FiveStack with Dean Blundell & Zev Shalev

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych , LC - Silence is Complicity , Amy Gabrielle , Debbie Hupp , The Rebel Crone (Shālah) , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. GET 40% OFF GROUND NEWS 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. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica , Amy Gabrielle , Lyudmila , Robin Payes , Grace Alexandra Hayden , and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas and Ellie Leonard ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych , LC - Silence is Complicity , Caro Henry , Ang Traders , Robin Payes , 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. 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. Thank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica , Cat: Poli-Psych , LC - Silence is Complicity , ITS Never Happening… , sandy bassett , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity , Caro Henry , Robin Payes , Peter W Shuster , Noble Blend , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. Thank you Dani Smart , Cat: Poli-Psych , LC - Silence is Complicity , Caro Henry , PsychiatRick , and many others for tuning into my live video with Ellie Leonard and Dana DuBois ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity , Peter W Shuster , Grace Alexandra Hayden , Skutt Hope , Truthsayer , and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica , LC - Silence is Complicity , LeftieProf , J'Net , Lori Modafferi , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you Ellie Leonard , Cat: Poli-Psych , LC - Silence is Complicity , Jason Gael , Sarah , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Ground News lets you see what both sides cover — and hide. 40% off at groundnews.com/fivestack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Canada is also the blindspot at Ground News. FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — Get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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 Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you Lev Parnas , Uncomfortable Truth by Monica , Amy Gabrielle , ShelbyRae Lane , Dr. Eric Lullove , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell and Ellie Leonard ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. Thank you Lev Parnas , Jim Bourg , Amy Gabrielle , LC - Silence is Complicity , Robin Payes , and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. and Dean Blundell ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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.” Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych , Cathy R. Payne , Grace Lovelace , Noble Blend , Stephanie Munoz , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — sign upo to and recieve 40% off their Vantage plan. 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. We found our #2 story on GroundNews.com — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan using this button to go tour fundsraisinbg page 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.” Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. Thank you Ellie Leonard , Cat: Poli-Psych , Amy Gabrielle , LC - Silence is Complicity , Caro Henry , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

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. This post has bonus content for paid subscribers. Upgrade to get full access. 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. Thank you Ellie Leonard , LC - Silence is Complicity , Lalisa , Noble Blend , Christina Reamy , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe