Episode Details

5️⃣ Vance Campaigns for Orbán

Vice President JD Vance spent day two of his Budapest visit openly campaigning for Viktor Orbán ahead of Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election, a vote Orbán’s Fidesz is trailing in for the first time in more than a decade. Zev called the trip a transparent audition. “Vance is desperately trying to position himself as being outside of this war, being anti this war, being anti-Israel, so he can assume the mantle as the next president of the United States,” he said. “He might be sounding very reasonable these days compared to the president, but that’s all showmanship. Behind all of this is a dictator in waiting who’s going to be probably more brutal and more calculating than the current one we have.” The VP of the United States, interfering in a NATO member’s election on behalf of a leader Zev described as “another fascist dictator who lives at the mercy of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin,” was treated in Washington as a footnote. It isn’t one.

4️⃣ Bondi Defies the Epstein Subpoena

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the House Oversight Committee today that she will not appear for her April 14 deposition on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. The DOJ, now run by Deputy AG Todd Blanche, argues the subpoena became moot the moment Trump fired her last week. The committee, which issued the subpoena with five Republicans voting in favor, disagrees and is weighing contempt. “Pam Bondi is not going to appear in front of the oversight committee. That’s a big deal,” Zev said. “The reason she was fired is because she doesn’t want to testify. So by firing her, by losing her position as the Attorney General, she no longer feels like she needs to comply with a subpoena, which means she’s obviously hiding something — obviously hiding something from the American people and protecting the president of the United States of America for the crimes he committed.” Five House Republicans already broke ranks on the subpoena. Contempt needs three.

3️⃣ Israel Bombs Lebanon — 100 Strikes in 10 Minutes

Within hours of the Iran ceasefire announcement, Israel launched what the IDF is calling its largest coordinated strike of the war: more than 100 targets across Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in under ten minutes, without warning. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported at least 89 killed and more than 700 wounded in the initial wave, with later reports citing 250 dead. Israel says the ceasefire does not cover Hezbollah. Pakistan, the mediator, says it does. “Israel has decided to use this opportunity when America had the ceasefire to go after, indiscriminately, it looks like, civilians in southern Lebanon and Beirut,” Zev said. The campaign now carries an official IDF name: Operation Eternal Darkness.

2️⃣ Iran Shuts the Strait of Hormuz — The Ceasefire Is Already Dying

Less than 24 hours after President Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, Tehran halted all oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the Israeli strikes on Lebanon. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard aerospace commander warned, “Aggression towards Lebanon is aggression towards Iran.” The White House called reports of a closure “false.” Markets disagreed — WTI fell nearly 20 percent and Brent fell as much as 16 percent, both trading around $95. “The ceasefire has collapsed, it seems, because there is no current open Strait of Hormuz,” Zev said. And the cost isn’t only military. Iran now says it intends to charge $2 million per tanker as a toll to transit the strait — “trillions of dollars of revenue for both Oman and for Iran,” Zev said. That toll gets passed to the American consumer. “Everything that you touch, that you buy, that was delivered to you,” he warned, is about to cost more.

1️⃣ Someone Knew: The Oil Insiders Who Cashed Out on the Iran War

The Fivestack led today with a Narativ exclusive investigation Zev wrote overnight: a