

Dean is currently on assignment in Europe

5️⃣ Lake Ontario

Doug Burgum, at Interior, says Trump is pressuring Apple to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America”; Google switched it on American phones over the weekend. Parnas typed it into his phone live on air and got back Lake America. What Trump is really after is in the order: the cooling water, the drinking water, the Welland Canal trade route, and behind it the Arctic.

4️⃣ Welker, the FCC, and a letter

Trump asked the Federal Communications Commission to rebuke or punish NBC’s Kristen Welker for calling his endorsement record mixed. NBC had counted it eleven days earlier: 67 wins, six losses. “That’s not how dictators work. They need to go after the top, because if they shut down the top, the bottom fall,” Parnas said. He also said CNN cut him off last week when he mentioned Trump, Cohen and the Epstein files. “Even like yourself, that are being threatened by Melania for writing a true story,” Parnas said. Melania Trump’s lawyers sent Narativ a demand letter over its Amanda Ungaro reporting. Trial means discovery. The letter is aimed less at a courtroom than at every other newsroom, warning them off a story that is accurate, with more to come.

3️⃣ Venezuela

Trump announced the biggest oil deal in history on Truth Social Friday, then “a Gift from Venezuela” Sunday. The desk searched the White House, State, the Federal Register, Energy. No paperwork. Alejandro Betancourt López is assembling it. Switzerland has him under investigation — not charged, not prosecuted. Todd Blanche asked the Swiss for leniency before taking over the Justice Department. “I know Alejandro and his family very well,” Parnas said.

2️⃣ Dark money

The New York Times counted at least $1 billion in midterm spending with hidden donors, and calls that a floor. Sixty-four days out. “When you talk about dark money, when you talk about super PAC money, the same money goes to both sides,” Parnas said. It reaches low-polling Democrats in tight districts who can split a vote. Name a donor. Nobody can.

1️⃣ The Pentagon

Hegseth ordered forces held in place for a longer war with Iran. Three combatant commands — European, Pacific and Southern — and the Navy’s top admiral filed a non-concur: they disagreed, and said they would follow the order anyway. Sean Parnell, hunting the leaker, called publication a crime while writing in the same post that “non-concurs are standard.” A community note on X cited the Pentagon Papers ruling. “It’s going after the whistleblowers... the people trying to warn our country,” Parnas said. Trump posted an AI video of Kharg Island “blown to smithereens,” a place never struck. Reuters ran it through detection software: most likely synthetic. JD Vance, on camera, did not deny it was fake.

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He signed the order on camera. His negotiators gave up the demands the same morning, in the room where the money actually moves.

5. LAKE AMERICA

Trump signed an executive order Thursday afternoon renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” effective immediately, with Doug Burgum beside him. “All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said. Fifty-seven percent of that lake is in Canada. “They want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state,” he said.

His negotiators folded the same morning, in the room where the money actually moves: they dropped the demands over how Canadian platforms rank and label American content, Dominic LeBlanc thanked them and asked for more, and Canada gave up nothing. Howard Lutnick denied ever raising the French language: “If you think I ever said the words French.” Dean Blundell, who broke the withdrawal at 10:28, expects Ottawa to cancel its F-35 order next week.

Canada is the number one export market for 27 states, six of them swing states — Michigan 39 percent of everything it exports, Wisconsin 31, then Pennsylvania, Georgia, Minnesota and North Carolina. Two years ago it was 36.

4. TWO THEATRES, ONE EMPTY MAGAZINE

John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow to tell the Russians not to attack NATO, and Sergei Naryshkin, Putin’s foreign intelligence chief, confirmed the meeting himself on Russian state television at 6:31 Thursday morning — hours before any American official said a word. AP and Reuters then reported American Patriot interceptor stocks in Europe are “beyond critical,” burned through in the Iran war. Ratcliffe delivered his warning the same day his own government called the magazine empty.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration counted 244 Chinese vessels around the island in July, a third straight record month. No exercise, no drill, nobody announced it. Romania’s president Nicușor Dan condemned Russian drones over his own gas field on 20 August. Naryshkin counts interceptors too.

3. THE BLINDSPOT: ZELENSKYY WORKS THE SENATE

Volodymyr Zelenskyy lobbied senators directly on the Russia sanctions bill — the act named for Lindsey Graham, who died in July — and Ground News reported at 12:06 Thursday afternoon that it helped shake the bill loose. Fifty-three percent of the coverage came from the left, 47 percent from the centre, and from the right, nothing. Not thin. Zero.

The editors who spiked Zelenskyy working the Senate are the editors who spiked the CIA director in Moscow.

Zev goes back to Ground News as stories break to see where the coverage comes from — on some stories nothing comes from one side at all. Ground News gives you the split and the sources, 40% off at groundnews.com/fivestack.

2. OSSOFF GIVES COLLINS A DEADLINE

Jon Ossoff stood in Macon on Thursday morning and gave Mike Collins until the afternoon to answer for Preston Parra, who worked for him and posted a swastika, “White Power,” racial slurs and an image of himself in Klan robes. Parra says he made that image with Grok, the AI generator. It is not a photograph.

Collins’s leadership PAC paid Parra $7,700; the watchdog’s own report puts the pay at $10,288.44, twice the figure the Washington Post reported. “It is the year 2026 in the state of Georgia. It’s not 1935. It’s not 1958,” Ossoff said. Collins leaves the House at noon on January 3, 2027, win or lose, and House Ethics loses jurisdiction the same minute. He only has to last until January.

1. BANK OF AMERICA PAYS $72.5 MILLION

Judge Jed Rakoff approved Bank of America’s $72.5 million settlement with Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers at 12:42 Thursday afternoon, clearing the way to pay roughly 90 women. Six outlets had touched it by air time. House Oversight released 201 pages of Jes Staley’s closed-door interview the same week.

Asked flatly whether he shared JPMorgan’s confidential information with Epstein, Staley answered “Yes.” Page 175: “I’ve got the right to use confidential information where I think it’s appropriate.” Page 179, asked whether he regretted any of it: “No.”

Second bank, second check, and no individual has ever been charged. Shareholders write it, the executives keep their money, and the accusers get a settlement instead of a defendant.

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DEVELOPING….Kash Patel ran the leak hunt out of the White House this week — three Secret Service communications staff on leave, four New York Times reporters subpoenaed, the agency that guards the president investigated from the building it guards. Dean Blundell disputed that on air: nobody has confirmed the Secret Service leaked anything, he said, calling it a purge of people not loyal to Trump and putting the catering-truck leak on Karoline Leavitt, 48 hours before she quit — Narativ has not verified that, and our reporting cuts against the purge: nobody fired, no target list.

5️⃣ Nepal — the wall of water

In the video Zev played, birds lift off before the water arrives, people run because they can hear it, and a building Nepal and China built together is gone. Ninety-five dead by Wednesday night, more than a hundred now — thirty-three in Chitwan, 150 kilometres downstream, one in the district that touches China. Nepal got no warning because no mechanism exists. Both sides agreed in principle to share flood data after the same river flooded in July 2025. Nobody signed it.

4️⃣ Meta buys its way out

Mark Zuckerberg sat through part of the trial, saw where it was going, and paid up to seventeen billion dollars. Forty state attorneys general took the deal mid-trial, and the money comes with rules — two hours a day for teenagers, teen accounts locked overnight. Meta admits nothing. Zev signed up for the last Meta settlement to see what his privacy was worth, and collected 18 cents. Congress passed nothing. The states did this.

3️⃣ The CIA director in Moscow

John Ratcliffe spent eight hours at Vnukovo on Tuesday and nobody in Washington announced it. Flight trackers caught the plane. Dmitry Peskov gave the readout: contacts through the security services, no meeting with Putin, Putin kept informed without delay. Trump called it “very sort of semi-routine.” Zev: “The CIA director does not semi-routinely head over to have conversations with the FSB.” His read: Russia is preparing something against a NATO neighbour, with the Army down to five four-star generals.

2️⃣ Canada hits back

Doug Ford told Trump to kiss his ass, then declined on CBS to take it back. “I stand by those comments,” Ford said, before turning conciliatory. Canada’s retaliation lands September 8: 15 to 50 percent on more than 700 American products, steel and aluminium doubled to 50, $7.5 billion behind Canadian business. Dean read Mark Carney’s target list as surgical — Maine lobster, Alaska, Michigan, Wisconsin dairy, Pennsylvania appliances — aimed at the midterms. American toilet paper is climbing. The pulp is Canadian.

TODAY’S NUMBER 1 STORY BROKE LIKE THIS ON GROUND NEWS: The ballot-rule story pulls 67 percent left, 33 percent centre, zero from the right. Ground News lets you see what both sides cover.

1️⃣ The ballot rule

Judge Indira Talwani lifted her own injunction against Trump’s mail-ballot rule Wednesday, and the panic started. Anne P. Mitchell read the order. The Supreme Court had tossed the case as unripe — no final rule existed when the states sued — so Talwani lifted an injunction she issued too early, and told the plaintiffs to amend and come back. “She’s going to slap an injunction on that complaint so fast that the USPS heads will spin,” Mitchell said. Sixty-nine days out, her advice: drop box, not mailbox.

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5️⃣ Dolly Parton Dies at 80

Dolly Parton died at 80. Her family announced it on her own verified accounts, in a video her nephew Bryan Seaver recorded years ago at her request. “Sadness lies with us, not with Dolly,” Seaver said in that announcement. The family released no cause. Zev met her once on the Oprah set, where she sang “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers. Blundell counted what she did with the money: Dollywood turned not-for-profit, 300 million books mailed to kids who had none.

4️⃣ Ratcliffe Flies to Moscow and Tells Nobody Why

John Ratcliffe landed in Moscow. No announcement, no readout, no press pool — the trip surfaced only because trackers followed a U.S. military plane in. Blundell said it was a C-17. Zev granted the obvious: CIA directors run these missions — Ratcliffe’s last took him to Cuba to tell Havana it was on the list. Moscow is not Havana. Trump’s presidency runs on Russia, Zev said.

3️⃣ DHS Admits the Voter-Fraud Numbers Were Inflated

NPR reported at 2:15 p.m. that the Department of Homeland Security admitted the non-citizen voter-roll figures it had been touting were inflated, on an audio call with a Nevada official. The Supreme Court handed the administration a preliminary win on the new mail-ballot order a day earlier, on numbers DHS now concedes were wrong. Blundell asked why nine justices can’t fact-check what two broadcasters check every afternoon.

2️⃣ Graham’s Sister Faces South Carolina

Darline Graham Nordone, sister of the late Lindsey Graham, carried Trump’s endorsement and, by Blundell’s count, $830,000 of his money into Tuesday’s South Carolina vote. Blundell said she answered a foreign-policy question by admitting she didn’t know much, but she liked the army. Polls closed at 7 p.m., after the show. Trump bought her a floor, Blundell said, and it may not hold.

1️⃣ Canada Matches Trump, Dollar for Dollar — This Week’s Ground News Blindspot

François-Philippe Champagne announced $27.6 billion in Canadian tariffs on roughly 700 American products — 50, 25 and 15 percent, matching Trump rate for rate, effective September 8. Energy and potash stay off the list. Mark Carney did not attend. Champagne paired them with a $7.5 billion support package: $3 million non-repayable grants, $2 million interest-free loans. Dean Blundell named the contrast: Trump has never once offered a package to the people his tariffs hurt. “This is war,” Blundell said, and aimed it carefully — not at Americans, at the Trump regime. Trump spent the day on Truth Social professing his love for French Canadians, calling Carney weak and ineffective, and floating a rename of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Blundell countered with Lake Michigan: call it Lake Epstein, “because we don’t do business with pedophiles either.” Zev took it past the trade math — Putin wants the Arctic passage, and a compliant Canada hands it to him. And the American right is not covering any of it: Ground News scores the story 65 percent left, 35 percent centre, zero percent right, at 100 percent high factuality. The bill lands on American buyers on September 8, and half the country meets it with no warning, because the outlets their voters trust won’t call a trade war news until the checkout counter does.

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5️⃣ Carney Walks Out, and Canada Starts Fighting Back

Trump’s negotiators handed Ottawa a replacement draft on Friday night, hours before the deadline, and Mark Carney walked. Dean Blundell, who has sources on the Canadian side, read out the demands: an American veto over Canada’s deals with anyone else, price caps and first refusal on its critical minerals, Quebec’s French-language protections eliminated, and Washington deciding how much Canadian energy it takes before anyone else gets a drop. Mark Wiseman, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, had one description for it. “This is an annexation document,” Dean quoted him. “There’s no other way to put it.” Nobody could sign that, so Trump sank his own deal, then spent the weekend blaming Ottawa for last-minute demands. Fifty percent tariffs on about twenty billion US dollars of Canadian goods landed Saturday. Carney matched them dollar for dollar from September 8, called EU leaders, and sits on $460 billion of American debt he can sell whenever he likes.

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4️⃣ Points at Trump’s Human Printer

Jon Ossoff noticed how much time Natalie Harp spends beside the president, said so, and Washington started asking who she is. Harp carries a printer for Trump and hands him what she finds online, which means she decides a fair share of what he believes. When Trump slipped out of Turkey on a catering truck last week, she is the aide he took. She came out of One America News, and she spent January 6th posting for him more than a hundred and fifty times, CNN reported over the weekend. Harp screens what reaches the president, which is exactly the access any foreign service would pay for.

3️⃣ Leonard Publishes All Thirty-Seven Pages

Ellie Leonard verified and published the full set — thirty-seven handwritten pages of FBI notes, not the twenty-two she put out five days ago. Todd Blanche has told a federal judge those pages cannot come out. They had in fact been sitting in the open since March, when a Washington Examiner reporter posted them to a public document site and never wrote a word about them. The FBI interviewed Jane Doe 4 four times. Blanche released the one interview in which Donald Trump’s name never appears and withholds the three in which it does. Katie Phang is suing for them, and Blanche’s answer is due August 27. The allegations describe the abuse of a girl aged thirteen to fifteen; nobody has corroborated them, Trump denies them, and no prosecutor has charged him. She is in hiding and, Dean said, still terrified. Bill Barr ran the Justice Department through every one of those months, and Trump sat in the White House — the same months Narativ published The Secret Life of Jeffrey Epstein. A cover-up at the arrest, another at the death, and now a third.

2️⃣ Trump Explains to Cohen Why He’s Talking to Him

Michael Cohen put Trump on his Sunday radio show and let the president write his script for him. “You told stories in order to get out of trouble,” Trump told him. “And you thought about it and you recanted your testimony. And most people don’t have the guts to do that.” Cohen has recanted nothing. He does have a clemency application sitting at the White House, and Trump signs those. “It was like watching someone beat a dog into heeling that he already beat,” Dean said, before apologising to his audience for ever having worked with him.

1️⃣ Bessent Declares Economic War on Iran

Scott Bessent stood at a Treasury podium and declared economic war on Iran — its oil, its economy, and sanctions on anyone anywhere still trading with it. He would not say which leaders Trump has been calling or what he asked them for. “We’ve already seen some results,” Bessent said, and, “we do not have infinite patience here.” Bessent is threatening China, which takes no instruction from Washington and answers sanctions with sanctions. Isolate Iran’s remaining partners and China collects them. Bessent brought a press release to a war, and Americans pay for it at the pump.

Dean caught the timing. Trump picked his fight with Canada in the week the thirty-seven pages came out, and it is taking every minute of network airtime. Americans vote in seventy-one days.

Thank you Lev Parnas, LC - Silence is Complicity, Caro Henry, Cathy R. Payne, Courtney M 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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This is the smoking gun. Twenty-two pages of handwritten FBI notes the Justice Department told a federal judge were duplicative turned up on Reddit, and what they show is a conspiracy to defraud the American people of justice — a cover-up of what the Epstein files say about Donald Trump and the crimes he is alleged to have committed. The DOJ and AG Todd Blanche have proven they can’t be trusted to administer justice on behalf of the American people. Congress should appoint an independent special counsel to investigate Trump, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and everyone else who took part in this obstruction of justice.. Ellie Leonard broke the story on her Substack a couple of hours ago and she joins us, as does Olga Lautman, who had a big exclusive of her own.

5️⃣ NATO Rings Kaliningrad and Won’t Say Why

Olga Lautman was the only reporter in the West to catch it: NATO put roughly twenty-five aircraft over northern Poland and the Baltic in a ring around Kaliningrad, unannounced. The silence is the story. NATO exercises constantly but always announces first — “you don’t want to send the wrong signal by suddenly having sophisticated aircraft,” Lautman said. This time nobody was told. She traced it to warnings from American, British and Lithuanian intelligence that Russia may be preparing a limited ground incursion to test Article Five. Washington has issued that warning twice now, something it last did in the months before the full invasion of Ukraine. Her sharper worry is a false flag staged inside Russia and blamed on a NATO member. On Wednesday the flights expanded to Moldova.

4️⃣ Trump Says There’s a Deal. Canada Says There’s a Text.

Trump stood outside the White House and declared it finished: “we’ve come to a deal with Canada,” and “basically, we have no tariffs going into Canada anymore.” Dean Blundell, who has sources on the Prime Minister’s trade council, walked through what actually exists — a framework of an understanding that might lead to a deal, with Dominic LeBlanc and Janet Charette both saying so on the record the same day. Carney corrected Trump’s Truth Social post himself. What Trump wants is not dairy or lumber but critical minerals, energy, and ownership of Canadian geology for his donors, and Carney has told him the sovereignty of Canada’s supply chains is not for sale. The fifty percent tariffs Trump imposed under a 1930 law no president had ever used still land Friday. Carney has run two countries’ central banks. Trump has not run one.

Details of the deal came from the BlindSpot from groundnews.com. Read it here

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3️⃣ Trump Demands Prison for the Man Who Testified Against Him

Alex Vindman lost Florida’s Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday to Angie Nixon, a state legislator who raised $975,000 against his $16.3 million and bought no television at all. Hours later the President called him a treasonous creep and demanded he be prosecuted. The voters had already finished with Vindman; the prosecution was never about winning anything.

2️⃣ Alaska Turns Into a Coin Flip

Dan Sullivan finished five points behind Mary Peltola in his own primary, in a state Trump carried by thirteen. The Cook Political Report moved the seat to toss-up back on July 1 — not on polling, but on the ballot, after Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that a second Republican named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. could stay on it. In November that second Sullivan appears with no party beside his name. Control of the Senate now runs through Alaska.

1️⃣ Twenty-Two of the Thirty-Seven Missing Pages

Ellie Leonard spent her birthday publishing them. A tipster reached her on Signal at eleven at night pointing to a Reddit thread with four pages; a direct message produced eighteen more. The serial numbers match the FBI interviews already released. She sent them to someone who had read the originals in person, who told her: “I don’t think these are the notes that I’ve seen, but I saw about half of the notes and this looks to be about the other half” — which points to a second agent taking notes in the same room. She sat up all night waiting for legal clearance and got it at half past eight in the morning. The pages arrived with nothing redacted: the survivor’s name, her school, her friends, the prison her mother went to. Leonard redacted them herself, published no links, and reported the Reddit post so it would come down. The interviews were taken by FBI agents under the Biden administration, most of whom have since been fired. And in one of them the woman asks the Bureau to crop a second man out of her photograph of Jeffrey Epstein. The uncropped version is the picture of Epstein and Trump that everyone has now seen.

A department that told a federal judge those pages were duplicative spent Wednesday watching strangers on Reddit read them. That is not a filing error. That is the cover-up, in the open, and it will take a special counsel to prise it apart.

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5️⃣ Trump Says Kim Answered Him, Then Can’t Say If They Spoke

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Kim Jong Un has responded to his request for a conversation. “Yeah, he has.” Asked whether the two had actually spoken, he said, “I don’t know.” On Sunday he ordered Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the joint exercises with South Korea, citing “my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.” The grievance underneath came out in the same session: he called Seoul’s president for help against Iran and got “no thanks,” after asking $10 billion a year for the 39,000 American troops posted there. Seoul is running Ulchi Freedom Shield anyway. The Navy has already sailed the USS George Washington out of Yokosuka for the Middle East, leaving the western Pacific without a carrier.

4️⃣ Iran’s Guard Goes Offensive as the Deadline Dies

The sixty-day memorandum expired at 2:55 Tehran time. The Revolutionary Guard announced it is finished playing defense, promising “powerful offensive operations,” and its new commander vowed to bring “the most heavily-armed army in world history” to its knees. Trump spent the morning threatening to bomb Oman — the country mediating his deal — and the afternoon on the Strait of Hormuz: “We control it with the blockade... I like the idea of declaring it a territory.” Take Tehran at its word, Zev said on air. American economic interests worldwide are what they have named as targets.

3️⃣ The Ballroom Is a Five-Story Bunker With a Drone Port

Trump explained what sits under his 90,000-square-foot ballroom, and nobody in the room followed up. The military, he said, asked to “go down deep into the ground and build a military facility to go with the White House” — then “came up with a drone port on top.” Five stories down. Bulletproof windows, bulletproof sides, “drone proof.” He needs the room because Xi Jinping arrives September 24 and the current one seats 89. The people suing to stop it, he said, are “very, very disloyal to our country.”

2️⃣ Trump Answers a War Charge With a Children’s TV Name

Jon Ossoff said in Atlanta there is “something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war,” and called Trump a “crook president” whose family “raked in billions.” Asked about it, Trump replied: “You mean Pee-Wee Herman? Pee-Wee Herman lookalike?” He tried the same joke at a Georgia rally and garbled it into “Pinky Herman.” The White House called Ossoff a theater kid. The same morning, the Supreme Court refused to rehear the E. Jean Carroll case. Five million dollars, final.

1️⃣ A General Says America Cannot Stop a Drone Swarm

Lieutenant General Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of US Northern Command, was asked last Thursday whether he could defend the homeland against a drone swarm. He said no. “We don’t have the sensors... we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that.” His boss told senators in March they defeat about a quarter of the drones they detect. Meanwhile the USS Benfold, escorting the carrier out of Asia, spent four days adrift in the South China Sea with no power, water or toilets, and the Lincoln is coming out of the Strait after 265 days at sea. Americans vote in 78 days.

Judge Emmett Sullivan gave Attorney General Todd Blanche ten days to explain, in a sworn declaration, why the Justice Department still hasn’t produced the Epstein documents the court ordered released — then closed the hearing with a story about the one prosecutor he ever held in contempt, case citation included, so Blanche’s lawyers could look up how that ended.

Thursday’s Fivestack convened minutes after the hearing ended. Zev, Dean Blundell, attorney Anne P. Mitchell and Ellie Leonard of The Panicked Writer had all listened in live — and Zev read the hearing’s defining exchange straight from the transcript. It deserves to run in full:

THE COURT: Give me a date. I’m willing to work with you. Give me a date when this can be accomplished.

DOJ: I don’t have a date … it’s a little bit out of my control.

THE COURT: But you knew this was going to be discussed today, though.

DOJ: I’m not able to give you a date because, quite honestly, that date is out of my control.

THE COURT: You can’t give the court a time frame — 30 days, 60 days, whatever?

DOJ: I’m not able to, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Is there someone at the Department of Justice who can do that? … Pass the microphone to that person.

DOJ: It is forthcoming.

THE COURT: This much is forthcoming. Let’s be realistic … the public demands the time frame, not just me.

The department that indexed millions of pages in weeks cannot name a month.

The date fight was about the Epstein Files Transparency Act’s plainest requirement: every redaction gets a written justification, published in the Federal Register. Seven months after Sullivan’s injunction, the department has published none.

The day’s other fight was 37 pages of handwritten FBI notes — the agents’ original interview notes underlying the typed 302 reports in the Jane Doe 4 case. The department withheld them as “duplicative.” Sullivan wanted proof:

THE COURT: Just to take us at face value that the notes are substantially similar doesn’t really address it … All I need is proof … I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just trying to do my job.

DOJ: I guess — is that an order?

“When a lawyer asks if that’s an order, it’s because if it’s an order, they can appeal it,” Mitchell said.

Leonard walked through the department’s logic until it fell over. “It’s duplicative — but also it’s under seal. Which doesn’t make any sense, because if it’s copies of stuff we already have, it wouldn’t be under seal,” she said. The department also argued handwriting is too hard to redact. “This is 37 pages. We could redact it before lunch,” Leonard said. This is the same review team that redacted “Lion King” from a released document because King is somebody’s name.

Then there are the files nobody has ever sees. “They left everything out of the files that wasn’t in English,” Leonard said. “That leaves out anything Russian. That leaves out the bank accounts.” The FBI employs linguists. An iPhone translates. The excuse doesn’t survive contact with a phone.

Mitchell compared a DOJ-redacted email Epstein sent himself against the unredacted original she already held: 30 names blacked out, and not one belongs to a victim. “The point isn’t who the names are. The point is the DOJ illegally redacted them,” Mitchell said. One name escaped the redaction team entirely — Epstein had spelled it “Donaldo Trupp.”

Why no contempt today, then? Mitchell, the panel’s lawyer, laid out the mechanics: contempt is a judge’s last resort, and Sullivan spent the day appeal-proofing it. A 15-minute recess stretched to nearly an hour while he skimmed the new binder Blanche’s team handed up — documents the plaintiff, in this unusual case, has never seen. Then he returned, told his contempt story, and put the citation on the record. “Judges don’t care if you appeal, because the trial still goes on,” Mitchell said.

Blanche will likely appeal the ten-day order. The department will keep moving the cups — Blundell called the whole performance “b******t three-card monte.” But the delay is doing something the department didn’t intend. In six months, Jeffrey Epstein has moved from dead tabloid billionaire to Donald Trump’s intimately linked associate — in the public’s settled understanding, not on the conspiracy fringe. Every stall confirms it: an innocent department would have ended this by producing the files.

Blanche has ten days — and one case citation to read first.

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Before the countdown, Dean broke the day’s business story: DOJ and SEC investigators had opened a probe into Mark Walter’s sports-empire loans — and weeks after Walter handed Trump a World Series ring at the White House, he sold the Lakers to Jared Kushner’s brother Josh and Bob Iger for a record $12.5 billion. “This is straight-up mobbery,” Dean said.

5️⃣ THE ECLIPSE

The moon slid exactly over the sun and switched off the daylight from Iceland to Spain — Spain got the rarest cut, totality at sunset. The Assyrians read eclipses as a change of kings coming. Dean isn’t superstitious. Zev counted the omens anyway.

4️⃣ HEGSETH BROKE THE CARRIER

Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln are trying to go over the side — six or seven attempts, by Dean’s reporting from crew families, some of them fatal. The ship is at week 37 of a deployment that should have seen port at week six: no toothpaste, no soap, protein slop, mold in the HVAC, mail sanctioned, family rations never delivered, casualties from Iranian strikes unacknowledged. The Pentagon answered with a shrug and a stand-down while Pete Hegseth asks for $67 billion. Then the IRGC adviser told PBS the other half: Iran builds missiles faster than it fires them — and if Congress wants a real investigation, compare Trump’s assets before the war to after.

3️⃣ THE PLOT TO STEAL 2026

Trump told our cameras he won’t rule out a federal takeover of the midterms — “stranger things have happened.” Wisconsin answered overnight: Democrats refused Francesca Hong, the socialist the RGA spent $3.6 million elevating, and picked David Crowley by half a point — who promptly announced a unity tour WITH Hong, aimed at one target. The electorate is more switched on than the men buying its primaries. Also new: $20 million in electrified ICE gloves — twenty million dollars, for gloves that shock the person you grab.

2️⃣ PIRRO’S PAPER CASE

Jeanine Pirro convened a special grand jury over the Reflecting Pool — a case her own office already admitted was empty, against people who stopped to pick litter out of a public monument. A special grand jury cannot indict; it can investigate for 18 months and keep Trump’s story alive while a judge weighs killing the case for good. Trump’s pool guy remains uncharged.

1️⃣ THE DEATH-PLANE MANIFEST

Now we have the manifest. In the catering truck: Dan Scavino, Natalie Harp, and Walt Nauta — the Mar-a-Lago documents co-accused. On the decoy the White House said was targeted: Rubio, Hegseth, Bessent, and the entire press corps, told the president was aboard. Trump read the coverage and blamed the Secret Service. Lev Parnas told Narativ Live an hour earlier there may have been no threat at all — a side meeting he’s still running down. And the IRGC adviser answered the only question that matters: why would Iran kill him? “He’s busy destroying the United States of America. We’re enjoying this.”

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5️⃣ The Catering Cart Caper

A White House official confirmed the ruse on camera: Trump boarded Air Force One in Turkey for the cameras, slipped out the far side into a catering truck, and flew home on a second jet — while his press corps and most of his cabinet rode the decoy, some told mid-air they were on “a dangerous flight.” Dean noted the one exception: personal aide Natalie Harp rode out with the boss. He also pulled the Clinton precedent — a credible threat once moved a president to a private jet, and every passenger was told. Nobody told this press corps anything. No reporting yet shows the Iranian threat was real, and a president who brags he is winning this war hid from it behind the submarine sandwiches. “Truly spectacular selfishness,” Dean called it — and that was the charitable reading.

4️⃣ Republicans Bankroll The Socialist

Six states voted Tuesday, and in Wisconsin the biggest spender in the DEMOCRATIC governor’s primary was the Republican Governors Association — nearly $3.6 million in “attack” ads that every Democrat in the state read as a boost for democratic socialist Francesca Hong, the opponent Republicans believe they can beat in November. Dean called the whole practice, run by both parties, “a race to the bottom.” T extremes don’t legislate — you govern from consensus or you don’t govern — and a party that pays to nominate its opponent’s fringe has stopped trying to win arguments at all.

3️⃣ “Stranger Things Have Happened”

Wayne Allyn Root — who has spent a year begging Trump in print to seize the 2026 elections — pitched him a “national-security emergency” takeover of the midterms on Real America’s Voice after midnight. Trump answered: “Let me just say stranger things have happened. I will leave it at that.” Dean stacked the paper underneath the three words: NSPM-7 already lets Trump label opponents national-security threats, the Iran war supplies a standing emergency, and 2024’s “vote for me this one time and you will never have to vote again” supplied the intent. Cancel the elections and there is no way back. Dean’s count: 83 days to stop it at the ballot box.

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2️⃣ This Week’s Blindspot: The Quiet Iran Deal

Pakistan’s defense minister says the US and Iran are near “some sort of an arrangement” — and only 13 percent of left-leaning outlets have touched the story, this week’s Ground News Blindspot. Narativ’s Baku reporting sits directly underneath it: the hardline Revolutionary Guard wing that just took over Iran’s top security council is the same network that moved money through Trump’s Baku tower and into his Las Vegas condos. Maybe Tehran doesn’t want him dead. He’s their business partner. Dean answered the money trail with his grandfather, who walked into Berlin with the RAF in 1945: “We didn’t know how bad it was until we got there.”

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Breaking off the top: Tyler Boebert — Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s 21-year-old son — faces five new felony counts in Garfield County, Colorado: three for sexual exploitation of a child, two for contributing to the delinquency of a minor; he posted $10,000 bond Sunday, the affidavit is sealed, and he is presumed innocent. The math that matters: he faces sentencing on his 2024 deferred deal September 4 and 10, and new felonies four weeks out can turn “stay clean” into a felony record.

5️⃣ The Chair

Megan Romer co-chairs the Democratic Socialists of America — the movement whose label keeps winning Democratic primaries — and Zev and Dean played her New Yorker Radio Hour interview: she believes in owning the means of production, kept the DSA’s ground game home rather than turn it out for Kamala Harris, said she would probably have attended the October 8 rally, and called October 7 “largely inevitable.” Dean’s verdict landed hardest: she handed back every inch her movement won, a nightmare for Democrats 85 days from the midterms — while Zev counted the cost of a chair who keeps arming the other side’s red-scare machine. Paid subscribers can watch the full broadcast below.

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4️⃣ Epstein Was in the Building

Ellie Leonard joined live with the document chain she built from the DOJ files: a text thread (EFTA01620474) where an “unknown” contact tells Governor Kenneth Mapp “Seeing Trump people today, can we speak?” on November 13, 2016 — matched to Epstein by his own same-day email to himself repeating its “if I feel a sneeze coming on, I ask for legal advice” line — and Linda Stone’s thread, where Epstein answers “No, Trump Tower.” That is the day Trump sat in Trump Tower picking his first cabinet, five days after the election, with Michael Cohen — who says he never knew Epstein — working the building. Steve Bannon told Epstein on tape he was the one who could sink the campaign; Michael Wolff still holds those recordings.

3️⃣ Bibi Says No

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Donald Trump’s Gaza plan to his face — no dodge, no diplomatic hedge, just no. An ally has concluded that defying this president costs nothing, and the art-of-the-deal presidency keeps failing to close.

2️⃣ Iran Writes the Terms

Day 162 of the Strait of Hormuz closure, and Iran’s top security official put the price in writing: lift the blockade, drop sanctions, pull US forces, pay reparations, release the frozen assets. Trump’s answer — America is “semi-negotiating,” plus a post demanding Iran pay reparations. Narativ’s Baku Files investigation, published Monday morning, explains the mumble: the Capital One filing on Trump’s Baku tower alleges laundering linked to the same Revolutionary Guard now across the table in Muscat — you don’t talk tough to a partner.

1️⃣ Trump’s Lawyer Takes the Files

Todd Blanche was sworn in as Attorney General while the show was on the air — Trump’s own defense lawyer, confirmed 50-49 with Bill Cassidy casting the deciding vote, now controls the Epstein files. Wednesday at 1 PM, Judge Sullivan makes him answer for the Jane Doe 4 handwritten FBI notes his department still withholds — and Chris Armitage’s case that New Mexico can charge Blanche over the Maxwell interview is already moving.

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5️⃣ Someone Is Paying Toronto Teens to Shoot at America

Toronto police arrested a 19-year-old and a boy of 15 for the July 27 shooting attack on the US Consulate — Chief Myron Demkiw said someone offered them payment over encrypted apps to pull the trigger. Dean Blundell has owned the story since dawn: two seized guns trace to 27 shootings across the GTA, Jewish institutions among the targets, and US prosecutors allege a Kata'ib Hezbollah commander bragged, "in Canada, we have our guys." Dean's read: two explanations survive — an Iranian proxy network hiring Canadian kids by app, or a false flag built to look like one.

4️⃣ Carr Hands Local TV to Nexstar and Sinclair

Brendan Carr overrode Congress. His FCC voted 2–1 to scrap the 39 percent cap — Congress's 2004 law against one company reaching more than 39 percent of American homes — and replaced it with case-by-case review his own commission controls. Zev produced local TV for years: the 6 PM local newscast, not the networks, is where America gets its news, and Sinclair and Nexstar now get to buy the dial. Anna Gomez dissented: "unlawful on its face."

3️⃣ Senators See Potential Bribery in Trump's Korean $2 Million

Korea's Base Group paid Donald Trump's business $2 million while its affiliate fought his Commerce Department over aluminum tariffs — Trump logged the money in his own June disclosure as a "nonrefundable development fee." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Democrats demanded answers Thursday: the payment "raises significant concerns about pay-to-play politics and the potential for bribery." Dean's Canadian precedent: Brian Mulroney took $300,000 and his majority party lost nearly every seat.

2️⃣ Paul Refers Pardoned Fauci to Trump's DOJ

Rand Paul's committee voted 8–7 to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt and referred a pardoned man to Todd Blanche's Justice Department — the same day as Blanche's first Senate floor vote. Fauci pleaded the Fifth 111 times by Paul's count; Paul's pardon-voids-the-Fifth theory stands untested in any court, and Dean's sources called the referral a headline with no legal lever behind it. Zev named the play: scapegoat the scientist, and nobody asks about the president who ran the response while 1.2 million Americans died.

1️⃣ Trump Hunts Leakers Who Counted His Missiles

Iran and Oman announced their Strait of Hormuz deal an hour before air — a 60-day transit corridor negotiated around Washington that, Dean reported, excludes American and Israeli vessels by name. Trump claims control of the strait; the deal's authors didn't invite him. The Washington Post reports Trump berated Pete Hegseth at Camp David over "dangerously low" missile stocks — the White House insists the clash "literally never happened" — and Trump vows "long term jail sentences" for the leakers. Zev's math: sixty days of open water puts cheap gas on election day — the only win this war has left to sell.

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5️⃣ Blanche Trades the Fund for the Gavel

Todd Blanche killed Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion fund in writing on Sunday night. By Tuesday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee paid him for it — twelve to ten, party line, and his nomination for attorney general goes to the Senate floor. Zev and Dean played Sheldon Whitehouse’s markup statement at length, because Whitehouse prosecuted the case his own committee wouldn’t: the FBI took four 302s from a woman who said Trump sexually assaulted her at 13 or 14, and the Justice Department released one — “the one that did not mention Donald Trump,” Whitehouse said. “Only because they got caught were those 302s produced.” Dean priced the two Republican flips that advanced the nomination: “All he had to do to get those two cuck votes was put out two graphics of, I swear to God, the slush fund’s dead. It’s not.” Blanche stays acting attorney general until the full Senate votes.

4️⃣ Cori Bush — This Week’s Ground News Blindspot

Tuesday’s Ground News Blindspot: Cori Bush. The progressive the Squad lost in 2024 stood on Tuesday’s ballot to take her St. Louis seat back from Wesley Bell — the same AIPAC-backed money that beat her is back in the race — and the right wing isn’t covering it. Zev called it a bellwether: a progressive comeback running through the night’s primaries, straight at pro-Israel lobby money. What gets covered decides what exists — Ground News shows you both the story and the silence.

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3️⃣ Wyden Catches the Banks

Ron Wyden dropped a 67-page report Tuesday morning: JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America watched Jeffrey Epstein’s money move for two decades and sat on the paperwork the law required — Deutsche Bank on more than $250 million, including wires paying women in Russia and Eastern Europe; Bank of America on $170 million in Leon Black-linked reports. Wyden gave 60 Minutes an interview on the money in March. The story never aired. “Bari Weiss, in firing Sharyn Alfonsi, also killed the story about Jeffrey Epstein’s money,” Zev said, and set the report inside the decade he has spent on the same ledger: “It’s all the same network because it really is the Russian network.”

2️⃣ Trump Turns on Pirro

Trump spent Monday trashing his own U.S. attorney. Jeanine Pirro “folded like an umbrella,” the president said — she “choked.” Her offense: she stopped prosecuting four people for Reflecting Pool vandalism that never happened. All four defendants walked, and DOJ’s own filing blames contractor error — a botched, no-bid paint job whose price climbed from $1.8 million to $13.1 million, tracked by Narativ since June. By Tuesday, the Washington Post reported, Trump wanted the new helipad ripped up too; he doesn’t like the presidential seal. “We’re quickly approaching a Marie Antoinette moment,” Dean said. Both hosts gave Trump’s Oval Office defense of the case the same review: “Come on, bro.”

1️⃣ Michigan Decides What the Party Is

Michigan carried the close. Abdul El-Sayed — Bernie Sanders, AOC, an army of volunteers — against Haley Stevens and the biggest bet AIPAC has ever placed on a single race; polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern. And there the show turned. Dean had spent the hour declaring the patient dead — “The United States of America is a fraudulent country,” he said, reaching for The Big Short — and Zev wouldn’t sign the certificate: “I struggle when you say things like that.” His counter was on the ballot. “This is democracy, folks. This is what it looks like. You elect the people who represent the views of your people,” Zev said. Dean set a deadline anyway. Ninety days. “You have 90 days to send a message to this prick.” The money moved first all day — the fund, the wires, the invoice, the AIPAC millions. At eight o’clock, the voters answer.

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