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.
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