Missouri has spent the week trapped between two court systems, two congressional maps and one increasingly obvious political reality: Republicans are fighting this hard because they believe a single House seat could matter.

That was the point Anne P. Mitchell and I kept coming back to when we spoke Thursday. The Republican-backed map was designed to make Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district much harder to hold. “This is just one seat,” I said during our conversation. “That’s all they’re basically fighting over.”

transcript_2026-09-11T02_10_22.111Z.txt

And then the fight became extraordinary.

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins had been caught between conflicting orders. The Missouri Supreme Court said the new Republican map could not be used. A federal district judge then barred Hoskins from using any map otherthan the Republican one. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked that federal order, clearing the way for Missouri to return to its 2022 districts.

Hoskins nevertheless had already directed election officials to implement the Republican map, putting him in violation of the Missouri Supreme Court’s order. Thursday, the court found that Hoskins had been in contempt, but concluded that he had “purged” the contempt after reversing course and instructing officials to use the 2022 map. No penalty was imposed.

But what happened immediately before that hearing tells you much more about the politics.

Fourteen Republican Missouri legislators sent Chief Justice W. Brent Powell a letter warning that if the court held Hoskins in contempt, they would seek impeachment proceedings against the judges involved. Anne walked through the letter on our broadcast. “They’re all Republicans,” she noted after I asked about the signatories.

The threat did not work. The court made the contempt finding anyway.

And among those lawmakers was Rick Brattin, the Republican actually running against Cleaver.

That matters.

Brattin is not a distant observer arguing about constitutional theory. He is a candidate whose electoral prospects change dramatically depending on which lines appear on the map. Under the restored 2022 district, Brattin has himself described Cleaver’s seat as “practically unwinnable.” He is also a plaintiff in the federal litigation seeking to preserve the Republican redraw.

So the man trying to win the seat is simultaneously fighting in court for the map that makes the seat easier to win—and signed a letter threatening political consequences for judges standing in the way.

There is another reason Republicans may be so anxious.

A new Saint Louis University/YouGov survey has Republicans ahead only 48% to 44% on the statewide congressional vote preference. Earlier this year, the same poll had the GOP advantage at 53% to 38%. Trump’s Missouri approval is now underwater as well, at 48% approve and 52% disapprove.

Missouri is still a Republican state. That is not the point.

The point is the margin.

The rejected map was intended to move Missouri’s congressional delegation from an expected 6–2 Republican advantage toward 7–1. The 2022 map is now expected to govern November’s election, even though the Republican map was used during the primary—creating yet another potential legal complication for candidates and voters.

Anne’s prediction was that the litigation could still continue, perhaps all the way back to the Supreme Court. But with ballots approaching, time itself is becoming part of the case.

That may be the real lesson from Missouri.

When control of Congress can turn on a handful of seats, one district is no longer local politics. It becomes a national emergency for the party that thinks it is losing.

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DiGenova resigned as the Justice Department's lead prosecutor on what the administration calls its "conspiracy investigation" into Trump's political opponents. He told the AP, "I did in fact resign." Five months on the case. Zero charges filed.

I said on FiveStack yesterday that charges against Brennan were coming "in the next week." My source has been telling me since August that Obama's indictment was coming too, with pushback running back and forth inside the department. Today the prosecutor who was supposed to deliver both walked out instead.

Todd Blanche removed Maria Medetis Long in April after she told the U.S. Attorney the case lacked the evidence to charge anyone. Blanche swore diGenova in as Counselor to the Attorney General four days later, on April 20. Prosecutors withdrew the subpoenas they had just sent to former FBI and intelligence officials 72 hours after diGenova arrived.

He spent the next five months trying to rebuild it in public. On Rudy Giuliani's podcast in April, he blamed Pam Bondi for the delay: "If she had not done that, we would have indictments brought in the last two months." His deputy and wife, Victoria Toensing, wanted Comey folded into something larger: "I would have saved it for the vast conspiracy in Fort Pierce." DiGenova wanted Obama himself under oath: "Put Obama in the grand jury and let's have a fight over his testimony." Prosecutors sent fresh subpoenas Monday. CNN reported DOJ headquarters expected charges as soon as this month. Two days later, diGenova was gone.

So the pace fight was never about pace. Long said there was no case in April and got removed for saying it. DiGenova spent five months proving her right and quit before anyone could remove him too.

Trump has dropped him before. His 2018 legal team hired diGenova and let him go six days later over conflicts of interest — the same lawyer who once told Newsmax that Chris Krebs should be "taken out at dawn and shot," then apologized.

Zero charges. No successor named. No case.

There was never a case. Only a promise.

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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 fucking happen. It’s pure fantasy,” Dean said.

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💵 THE $5,000

Trump promised every adult American $5,000 Wednesday night if Republicans win in November — "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000," from the stage of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. By breakfast Vance, on Fox with Bret Baier, would not repeat the number or total it; he called it "fundamentally a dividend for American workers" and said tariffs would pay. Congress has voted none of the money and would have to. Republicans were criticizing the promise to Politico inside twelve hours; Axios called it a familiar one. Then Trump told the room to "pretend I'm on the ballot." He is buying a midterm he cannot run in, with money the country does not have, and his own vice president won't say the number. At 8:10 this morning he added, on tape, that gas prices stay high until after the election. We did the sum — $5,000 times every adult, against a two-trillion-dollar deficit. Trump has 54 days to convince anyone the check is coming.

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🗳️ LATINO VOTE

Denver sued this morning to keep armed ICE agents away from its polling places. Todd Blanche's Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington for their voter files, the Brennan Center counts, and Trump's Homeland Security secretary said agents could turn up at polling places "if we're serving a warrant." Nobody needs a law to suppress a vote; an armed agent at the polls does it. Karen Brownfield wrote to us at 5:24 this morning: "The Hispanic people I know are afraid to register. I told them I would take them and protect them, and they said no way." The Latino vote is bigger than the margin in all seven swing states. Other swing cities now have a suit to copy.

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🛢️ OIL CASHES IN

Brent crossed $105 this morning after the Houthis seized the Red Sea port of Mocha; Hormuz traffic is in single digits. Trump holds energy investments that gain millions as the price climbs, CNBC found, and told voters Wednesday the war ends "immediately" after the midterms. His advisers are planning for it to last through his term, the Wall Street Journal reports. This morning he said it on tape: gas stays high until after the election. He set the war's end to his own election date, and holds the oil that rises until then.

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📺 KIMMEL CENSORED

Jimmy Kimmel pulled his interview with James Talarico, the Democrat running against Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat, off ABC and put it on YouTube — after what Kimmel described as threats from the FCC. Anyone with a phone can still watch it. Brendan Carr's FCC now decides which Senate candidates reach network television. Paxton's opponent reached it through the side door.

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🕵️ ZAMPOLLI SUED

Victoria Drake says in federal court that Trump's envoy Paolo Zampolli drugged and raped her in his Manhattan basement in October 2023. Zampolli hasn't answered Wednesday's summons. Epstein wrote of him in 2011: "Be careful. He is trouble. Lots." Narativ published at 1:40 a.m. No other outlet among the sixteen we checked has.

📱 $2,000 IPHONE

Apple priced its new folding iPhone Duo at $1,999 Wednesday, on sale October 23. Zillow puts the typical American rent at $1,948 a month. When the phone costs more than the roof, America has become unaffordable.

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🎯 THE BIGGER PICTURE

Trump is out of time and out of runway, so he reached for the oldest trick in politics: buy the vote. The $5,000 says two things in one sentence. His efforts to rig this election before the polls open have not worked, but he’s still desperate enough to run an operation to suppress Latino voters. The Latino vote is one example. In every swing state, it is bigger than his margin, and Denver is now asking a federal court to rule that armed agents at the polls are exactly what the law forbids. Fifty-four days.

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Who Paolo Zampolli is, how he reached Melania's side, and what Epstein already knew about him — from June, before the lawsuit.

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Vice President JD Vance spent Thursday morning declining to repeat a number the President put up Wednesday night. Donald Trump told the Republican midterm convention in Dallas: "If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000." The election is Tuesday, 3 November — 54 days out. "It will be called the 'Trump dividend,'" he said, "very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders." He would pay for it "because of our tremendous strength and success economically."

Within the hour Vance faced Bret Baier on Fox News. Baier put the bill at roughly $1.3 trillion and said critics were shouting "the president is bribing voters." Vance never said $5,000. He never said a trillion. He called it "fundamentally a dividend for American workers," said tariffs would pay, and set the terms: "If you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you're going to share in some of the benefit." By 6:41 a.m. ET the Guardian's live blog led on the walk-back, not the promise.

Baier rounded on live television. Nobody on that stage did the sum, and it takes one line.

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Donald Trump told voters on Wednesday that gas stays expensive until the midterm is over. "Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. I think it's going to take a little bit longer than the midterm," he told reporters before flying to Dallas. The war, he said, "is going to end immediately after the election because they can't hold out any longer." Brent hit $105.27 at 8:51 ET this morning, up $4.06 on the day, and American drivers paid $4.28 a gallon, up $1.08 on a year ago, AAA said. Diesel hit $5.98, the highest AAA has ever recorded.

Trump owns the oil that rises until then. His own disclosure lists Chevron and Exxon Mobil at $1 million to $5 million each and Marathon Petroleum at $250,000 to $500,000, in the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. His nine largest oil and gas holdings gained an estimated $1.5 million to $4.4 million on paper between 27 February and 31 August, CNBC calculated Wednesday from the disclosure bands and share prices. His accounts traded through the war, CNBC found, on the days the war moved the market, each trade marked as J.P. Morgan's discretionary order; the bank is the trust's sole trustee.

Three facts, one story. He set the war's end date to the midterm. He told voters the pump price falls "right after." His portfolio rides the price up until then.

Below: what his accounts bought the first trading day after the bombs fell, who took the second door this morning, and how long his own advisers say the war runs.

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Jimmy Kimmel told his audience Wednesday night that his interview with James Talarico, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air on ABC. He tapes it Thursday. He posts it to YouTube instead, "where you will see it in its entirety."

"His FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional, editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don't like," Kimmel said in the monologue TheWrap carried. He kept the interview off the air "out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense."

Kimmel interviewed candidate Trump on the same couch in 2015. Trump "seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates," Kimmel said. "Something has changed."

Talarico changed it. The former schoolteacher trails Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general, 47 to 46 in Emerson College's August poll of 1,000 likely voters — inside its three-point margin — and the Cook Political Report rates the seat a Toss Up. Paxton, whom Trump backed over the sitting senator in May's runoff, told a rally this month: "If we lose Texas, we've lost the country." Early voting opens Monday, October 19.

The FCC never had to write Kimmel a letter. Carr's April order on Disney did the job — the date, the deadline and the lawsuit are below.

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Apple chief executive John Ternus unveiled the iPhone Duo in Cupertino on Wednesday and priced it at $1,999. That is the starting price, for 256 gigabytes. Apple charges $3,199 for the 2-terabyte model. Pre-orders open Friday 16 October and the phone ships Friday 23 October. Ternus called it "the most transformational change to iPhone since the original." Apple will also take it in installments: $83.29 a month for 24 months.

Zillow put the typical American asking rent at $1,948 in August, in its report of Tuesday 8 September, up 2.5 percent on the year. The phone now costs more than the roof.

The median full-time worker earned $1,251 a week in the second quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday 21 July. Divide the phone by the paycheck: 1.6 weeks of work, 64 hours at $31.28 an hour, for the cheapest Duo. Before tax. The same worker gives 102 hours for the 2-terabyte version. Nobody at Apple said the word "affordable" on Wednesday, and nobody had to.

The phone is the tell. When the everyday thing costs what the roof costs, America is becoming unaffordable, and the week's other prices — the pump, the barrel, the factory gate and a president's own delivery date — say the same thing, below.

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Denver sued the Trump administration this morning to keep armed ICE agents away from the polls on Tuesday 3 November, 54 days from now. Democracy Forward filed in federal court in Washington for the city, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS, naming Homeland Security, ICE and Secretary Markwayne Mullin. They want armed officers barred from polling places under the law against "troops or armed men" at the polls. The complaint calls it a "specter" that "threatens the freedom of this upcoming election." The plaintiffs claim it; no judge has ruled.

Mullin answered first. "ICE isn't there to patrol the polling places," he said at a New York news conference on Tuesday 1 September; agents would come only "if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant." His election official, Heather Honey, told the secretaries of state on Wednesday 25 February there would be "no ICE presence at polling locations." No written policy puts agents at the polls.

A Narativ reader, Karen Brownfield, wrote the FiveStack: "My fear is that people will be afraid to vote. The Hispanic people I know are afraid to register. I told them I would take them and protect them, and they said no way."

UnidosUS put a number on that fear: 44 percent of 3,000 registered Latino voters said they or people in their community fear immigration agents will harass or arrest them, citizens or not. Below, Narativ sets that vote against Trump's margin in all seven swing states, and the one study that says fear cuts the other way.

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“Be careful. He is trouble. Lots.”

Jeffrey Epstein wrote that about Paolo Zampolli on February 15, 2011, in an email the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Fifteen years later, a woman named Victoria Drake put the line in a federal complaint and, beneath it, described what she says the trouble looked like.

Drake filed the suit on the night of September 3 in the Southern District of New York. It runs eleven pages, names one defendant, and asks a jury to find that Zampolli — Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, the man who by his own account introduced Trump to Melania Knauss in 1998 — drugged and raped her in the basement of his townhouse at 119 East 17th Street on October 7, 2023. Judge Ronnie Abrams has the case. Summons went out September 4. Zampolli has not yet answered.

Narativ has spent most of this year on Zampolli. On June 12, Amanda Ungaro — his partner of two decades and the mother of his son — sat with me live and described how ICE took her into custody last June and held her for months until she gave up and left the country. We reported then, in “Melania’s Shadow” and “The Spy at the First Lady’s Side,” on the pattern around him: the modeling agencies, the Epstein-era auction bid for Elite, the 2013 nonprofit with Ghislaine Maxwell, the diplomatic titles handed down by Trump. Drake’s lawyers, Jesse Weinstein and Max Bracero of Arcé Law Group, have now put that same pattern in a court filing, under penalty of Rule 11, with Bates numbers.

That is the new thing. A plaintiff’s complaint is one side of a story. But this one cites the government’s own Epstein documents by page — EFTA00173834, where a correspondent calls Zampolli “sleazy”; EFTA02618736, a list the filing describes as purported “killers” with his name on it; EFTA01836539, the “trouble” email — and it names Ungaro’s deportation, in paragraph 3, as an act of a presidential appointee using his office against the mother of his child. Nobody has sworn to that in a federal pleading before.

The full complaint, all eleven pages, is attached below for paid subscribers. Read it yourself.

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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 fucking 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 fucking entertain it," Dean said. "The United States is at the gates of Dachau right now. And that is not a fucking 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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👀 THE FRONT PAGE

🤖 ANTHROPIC RESEARCHER QUITS AS AI LEARNS TO HACK PHONES

Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic Tuesday and said the people building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." He had worked at OpenAI before that. The labs are "gambling with our lives," he posted on X, pointing at "warning shots" from rogue AI agents hacking companies (The Hill, 11:02). Two serving safety leads backed him. Evan Hubinger, who heads alignment science, put the chance AI kills every human above 10% within a decade, and said Anthropic has no plan to keep it aligned. Samuel Marks blamed "commercial incentives." The New York Times reported the same Tuesday that a hacking tool built with AI "can breach phones without a click" — an attack AI researchers found, which experts said could hit hundreds of millions of devices within hours. It rode incoming WeChat calls onto iPhones and Androids. The Wall Street Journal calls it a race "toward self-improving models that risk spiraling out of human control." The builders have said it out loud. The machine already fired once.

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🛢️ TRUMP RALLIES IN DALLAS AS OIL PASSES $100

Trump headlines the Republican midterm convention in Dallas today with Brent crude above $100 a barrel, hours after American forces struck Iran's oil tankers. Drivers are paying $4.22 a gallon, AAA says, against $3.19 a year ago. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.837% today, a 52-week high, and the Dow fell 420 points. CNBC read his disclosures this morning and found nine oil holdings — Chevron, Exxon, Occidental, Valero and five more — up between $1.5 million and $4.4 million on paper. He holds them in discretionary accounts. Not a blind trust. CNBC found no evidence he directed a single trade. Fifty-five days from the midterms, Trump owns the price at the pump and the shares that rise with it.

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💵 TRUMP HANDED THREE AIDES $45,000 EACH IN CASH

Trump handed the three aides who work closest to him $45,000 each in cash. Natalie Harp, Chamberlain Harris and Margo Martin each disclosed a $45,000 "cash gift for holidays" from Donald J. Trump in ethics filings posted on whitehouse.gov. The White House pays each of them $150,000 a year, so the gift runs to exactly 30% of the salary. The ethics office read Harp's filing and certified her in compliance with the law. A president can hand his closest staff nearly a third of their pay in cash and the paperwork clears.

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🇩🇪 MERZ CANCELS TRUMP'S CALL AFTER HE CHEERS THE AFD

Friedrich Merz cancelled his call with Trump. The German chancellor had just stood in the Bundestag and accused the AfD of seeking "ethnic cleansing," the Guardian reported, after the party won the Saxony-Anhalt state election. Trump posted that populists had a "really big night." Merz called the whole thing off over that post. Trump keeps congratulating the people Europe's leaders are working to keep out of power.

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🍁 AP KEEPS CALLING IT LAKE ONTARIO AS TRUMP BANS CANADIAN WHISKY

The Associated Press will keep calling Lake Ontario by its name despite Trump's renaming order, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. He banned Canadian whisky, beer and big motorcycles from 29 September, covering 0.25% of Canada's exports, Capital Economics told the BBC. Carney addresses the European Parliament next week.

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🇮🇱 NETANYAHU THREATENS HAARETZ OVER REPORT HE WAS WARNED

Netanyahu sent Haaretz a libel warning, Haaretz says. It reports the UAE's president warned him of a Hamas operation in September 2023 and he told no security chief. He calls it an absolute lie. Israel votes 27 October.

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🎯 THE BIGGER PICTURE

The people building the machines say the machines could kill everyone, one of them quit Tuesday, and the president is spending Wednesday at a convention in Dallas while oil passed $100. None of it looks real on its own. Together they say one thing. Trump is turning America into Venezuela: an economy that moves on the price of a barrel, a president who gets richer as it moves, and who hands out cash and calls it the holidays. He is giving China the boost, and it all points at crypto. Americans have 55 days to say whether they will keep paying for it.

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In March we wrote that Trump's Iran war was paying Vladimir Putin. It is paying Trump too.

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Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on Tuesday and posted his reason on X: the people who build these machines, he wrote, "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

He worked at OpenAI before he worked at Anthropic, so he has now worked inside two of the companies racing to build the thing. He wanted readers to understand this is not a sales pitch. "This is not a marketing stunt," he wrote. "I hear the same people express fear privately." He accused the labs of "gambling with our lives," and he pointed at what he called "warning shots" — recent incidents of rogue AI agents breaking into other companies.

The Wall Street Journal carried it on Tuesday evening: "Anthropic Researcher Quits Over 'Out-of-Control' AI Fears." The paper wrote that the companies are racing each other toward models that improve themselves and could spiral out of human control.

The same day brought the next one. Nobody had to touch a phone for it to work.

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The Associated Press said Wednesday it will keep calling Lake Ontario by its name, despite Trump's order renaming it. He signed the executive order renaming it Lake America on 27 August. Narativ reported on 31 August what he is actually after: the drinking water, the water that runs the power plants on its shore, and the shipping. He has since threatened to change New Mexico's name too.

Trump has run out of tariffs that work, so he has moved on to names and shelves. He signed five Canada proclamations on Tuesday evening, and three of them ban goods Americans can pick up off a shelf. Whisky. Beer. Motorcycles with big engines. The White House posted the documents at 18:50 ET. The bans take effect at 12:01 a.m. on 29 September.

He reached for a 1930 law to do it. Section 338 of the Tariff Act lets a president shut a country's goods out entirely instead of taxing them, and Trump cited it in all three orders. A tariff makes you pay more. A ban means you cannot buy it.

Carney moved first, and moved in kind. He put C$27.6 billion of counter-tariffs into force Tuesday morning, hours before Trump signed anything.

Read the annexes and the bans get narrower — and stranger — than they sound: a quarter of one percent of what Canada sells America, and a prime minister with his next flight already booked.

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Trump headlines the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, hours after American forces struck Iranian tankers and Brent crude passed $100 a barrel.

Traders marked Brent at $101.35 at 11:05 ET. Reuters had it above $100 at 11:22. They left the American grade, West Texas Intermediate, at $96.38, and it has not crossed.

Drivers pay first. AAA put the national average at $4.22 a gallon on Wednesday. Drivers paid $3.19 a year ago. The Energy Information Administration put its weekly average at $4.157, up 96.5 cents in twelve months.

Investors sold. The Dow fell 420 points by 11:34 and the S&P 500 lost half a percent. Bond traders drove the ten-year Treasury yield to 4.837%, a 52-week high set this morning.

Trump signed five Canada proclamations on Tuesday evening banning Canadian alcohol, motorcycles over 800cc and whey from 29 September, which is the second bill Americans will pay this month.

A hundred dollars a barrel is a disaster too big to ignore, and the convention is the backdrop: a party filling a Dallas ballroom while the economy comes apart outside it.

CNBC spent Wednesday morning inside Trump's own financial disclosures, counting what nine oil and gas holdings did between the eve of the war and the end of August — down to the date one account sold Exxon, and what he announced two and a half hours after the closing bell.

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Benjamin Netanyahu sent Haaretz a warning letter, the newspaper reported on Wednesday — the step that comes before a libel suit — naming the newspaper and the two reporters who wrote that the president of the United Arab Emirates telephoned him weeks before October 7 with an explicit warning. Haaretz says it stands by the reporting.

Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval published the account on Tuesday, drawn from an investigation they conducted for a new book. In September 2023, they report, Mohammed bin Zayed called the Israeli prime minister and delivered a harsh warning about a major Hamas operation. Netanyahu briefed none of Israel's security chiefs. Everything past that opening sits behind Haaretz's paywall, so it stands as Haaretz's reporting and nothing more.

Netanyahu answered inside the piece itself. "This is an absolute lie," he said. Then he sent the letter.

Israelis have argued for two years about who knew what before October 7, mostly through leaks and inference. Eldar and Yuval put a named head of state on a phone line, on a date, with a warning the prime minister could have handed to his own generals.

The lawyers are the tell. He is fighting a newspaper seven weeks out from an election he is losing — and the Emiratis, given the chance to knock the story down, chose their words instead.

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Friedrich Merz cancelled his call with Donald Trump on Wednesday, hours after the American president went online to congratulate the far-right party that had just won a state election in eastern Germany.

Trump hailed a "really big night" for populists, Fox News reported. He was cheering the Alternative für Deutschland, which had taken the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. Germany's domestic intelligence agency has classified the party as extremist.

Merz scrapped the call over that post, the Guardian's Europe live blog reported. Germany's chancellor refused to get on the phone with the president of the United States because of what the president wrote about a German election result.

Fox News carried Trump's line at 7:30 on Wednesday morning, Washington time. By 11 the Guardian had the call cancelled.

Merz leads Germany's mainstream conservatives, not the left. Saxony-Anhalt is one of the eastern states where the AfD runs strongest, and the surge there is now the story the rest of Europe is reading: the New York Times led its morning briefing with two words, "Germany's Right Turn," and the Guardian reported from inside the state under the line, "I fear the price could be high."

Then Merz walked into the Bundestag and said out loud what he believes the AfD wants to do to Germany.

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Trump gave three of his closest White House aides $45,000 each in cash, and his own White House posted the forms that say so.

Natalie Harp, Chamberlain Harris and Margo Martin each filed an annual disclosure form this year, and the White House posted all three on whitehouse.gov. Each form lists one gift, from Donald J. Trump. Each lists the same amount. Each describes it in nearly the same words — "Cash Gift for Holidays." Harp's form gives the source as Palm Beach. Martin's says Palm Beach, Florida. Harris's says Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post reported the forms first, early Wednesday. Politico followed. The New York Times confirmed the disclosures independently at 10:42 ET, and The Hill had them at 10:33.

Harp is the one people know. People around Trump call her the human printer. She feeds Trump information she finds online and helps form his worldview, carrying it to him through the day. She is the aide he took with him last month when he left the catering-truck scene and slipped away from the press. Sen. Jon Ossoff raised her role publicly, and the question of who she actually is has trailed her since.

Now her name sits on a federal form beside a five-figure cash payment from her boss. Anyone who reads the rest of that page finds worse than the gift.

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The Revolutionary Guard started it, firing ballistic missiles at an American warship twice in two days, Central Command said. The crew dodged both and kept patrolling. No American ship was hit. Tehran says the missiles were its new Qassem Basir, built to beat American defences. They didn’t.

Tuesday afternoon, American forces destroyed five Iranian tankers — Kaviz, Charminar, Horizon 1, Riesco and Derya. Four in the Gulf of Oman, one four miles off Kharg Island, the terminal that ships nearly all of Iran’s crude. Central Command warned the crews off first, then wrecked the ships. Nobody was hurt — not one American, and by Tehran’s own account none of the crews.

Marco Rubio, in Colombia, set the price: “for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers.” A tanker for every missile.

Iran answered inside two hours. Just after 6 p.m. ET, Iranian state media said missiles were going up from six cities — Isfahan, Tabriz, Yazd, Khorramabad, Khomein and Shahrekord — at “hostile American targets.” At 6:57 p.m. ET the Guard named the target: Al Azraq, the base in Jordan that hosts American jets, and claimed it had hit the hangars where the F-35s, F-16s and F-15s are serviced. Israeli Army Radio counted at least 35 missiles from 12 cities, the heaviest barrage since Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion ended.

Around 8 p.m. ET, Jordan gave its own numbers: 20 in, 18 down, no casualties reported. The Pentagon has said nothing. Nobody has placed, dated or named the buildings in the video going round tonight that purports to show missiles striking Jordan. The last time the Guard claimed those hangars, on August 31, Jordan shot down eight and nobody was hurt. So “hit the hangars” is Tehran talking, not a fact. And nobody has accounted for the other two.

The Guard’s navy told tanker crews in Kuwait and Bahrain to get off their ships. Mohsen Rezaei said Iran will draw its own exclusion zone across the Gulf, starting where the American blockade starts. Iran’s armed forces declared every American base in the region a target. The Houthis hit four Saudi cities — 73 wounded, the Jazan refinery burning. Reuters called it the widest the war has spread in six months.

Oil closed above $94 in New York, the highest since June 8. Brent touched $99.22. The Pentagon’s own casualty list added 26 more Americans wounded since July — 403 in two months. No names. No places.

Donald Trump said nothing Tuesday night. This morning on Truth Social he promised oil prices “will drop precipitously” once America wins. Tonight Iran fired 20 missiles at an American base, and the price went up.

Rubio promised a tanker for every missile. Jordan counted 20. Count the tankers tomorrow.

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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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