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DEVELOPING….Kash Patel ran the leak hunt out of the White House this week — three Secret Service communications staff on leave, four New York Times reporters subpoenaed, the agency that guards the president investigated from the building it guards. Dean Blundell disputed that on air: nobody has confirmed the Secret Service leaked anything, he said, calling it a purge of people not loyal to Trump and putting the catering-truck leak on Karoline Leavitt, 48 hours before she quit — Narativ has not verified that, and our reporting cuts against the purge: nobody fired, no target list.
5️⃣ Nepal — the wall of water
In the video Zev played, birds lift off before the water arrives, people run because they can hear it, and a building Nepal and China built together is gone. Ninety-five dead by Wednesday night, more than a hundred now — thirty-three in Chitwan, 150 kilometres downstream, one in the district that touches China. Nepal got no warning because no mechanism exists. Both sides agreed in principle to share flood data after the same river flooded in July 2025. Nobody signed it.
4️⃣ Meta buys its way out
Mark Zuckerberg sat through part of the trial, saw where it was going, and paid up to seventeen billion dollars. Forty state attorneys general took the deal mid-trial, and the money comes with rules — two hours a day for teenagers, teen accounts locked overnight. Meta admits nothing. Zev signed up for the last Meta settlement to see what his privacy was worth, and collected 18 cents. Congress passed nothing. The states did this.
3️⃣ The CIA director in Moscow
John Ratcliffe spent eight hours at Vnukovo on Tuesday and nobody in Washington announced it. Flight trackers caught the plane. Dmitry Peskov gave the readout: contacts through the security services, no meeting with Putin, Putin kept informed without delay. Trump called it “very sort of semi-routine.” Zev: “The CIA director does not semi-routinely head over to have conversations with the FSB.” His read: Russia is preparing something against a NATO neighbour, with the Army down to five four-star generals.
2️⃣ Canada hits back
Doug Ford told Trump to kiss his ass, then declined on CBS to take it back. “I stand by those comments,” Ford said, before turning conciliatory. Canada’s retaliation lands September 8: 15 to 50 percent on more than 700 American products, steel and aluminium doubled to 50, $7.5 billion behind Canadian business. Dean read Mark Carney’s target list as surgical — Maine lobster, Alaska, Michigan, Wisconsin dairy, Pennsylvania appliances — aimed at the midterms. American toilet paper is climbing. The pulp is Canadian.
TODAY’S NUMBER 1 STORY BROKE LIKE THIS ON GROUND NEWS: The ballot-rule story pulls 67 percent left, 33 percent centre, zero from the right. Ground News lets you see what both sides cover.
1️⃣ The ballot rule
Judge Indira Talwani lifted her own injunction against Trump’s mail-ballot rule Wednesday, and the panic started. Anne P. Mitchell read the order. The Supreme Court had tossed the case as unripe — no final rule existed when the states sued — so Talwani lifted an injunction she issued too early, and told the plaintiffs to amend and come back. “She’s going to slap an injunction on that complaint so fast that the USPS heads will spin,” Mitchell said. Sixty-nine days out, her advice: drop box, not mailbox.
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