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.
