Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev returned from a two-week break to five headlines telling one story: one man pulling power into his own hands, and only the courts and the states pulling back. Watch the full countdown at narativ.org.
5️⃣ A Senate Seat, Filled by Truth Social
It became official an hour after the show ended: Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone — Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has never held public office — to serve out his term, hours after Trump announced the pick by Truth Social and preempted the governor’s own press conference. On the show, Zev played Graham’s final tape — Kyiv, 24 hours before his death, announcing the White House had agreed to his Russia sanctions bill — and walked the who-benefits board on a death the medical examiner calls natural causes and Iranian state TV calls a kill. The whole story, including the photograph propping up Mitch McConnell’s empty seat, is in the episode.
4️⃣ Twelve States Move to Stop the Ellison Media Empire
California AG Rob Bonta led a 12-state antitrust suit to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — CNN, HBO and CBS News under Larry Ellison’s family, Trump’s biggest donor, who already holds Oracle and TikTok. Zev takes you inside how media owners actually collude — he watched it from inside CBS — and Dean names what Jake Tapper’s weekend Trump interview was really about.
3️⃣ ICE Kills Again — Maine This Time
ICE agents shot and killed a man in his car in Biddeford, Maine this morning — the second fatal ICE shooting in under a week, at least the fourth death this year — and it took the Maine House Speaker, not the agency, to tell the public. Biddeford poured into the streets. Dean connects it to the Houston foreman ICE admits it killed by mistake last week, and to the $5,000 NDAs his reporting says witnesses were offered.
2️⃣ Judge Kathleen Williams Kills the $1.8 Billion Slush Fund
A federal judge tore up Trump’s settlement with his own IRS — voiding the $1.8 billion “weaponization victims” fund, the family immunity deal, all of it — ruled the suit was filed for an “improper purpose,” and referred Todd Blanche to the Florida bar for attempting to defraud the court. Blanche faces his Senate confirmation hearing for Attorney General on Wednesday. The hosts break down the 56 pages that just followed him there.
1️⃣ The Guardian of the Strait
Iran struck US facilities in Bahrain and radar sites in Oman, and Trump answered by Truth Social: America is now “the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait” and “will be reimbursed at the rate of 20%” on all cargo through it — a toll on a war Congress never voted on, from a blockade Dean calls fantasy dressed as policy. What it actually buys: higher prices straight through November.
Watch the full Fivestack at narativ.org — and tonight at 7 PM ET, Amanda Ungaro returns to Narativ Live with new Zampolli documents. Fivestack viewers get 20% off annual subscriptions.
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