Narativ with Zev Shalev (Audio)

Democrats took the Senate on Tuesday night. Decision Desk HQ called six Republican seats for them between 9:56 p.m. and 1 a.m. Eastern; they needed four. Here is the round-up as the count stood at 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, race by race, with the caller and the time on every call.The SenateThe first wave hit South Carolina at 9:56. Decision Desk called the race for Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, over Senator Darline Graham, 51 to 47 at 82 percent in. Graham had been appointed to her late brother Lindsey's seat and carried Trump's endorsement into a state he won by 18 points. Andrews finished 51.2 to 46.8.James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in Texas at 10:16, 55 to 43 at the call, 54 to 44 at the last count. Texas last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1988.Hamilton beat Roger Marshall in Kansas at 10:50, 51 to 46 at the final count. Republicans had held that seat since 1932.Sherrod Brown beat Jon Husted in Ohio at 11:16, 49.6 to 45.6 with 84 percent in, and took back the seat he lost two years ago.Turek beat Ashley Hinson in Iowa at 11:19, 50.5 to 46.4 with every precinct in.After midnight Decision Desk called Maine for Jackson over Susan Collins, 53 to 45 on the early count, and Michigan for El-Sayed over Mike Rogers, 52 to 46. Michigan was a Democratic seat; Maine was the sixth flip.The wave stopped at the Nebraska line. Pete Ricketts held off the independent Dan Osborn, 49.5 to 44.6, called with 65 percent in. In Alaska, Dan Sullivan led Mary Peltola 48.8 to 47.5 with 69 percent counted, uncalled, after Peltola had led the first batch.The arithmetic: 34 Democratic-aligned senators were not on the ballot. Add the seats they defended and the six they took, and the caucus stands at 53 with Alaska open. Fifty-one controls the chamber.The HouseSeven Republican-held seats on Narativ's watch list went Democratic, and none went the other way. Dandiya took Florida's 22nd at 8:07, the first toss-up called all night. Ager took North Carolina's 11th at 8:30. Cognetti beat Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania's 8th at 9:02. Pulido beat Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas's 15th at 11:00. Poindexter beat Rep. Max Miller in Ohio's 7th at 11:17. James took Iowa's 2nd at 11:35. Harvie beat Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's 1st after midnight. Garcia held Texas's 35th for the Democrats.Two watch-list seats stayed open at 2:40: Maine's 2nd, where Dunlap led Paul LePage by half a point before the ranked-choice count, and New York's 17th, where Conley led Rep. Mike Lawler 52 to 48 on the first numbers. Decision Desk had not put a number on the full House. Two hundred eighteen is the majority, and the count runs into Wednesday.The governorsDemocrats took six. Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia at 9:15. Rob Sand won Iowa at 9:58. Katie Hobbs beat Andy Biggs in Arizona at 10:13. David Crowley beat Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin at 10:21. Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio at 10:31, the first Democrat to win the office since 2006. Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott in Texas at midnight, and Abbott conceded.Republicans held three. Byron Donalds won Florida by half a point, 50.0 to 48.7 at the full count. Wilson held South Carolina. Kelly Ayotte held New Hampshire. Kansas sat at half a point for Holscher with every precinct in, uncalled; Alaska's Kreiss-Tomkins led by 20 with the count unfinished; Nevada had not posted.The money linePolymarket priced the Senate at 76 cents Democratic at 5 p.m. and 99 cents by midnight; the House went from 94 to 99. Those are prices, not calls, and Narativ read them on air as prices.What we said, against what the count saysOn air Narativ said 255 House seats and 55 senators. The Senate stands at 53 with Alaska leaning Republican, so 55 is out of reach and 53 or 54 is the range. The House forecasters had 239 to 242 going in; the market at midnight priced Republicans below 190 seats at 99 cents, which means 246 or more for Democrats. The count decides it.Trump's night, in his own wordsHe changed his account four times before 1 a.m. On Truth Social, before the West Coast closed: he was not on the ballot, and if he had been, Republicans "would have won in a landslide." As the calls landed: the candidates were at fault, one was a "RINO," and Fox News shared the blame for putting Democrats on air. To The New York Times: "I am absolutely willing to accept those results." On Fox, after midnight: "I think a part of it was Iran." His last post of the night: "...AND SO IT BEGINS!"What Narativ didNobody on the broadcast called a race. Decision Desk and the networks called them; Zev Shalev and Anne P. Mitchell covered that coverage from 8 p.m., with Lev Parnas, Ellie Leonard, Kait Justice and Olga Lautman in and out, the results board live in the studio and the network feeds cut in by key. That is the replay above. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Four days out, MeidasTouch’s chief Washington correspondent told Narativ Live to read the money and the plane, not the polls.Scott MacFarlane came back from Michigan with a measure of this election that no poll prints. He told Zev Shalev on Friday to watch “where the surrogates and the money are going,” because that is “a much better read than polls ever will be.”MacFarlane reads the plane first. Trump has flown to South Carolina twice in two weeks, to Kansas and Iowa, and on Monday, MacFarlane said, he lands in Louisiana, where Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third in May’s primary and nobody polls the seat. Democrats send their money the other way: their Senate Majority PAC put $1.2 million behind Scott Colom against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, and the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund answered with seven figures. “If they’re putting money into Mississippi, they’re seeing something polls can’t show,” MacFarlane said.The Democrats he talks to feel “optimism and nausea,” and trust the polls “about as much as they trust thin ice on a warm winter day.”MacFarlane called the Republicans Trump is flying to save “endangered Republicans”; Shalev said they are becoming an endangered species. One, by MacFarlane’s count, has put daylight between herself and Trump: Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa, and even her criticism is “muted” and “mushy.”Michigan, where he spent the week: tariffs are the issue, MacFarlane said, and in the Lansing district the Iran war is too. Rep. Tom Barrett, a Republican, voted twice this summer to pull U.S. forces out of Iran and told MacFarlane he “caught all kinds of hell” for it. Michigan’s 10th, 7th and 4th districts are, in his count, “the margin Democrats need to pull even.” Shalev’s read: the House most likely flips; the Senate is “still very much too hard to call.”The Senate race there has, MacFarlane said, “naked Islamophobia being uncorked in” it; Republican Mike Rogers is betting on a divide between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Detroit’s voters, and MacFarlane is “not seeing that work.” Shalev said the Islamophobia is backfiring.MacFarlane saved Alaska for last. Trump had Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Justice Department sue to stop the state certifying the result if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses; Alaska’s own election officials asked the federal judge to throw it out. Shalev called the suit a first. MacFarlane called it “ballot stacking crap” and said the administration “is quickly losing credibility with all of the courts.”MacFarlane anchors the MeidasTouch Network’s election night on YouTube from the first poll closings in Indiana and Kentucky. His Substack, MacFarlane Reports, runs daily until then. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Thank you Kelly Trimble, Sheryl ☀️, Winterish for Ukraine, Courtney Busby, Andrea York, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

Sergey Lavrov landed in Atlanta on Friday morning for the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting. A day earlier Russia flew a jet drone into the platform at Dnipro’s main railway station as a train boarded and killed at least 14 people; CNN counted 15.Those two facts opened Narativ Live, and by the end of it Sean Wiswesser and Olga Lautman, a Russia analyst, had said it plainly. “This is not America isolationist policy,” Lautman said. “This is America siding with Russia.” Zev Shalev went a step further: this is no longer betrayal, it is Trump aiding and abetting Russia.Wiswesser ran a CIA station, and put the first number on it: Patriot interceptor deliveries to Ukraine are down to one quarter of January’s rate, by his count, “and it’s costing lives.” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth had neither approved nor rejected the transfers Europe already paid for, the Washington Post reported Oct. 19; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked him Monday to “unblock the deliveries.”Starshield, the military Starlink, was speed-capped in mid-October with no notice: a terminal moving faster than 100 mph loses its link. Lautman blamed the Pentagon, not Elon Musk, and Musk agrees: the limits, he said Oct. 24, are “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Hegseth denies any directive. Whoever’s hand is on the switch, the switch does the same thing.Trump signed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sanctions law on Sept. 18 and waived every provision of it on Oct. 16, in an order with no end date that never uses the word Ukraine. On Oct. 9 the Treasury licensed Russian diesel; the first tanker, the Agioi Fanendes, was due in New Jersey on Nov. 7 and now sits “for orders,” after Gov. Mikie Sherrill called the deal illegal on Thursday and said she is looking for ways to stop it.“Congress needs to take action,” Wiswesser said. “Why aren’t they acting to enforce the law?” Lautman counted one Republican who has acted, Sen. Thom Tillis, the only one to sign the Oct. 24 letter to banks and ports. Wiswesser’s book, Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War (Naval Institute Press), is out now and, he said, topped Audible’s espionage releases last month; he told the audience the proudest boast today should be “I am a Ukrainian.”On Friday Reuters reported that Pentagon officials privately urged Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to tone down their warnings about Russia; the Pentagon’s policy chief advised one Baltic official against “poking” Moscow, and Estonia says nothing of the kind came through official channels. Lautman’s version: the Pentagon told allies to shut up and stop poking Russia. In the same weeks drones hit at least three merchant ships off Bulgaria and Romania and more than 20 sailors were lost; Romania blamed Russia for one, the Khoryv, sunk off Constanța on Oct. 23. “This is war,” Lautman said. “You hit ships with drones and you sink the ships.”Russia bombed a train station, and Romania says a Russian drone sank a merchant ship in NATO waters, in the same two weeks Washington licensed its diesel, waived its sanctions and asked the neighbors to keep quiet. Narativ reported on Oct. 20 that Russia is being paid before the talks. This week the payment went from money to cover.A House that flips on Tuesday makes any Trump-Putin deal hard to get through Congress; as Shalev put it, voters can change the outcome of this war by how they vote. The Kremlin wants its Abu Dhabi round of talks after Nov. 4, and Nov. 3 sets the price. The Agioi Fanendes, idling with no port confirmed, will show which way the shipowners bet first.Thank you Dani Smart, Amy Gabrielle, Caro Henry, John Mahoney, Lalisa, and many others for tuning into my live video with Olga Lautman and Sean Wiswesser! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe

The mayor of Bucha has an answer to Donald Trump's diesel deal with Vladimir Putin. He posted a photo of himself holding a jerry can of diesel and asked everyone to fill one and ship it to the United States, so Ukraine can outsupply Putin and save Americans billions.Jacob Kaarsbo saw the post on the mayor's phone on Monday, after the two laid flowers at the Bucha memorial. The former Danish intelligence officer joined Narativ Live from Kyiv on Wednesday, four days after driving in from Copenhagen with a convoy of 11 cars for the Ukrainian army. One blew its engine on the road. Cars for Ukraine, the Danish group behind the convoys, passes 1,000 vehicles next month.Kaarsbo's reading of the diesel deal: Russia has no diesel to spare. It has an export ban in force and has been importing diesel through South Korea. The deal is "smoke and mirrors," he said, a route to getting sanctions lifted. Zev Shalev went further: it puts Russian oil back into the open market and legitimizes the shadow fleet.The anger in Kyiv is real and mostly unspoken, Kaarsbo said. "They feel the betrayal." A senior Ukrainian officer told him on Wednesday, through a translator, that Ukraine and Denmark have to fight Russian fascism together. Then he laughed and added: and American fascism too.Kaarsbo named Putin's war crime: the deportation of Ukrainian children, which Putin has bragged about. Trump, he said, is threatening sanctions on the International Criminal Court that prosecutes such crimes. "Donald Trump sides with him."Why now? Danish pundits say Trump wants cheaper diesel before the midterms. Kaarsbo called that "b******t." He expects Trump to try to hold power whatever the result; Denver Riggleman has warned the machinery to annul a defeat is already in the works. Shalev offered two scenarios: Russia helps the GOP win, or a Nixon ending if the vote collapses far enough that the party tells him to go.Kaarsbo said he predicted this in his book: Putin manipulates Trump through a "treasonous web" of finances. The Financial Times showed this weekend how the Russians got into the Alaska gas deal; Shalev named the route: Don Jr.'s hunting companion, a man tied to Putin's bodyguards.On Starlink, Kaarsbo said Europe has the satellite technology and must scale it. While Musk was throttling Ukraine's connection, someone sabotaged Starlink antennas in Bulgaria, Poland and Lithuania. "Classical GRU stuff," he said.He woke at 3 a.m. Monday to the air defense battery next to his hotel. The one place in the city with real destruction is a marketplace with no military target in sight, struck again and again. The students were drinking in the park the next night.His last word: Ukraine is doing well on the front line and innovating faster than Russia. Build it up from Europe and Canada and it can end the war without the Americans. Shalev: Carney already has a plan with Zelensky.SourcesNarativ Live, Oct. 28, 2026, live from Kyiv with Jacob Kaarsbo (the replay)Jacob Kaarsbo, Intel Brief, "Live from Kyiv Q&A Special," Oct. 27, 2026: https://jacobkaarsbo.substack.com/p/live-from-kyiv-q-and-a-specialKyiv Post, Oct. 27, 2026, Treasury weighs lifting sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund (NYT): https://www.kyivpost.com/post/88359CNBC, Oct. 24, 2026, Starlink restored, Musk admits throttle: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/24/ukraine-starlink-starshield-service-restored.html This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe