FiveStack with Dean Blundell & Zev Shalev

5️⃣ TRUMP LANDS IN BEIJING — XI SENDS A DEPUTYAir Force One touched down at Beijing Capital at 7:50 PM local time, 7:50 AM Eastern. Three hundred Chinese children in blue and white uniforms waved American and Chinese flags. The man at the foot of the stairs was Vice President Han Zheng. Xi Jinping was not there. He will receive Trump on Thursday morning. Melania did not make the trip. The first lady stayed home.The choreography of the welcome was deliberate. The Chinese president sent his deputy to the tarmac. The American president walked off the plane with billionaires and a Hollywood director accused by six women. Xi made Trump wait a day for the photo. The trip is officially about trade and Taiwan. Trump arrived in Beijing with the Iran war burning $4 billion of US weapons every fourteen days, the Strait of Hormuz frozen, his tariffs surviving on a court reprieve, and CPI printing 3.8%. Xi sets the terms Thursday. The trade concession Xi extracts is the news.4️⃣ BRETT RATNER FLIES TO CHINA WITH TRUMPDean called it on air. The flying Epstein memorial. Among the cabinet and the CEOs on Air Force One — Musk, Cook, Huang, Fink, Solomon, Schwarzman, Hegseth, Rubio — was a name no one expected. Brett Ratner. Accused in 2017 by Olivia Munn, Natasha Henstridge, and four other women of sexual harassment and assault. Another woman accused him of rape; he sued, then dropped it. Elliot Page accused him of outing him on the X-Men set at eighteen. Forced out of Hollywood at the peak of MeToo.Ratner directed the Melania documentary for Amazon. Two-thirds of the New York crew asked not to be credited. Crew members described “chaos” on set. He lived at Mar-a-Lago while filming it. The Epstein files name him — emails confirm he was used by Epstein as a bridge to other people for nearly a decade. There is a photograph of Brett Ratner shirtless and embracing Jean-Luc Brunel, the modeling agent who scouted underage girls in Europe for Epstein and who killed himself in his Paris cell in 2022.The Hollywood Reporter says Ratner is scouting locations for Rush Hour 4. Not buying it. He is on the plane because the plane is full of men who knew what Epstein was and stayed in the room. The Palm Beach hearing on Tuesday put a fourteen-year-old, an Uzbek model named Rosa, and a 1996 whistleblower named Maria Farmer on the record as survivors of that network. The same week, the President of the United States flew the network’s documentarian to Beijing on Air Force One. The signal is the choice. The choice is the signal.3️⃣ UAE SECRETLY STRUCK IRAN IN APRILThe Wall Street Journal reported overnight that the United Arab Emirates carried out a covert military strike on Iran in April — an attack on the Lavan Island refinery in the Persian Gulf. The Trump administration knew. The Trump administration welcomed it. The Iran war is no longer a US war. It is a Gulf coalition war, fought partly in the open and partly in shadows, and the White House is quietly recruiting more Gulf states to join the strikes.Iran’s parliament speaker says the Islamic Republic’s military is “ready to teach a lesson” to any aggressor. Qatar accuses Iran of “weaponising” the Strait of Hormuz and “blackmailing” Gulf states. Iran today accused Kuwait of attacking it. The whole region is fragmenting into a multi-front war, and the United States is the player making it possible. Israel is doing everything under the umbrella of US security. Kuwait is doing everything under the umbrella of US security. The UAE struck Iran with US blessing.And the receipt is on the water. The USS Gerald R. Ford, flagship of the American navy, limped out of Greece this week. Iran damaged it badly enough that it is going to dry dock for two years. Two years. Bob Kagan — one of the country’s longest-serving war hawks — wrote in The Atlantic that the war is lost. Donald Trump’s response to Kagan was to call Americans who report on the lost war guilty of “virtual treason.” That is the word he used. Treason.2️⃣ PATEL PULLED FBI COUNTERINTEL OFF IRANSenator Chris Van Hollen pressed Kash Patel yesterday on three things — the Atlantic reporting on his drinking, the journalists Acting AG Todd Blanche just announced he would subpoena, and the FBI counterintelligence agents Patel quietly pulled off the Iran threat beat. Patel lashed out. Patel accused the senator of drinking on the taxpayer dime. Patel agreed on the record to take an alcohol-use-disorders test. And Patel admitted the counterintel agents had been moved.The reporters who covered the Iran war — the same reporters Blanche is now subpoenaing — have been telling the country for weeks that the FBI’s Iran threat unit has been gutted. Patel confirmed it under oath. The FBI counterintelligence agents responsible for catching Iranian threats inside the United States were pulled off the case at the same time the Iran war was widening into a Gulf coalition war. Brian Driscoll, the former FBI second-in-command fired in March for refusing to assemble political-target lists, has filed a lawsuit revealing that thousands of FBI agents — including the child-trafficking units — were reassigned or fired.Bloomberg’s verdict this morning, in a column written by the editorial board: “Patel FBI Senate Hearing — He’s an Embarrassment and a Risk.” The captured bureau is no longer protecting the country. The captured bureau is protecting the man at the top.1️⃣ DOJ SUBPOENAS WSJ REPORTERSThe biggest story of the day. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer until January, the man Trump credits with keeping him “out of jail” — has now actually subpoenaed Wall Street Journal reporters over Iran-war leaks. The WSJ publisher fired back today, calling the subpoenas “an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it a return to the surveillance regime curtailed after Trump’s first term. Bondi rolled back the Biden-era restrictions on subpoenaing reporters before Trump fired her on April 2. Blanche stepped in and walked through the door Bondi opened.The trigger was Trump’s reaction to Kagan. The reporters telling Americans the Iran war is lost. The reporters telling Americans the war is costing $29 billion. The reporters telling Americans the UAE secretly struck Iran. Trump passed Blanche a stack of news clippings with a sticky note that said “treason.” Blanche complied.The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch. The Wall Street Journal is now fighting Donald Trump’s DOJ in court for the right of American journalists to do their jobs. When Murdoch sues Trump over press freedom, the room has flipped. The First Amendment is being dismantled in plain sight by a man whose only qualification is loyalty.THE PATTERNThis morning Trump deplaned in Beijing in front of three hundred Chinese children waving American flags and the lights of a state visit. The men who got off the plane with him are the men who funded him, hung around Jeffrey Epstein, built their fortunes in China, and now need Xi Jinping’s permission to keep them. The host of the banquet is arming the enemy Trump cannot defeat. The aircraft carrier sent to defeat that enemy is going into dry dock for two years. The reporters telling the story are getting subpoenaed by Trump’s former defense lawyer. The FBI Director who could investigate the threat has been pulled off the beat. The Justice Department is preparing to charge a former president. And the American president told the country on the South Lawn yesterday that he does not think about Americans’ financial situation. Day 479.Thank you Ellie Leonard, Courtney, Lalisa, Yolanda D., Maureen Drews, 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.The Fivestack was supposed to count five stories but we could not turn our eyes away from today. Lev Parnas walked out of a Florida Senate hearing on Jeffrey Epstein, called in, and the show became one story. The story is what Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has done to the women who survived Epstein —Today’s show is dedicated to them. 5️⃣ THE HEARING REPUBLICANS WOULDN’T HOLDHouse Oversight Democrats drove to West Palm Beach. The committee in the majority — the Republicans — refused to convene the hearing in Washington. So the minority held it themselves, in the county where federal prosecutors handed Jeffrey Epstein his 2008 sweetheart deal, across the bridge from Mar-a-Lago.Security was tight. Local press showed up. Jim Acosta walked in. Tara Palmieri walked in. Katie Phang walked in. The major networks did not. Lev Parnas got the call from the Oversight team the night before, drove down, sat in the room, and live-streamed the hearing publicly because the committee told him he could. Schumer was not there. Jeffries was not there. Massie was not there. Marjorie Taylor Greene was not there. Survivors who waited thirty years for a hearing got the hearing they could organize themselves, and only one of the two parties came.4️⃣ MARIA FARMER, THIRTY YEARS LATERMaria Farmer was the first witness. She was not in the room — she had just been discharged from the hospital after twenty-three nights in the last month, several of them in the ICU. She recorded her statement and the committee played it. The voice was not strong. The statement was steel.“My name is Maria Farmer. I am the whistleblower who reported Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Les Wexner and others to the FBI 30 years ago in 1996.”She walked through the file. The 1996 report to the New York City 6th Precinct. The commanding officer who told her local police could only handle the local arson and to take the rest to the FBI. The FBI agents who said they recognized some of the names. The thirty years of nothing that followed. The 2006 federal trial they pulled her into and then the sweetheart deal that closed it. The death threats. The arson threats to her apartment. The Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The brain tumor. The Addison’s disease that landed her in the ICU last month.She wants her FBI file. She has FOIA’d it. She has sued for it. The government’s most recent response told her they will get back to her in November 2027.She named the women whose lives the FBI’s inaction cost — Virginia Giuffre, Anushka DiGiorgio, Chante Davies, Marika Chartone, Danny Benski, Jenna Lisa Jones, Ashley Rubright, Jennifer Rose. She called Virginia “the backbone of this case” and “the shining star and guiding light” the survivors are still walking behind.3️⃣ ROSA — DOXED 540 TIMESThe next testimony broke the room. Rosa came to New York at eighteen from Uzbekistan, signed by the MC2 modeling agency, paid one hundred dollars a week. The agency took her passport. The agency paid her enough that she could not leave. She was trafficked.She had spent the last decade rebuilding. She had been a Jane Doe — her name redacted from every court filing in every case. The redaction was the only thing standing between her past and her present life.In January, Donald Trump’s DOJ released the Epstein files in compliance with the Transparency Act. They unredacted her name. Five hundred and forty times.“I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world. Now reporters from across the globe contact me. I cannot live without looking over my shoulder.”A congresswoman in the room asked her what justice would look like. Rosa told her that’s not the survivor’s job. That’s the lawmaker’s job. Enough with the survivors being pressured to testify.2️⃣ THE 14-YEAR-OLD AND THE BRIDGEThe fourteen-year-old from the other side of the bridge testified next. Lev described it on our show — across the Royal Park Bridge from West Palm Beach to Palm Beach island, you have trailer parks on one side and Mar-a-Lago on the other. The fourteen-year-old grew up watching the lights.Her parents were addicts. She walked across the bridge. Epstein’s network picked her up. She was trafficked. She survived. And when she finally made it back to a sheriff’s deputy who was, in the lawyer’s words, “trying like a superhero,” three private attorneys flew in — Roy Black, Alan Dershowitz, and a third New York lawyer — and ran the case into the ground. Private investigators dressed as Palm Beach sheriff’s officers intimidated the witnesses. Dershowitz produced grade-school records that the girl had smoked weed once. The reputation got dismantled in the local paper. The witnesses dropped.But here is the part Lev could not get past. The DOJ told the fourteen-year-old she could be prosecuted herself. For prostitution. At fifteen and sixteen years old.She asked the question on the record. Is there even a statute for that? Is there a criminal statute for a 15-year-old to be charged with prostitution?🎯 GROUND NEWS BLINDSPOT — TODAYThe Palm Beach hearing was on today’s Ground News Blindspot — a story being covered by local Florida press and Substack, and quietly ignored by the major national networks. The second Blindspot story today was Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the DOJ will subpoena reporters who receive classified information about Iran-war leak investigations. Sixty-four percent of the coverage of that second story is right-leaning, celebrating “accountability.” The left-leaning and center coverage is thin. The two Blindspots share the same DNA — Trump’s DOJ choosing which truths the country gets to hear, and which journalists are allowed to report them. Ground News tracks the bias spread on every story so you can see who is covering it, who is hiding it, and where your news is steering you. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.1️⃣ THE DOXING WAS THE POLICYThis is what we keep telling you on Narativ. The cruelty is not a byproduct. The cruelty is the design.Trump’s DOJ had two options when it released the Epstein files. Redact the survivors and reveal the perpetrators, or reveal the survivors and redact the perpetrators. They did the second one. Five hundred and forty unredactions of one woman’s name. The accusations against Trump in the files — those got cut. The names of the trafficked women — those got published. The lawmaker in the room said it on camera: we’re pretty sure he did this to make these women shut up. Lev was sitting in the gallery. He could not disagree.And while the doxing was running, Trump was firing the FBI agents who could have helped. Brian Driscoll, second-in-command at the Bureau, told Anderson Cooper this week that he was fired for refusing to put together political-target lists. Driscoll’s lawsuit names thousands of FBI agents — including the child-trafficking units — who were reassigned or fired. The Acting Attorney General is Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer, the man who, in Trump’s own words on tape, “kept me out of jail.” Blanche announced today that reporters who write about DOJ investigations will be subpoenaed. He posted it on X.Maria Farmer cannot get her own FBI file. The reporters trying to read the Epstein files are now legal targets. The fourteen-year-old who walked across the bridge was almost prosecuted herself. Rosa cannot stop looking over her shoulder. And the men whose names are still redacted in those files are on a plane to Xi Jinping with Elon Musk and Tim Cook.THE PATTERNThe captured Justice Department is not protecting the survivors. The captured Justice Department is protecting the perpetrators by re-traumatizing the survivors. Lev called it the Epstein class — the people in the powerful seats on both sides of the aisle who have reasons to keep the file half-redacted forever. The hearing today in Palm Beach was the work the captured DOJ refuses to do, done by the minority party with no subpoena power and no cameras. It was also the work Narativ has been doing in our Epstein archive for years.Maria Farmer waited thirty years and ended up in the ICU. Rosa rebuilt her life and lost her redaction. The fourteen-year-old got told she could be prosecuted herself. The country has now been told, in the same week, that the reporters covering the case will be subpoenaed and the former president who oversaw the original assessment of who installed Trump is the new target.Across the bridge from Mar-a-Lago, the women showed up. The cameras did not. The Republicans did not. The Acting Attorney General is threatening every journalist who would have covered it. Day 478. Maria Farmer wants her file. The country needs to want it for her.The Fivestack airs Mon–Fri 3 PM ET. Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev. [narativ.org]Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Lyudmila and Daniel, Robin Payes, LeftieProf, Leah Anderson, 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

The plan today was a five-story countdown . The plan did not survive Benjamin Netanyahu on 60 Minutes.Sunday night, the prime minister of Israel walked onto Bari Weiss’s captured CBS — “Breitbart Light,” as Dean Blundell called it about thirty seconds into the show — and effectively told the American people that he gets to decide when their war with Iran ends, what their soldiers will be asked to do, and what their citizens may say on social media. Donald Trump sat off-screen in Washington and posted backup in all capital letters. “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE… AT A MUCH HIGHER LEVEL.”We started number five. We never got there. The whole hour turned into one Fivestack on one story — the captured presidency, the cudgel, the criminals, and the gas-station line that is coming for everyone in fourteen days. Here is what landed.5️⃣ Breitbart Light at 60 MinutesThe format used to mean something. Sixty Minutes used to be where presidents and prime ministers got asked hard questions in front of seventeen million Americans. Sunday night, under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, the foreign prime minister of Israel got to sit and tell the American host that the United States must continue his war, must send American troops into Iran, must police what Americans say online — and the host nodded along.Dean called it on air. “That was the most dystopian interview I have ever seen from that capacity.” The s**t-eating grin, he said, gave it away. Netanyahu knew he had captured the American presidency, and the network anchor was pretending not to notice.This is the first stack: the country lost its premier interview slot to a foreign leader on prime time, and the host treated it as a courtesy call.4️⃣ The cudgel and the hate crimeInside the same interview, Netanyahu told the world he intends to “fight back” against people on social media who say negative things about Israel. He did not define negative. He did not define Israel. He did not need to.What he gets out of this play is something nobody talks about on cable news: every time he calls a critic of Bibi Netanyahu an anti-Semite, the actual anti-Semites in America and Canada are handed permission to attack ordinary Jews. Jewish Canadians are one percent of the country’s population and the target of seventy percent of religious hate crimes there, Dean said on air, citing the most recent figures from the agencies that protect Jewish communities in Toronto. Cafe Landwer — a beloved Jewish-owned breakfast chain in Toronto — has been attacked with bags of vomit at its doors. Not because it is Israeli. Because it is Jewish.“He doesn’t care about the American Jews at all,” Zev said on air. “He is using the fact that American Jews are liberals as a way to make them targets.”Sixty-nine percent of American Jews voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump have not forgiven any of them for it.3️⃣ The sect that captured Israel — and what it did with the keysMalcolm Nance walked Zev through it on Narativ Breaking News this morning. Dean walked Zev through it again on the Fivestack this afternoon. The story is the same story.In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union started flowing into Israel. Russians arrived under the Law of Return on the slimmest claim of Jewish heritage. Big argument whether half of them were Jewish at all. Mobsters. Intelligence officers. Oligarchs. Hand grenades in Ashdod bars. Some stayed and turned the Israeli political map hard right. Many lily-padded off to Florida — where they continue their work today.The result, six presidents later: an Israeli government aligned with Moscow on most things that matter, an Israeli prime minister friendlier to Vladimir Putin than to seventy percent of his own diaspora, and an Israeli right whose loudest voices speak a Russian Jewish brand of politics that has very little to do with the liberal socialist Zionism that built the country.“This is a movement by a corrupt criminal organization that has seeped its way into the world’s democracies,” Zev said today, “and has taken over Israel’s democracy and installed Bibi Netanyahu as a strongman figurehead. And it is doing the same thing in America.”That is not a metaphor. That is a thirty-year trafficking operation that ends with a foreign prime minister on 60 Minutes telling Americans what they may post online.2️⃣ Bibi funded Hamas. Bibi killed JCPOA. Bibi needs Iran.Two facts that do not appear in the Sunday night interview, and that Dean and Zev put on the table again today.Benjamin Netanyahu approved the cash flow from Qatar to Hamas in Gaza for years before October 7. That is on the record. He built up the enemy he then declared he had to wipe out. The same play, exactly, that Donald Trump runs every time he needs a villain.And in 2012, when Barack Obama was running for re-election and pursuing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, Netanyahu backed Mitt Romney from a foreign capital. He sandbagged Obama’s foreign policy for seven straight years. When the JCPOA finally passed in 2015, Netanyahu went on a global speaking tour to destroy it. Donald Trump killed the deal in his first term as a favor to him.“He needs Iran to be his enemy,” Zev said on air, “because that is what gives him the power. Otherwise he does not stay in power.”The man on 60 Minutes Sunday night demanding a third American strike on Iran is the same man who fed Hamas, killed the deal that would have ended the nuclear standoff, and now wants American soldiers to go to Natanz and Fordow and Isfahan and dig his enemy out for him.1️⃣ Fourteen days to the gas-station lineThis is where it lands. Not in foreign policy. In Akron. In Calgary. In Tampa.Bloomberg’s research, which Malcolm Nance walked Narativ through this morning and Dean walked the Fivestack through this afternoon: physical oil already trades fifty to seventy-five dollars above the futures price. First-week-of-June oil-shock stress arrives. By September, if conditions do not change, every refinery, every pipeline and every bunker in the Western world runs dry.Dean’s translation, on air, for the people who do not read Bloomberg: six dollars a liter for gas, eight for diesel, and a line at the pump that the country has not seen since the Carter administration. “This is 1979 all over again. All over again.”The president who started this war by tearing up Obama’s deal in 2018 — because, in the words of Ken Harbaugh on Dean’s show last week, “Obama is Black” — is the same president who now has to explain to his MAGA base why their summer vacation costs three times what it cost last year, why the flight to Disney was cancelled, and why the gas station has a line that goes around the block.The country that elected Donald Trump in 2024 to bring prices down is about to pay the highest energy bill since Jimmy Carter — to make Benjamin Netanyahu happy.THE PATTERNFive threads. One story. Three criminals.Vladimir Putin in a bunker in Krasnodar, his honor-guard parade rolling World War II tanks across a CGI sky. Benjamin Netanyahu on 60 Minutes calling for the third war in five years against the enemy he built. Donald Trump on Truth Social in capital letters, his arsenal empty, his Senate being investigated for telling the truth out loud, his DOJ purging its own prosecutors over the last fight.All three of them facing prison if they stop running. All three of them willing to set the world on fire to keep moving. All three of them propped up by the same Russian organized criminal network that has been doing this work, patiently, since the Soviet Union opened its borders.Six years ago, Narativ reported that the Trump–Netanyahu axis was an espionage operation, not a foreign policy. This afternoon on the Fivestack, Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev arranged the rest of the pieces on the table — Bari Weiss’s CBS, the Toronto bakery attacks, the Chabad sect, the Qatar cash to Hamas, the 1979 gas line — and let the audience land the verdict.They are not three different stories. They are one criminal enterprise wearing three different flags.And in fourteen days, the bill comes due at every gas station in America.Thank you Caro Henry, Elaine Cimino, Peter W Shuster, Leah Anderson, Lalisa, 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

THE GOP’S ELECTION FIX IS INFour to three Friday morning. Virginia voters had passed the redistricting amendment 52-48 four weeks ago — a margin of about three hundred thousand votes — to undo the Republican-favored 2022 map and flip up to four GOP-held House seats. Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote for the majority. The legislature, he held, took its second vote on the amendment four days before the last day of early voting in the special election, denying voters the chance to elect delegates with a known position on the proposal. Chief Justice Cleo Elaine Powell wrote the dissent. The majority, she said, had “broadened the meaning of the word ‘election’” to include the early-voting period — “in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election.”Three hundred thousand votes erased on a four-day calendar argument three of seven justices said was not the law. The Trump nationwide gerrymander — Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, Florida — was already running. Issue One had Republicans at an eight-seat structural House edge before Friday. After Friday, ten to twelve. Earliest Virginia voters can re-do this: 2028. Earliest a redrawn map could matter: 2030.Trump celebrated on Truth Social. Governor Abigail Spanberger said her office is considering “every legal pathway forward.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it a constitutional crisis. Denver Riggleman put up a post Friday morning calling Virginia what it is — the death of the United States by way of the redistricting map. The cheating is no longer hidden. It is being adjudicated. And on Friday, four justices in Richmond ruled in its favor.5️⃣ HACKERS RANSOM 275 MILLION STUDENTSShinyHunters walked into Canvas Wednesday night and walked out with the personal data of every student logged in across roughly nine thousand schools worldwide. They left a ransom note on the login screen. The schools have until May 12 to pay.Two hundred seventy-five million user records — names, emails, student IDs, private messages — across the U.S., U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Instructure runs the back end of American higher education. One ransomware crew turned the lights off.4️⃣ USA TIPS: OWES MORE THAN IT MAKESApril hiring beat the forecast — 115,000 jobs added against a 67,000 projection, unemployment steady at 4.3 percent. The Labor Department slipped a second sentence into the same release: the Iran-war drag is “only beginning to emerge.”By the time it does, total federal debt has already crossed total U.S. economic output — a line crossed only briefly during the pandemic and after World War II. Trump added seven trillion in fifteen months. Justin Wolfers stopped saying recession this week. He started saying depression.The hiring number flatters the surface. The fundamentals are running the other way.3️⃣ TRUMP TARIFFS DOATrump’s first tariff scheme died at the Supreme Court in February. He rolled out a 10 percent backup version. The U.S. Court of International Trade killed that one Thursday — invalid and unauthorized by law — in a 2-1 ruling that found the president “overstepped the tariff power Congress had allowed.”Two for two inside ninety days. Canada, who watched the rulings come in, diversified its trade out of the U.S. months ago. The EU deal Brussels signed last quarter is unwinding. Xi will know all of this before Trump’s plane lands.The federal courts are still tearing up Trump’s executive orders. The state courts, as Friday’s Virginia ruling showed, have started writing them in.2️⃣ CHINA SENSES US WEAKNESS, EYES TAIWAN China’s foreign-policy class is now reading the Pentagon’s munitions ledgers in public — and saying out loud what Washington will not admit. Hu Xijin called America “a giant with a limp.” Trump meets Xi in Beijing next week claiming the Iran ceasefire is “intact” — hours after Iranian strikes resumed and U.S. forces fired back overnight.About half of America’s long-range stealth cruise missile stockpile is gone. Ten times the annual Tomahawk buy has been fired. Twenty-four Reapers downed. The war is running at $1.8 billion a day — more per day than Iraq or Afghanistan ever cost. The Washington Post’s satellite investigation this week confirmed Iran has hit far more U.S. bases than the Pentagon admitted. The contractors who would replace the missiles cannot build them at war pace.Eighty percent of the U.S. military in the Iran theater has stopped pretending it knows why it is there. The retired admirals and generals are silent — afraid for their pensions, afraid of a president using the resolute desk to settle scores. Beijing is no longer asking whether America can defend Taiwan. It is calculating when.1️⃣ THE OIL CLIFF IS COMINGBrian Hook, Biden’s former Iran envoy, laid it out on Bloomberg this week. The oil cliff lands at the end of this month. Physical shortages start in poor countries no one is paying attention to. Then Vietnam and Thailand. Then Japan and Korea. Then here. You can fly out of the U.S. on cheap jet fuel. You cannot get back.By month’s end, a quarter tank is $120. By next month, the queues start. By the month after, your SSRI prescription has the same supply-chain problem as the gas pump — refined-petroleum derivatives are inside it. Domestic plane tickets are up thirty percent already; a friend of the show paid $600 for a seat L.A. to Vegas that cost $200 two weeks ago.This is the bill the jobs report did not show. It is the bill the tariff regime cannot block, because the courts blocked the tariff regime. It is the bill the depleted military cannot fight off, because the depleted military burned its inventory in Iran. And it is the bill the institutions are no longer set up to absorb, because Friday morning a state Supreme Court erased the votes of three hundred thousand Virginians on a four-day calendar argument.THE PATTERNWhen you’re making less than you owe, when courts overturn the will of the people, when your elections are rigged, the president calls a reporter a b***h, the military brass is too afraid to speak out, and the worst oil crisis in history is about to get worse. Our democracy isn’t just running on empt, it may need a total overhaul to restart Three-time Trump voters are now telling reporters they were idiots. Nick Fuentes — a name we have never put in a Narativ piece — declared himself an anti-Zionist Democrat this week. Three thousand six hundred Justice Department lawyers have walked or been pushed out in the last fifty days. The former Pentagon press secretary said the brass is silent. The president spent Friday morning yelling at an ABC reporter in front of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool — which his administration is repainting Bahamas-blue for the king’s visit, with Thank you, President Trump, for making D.C. clean and safe posters lining the barricades around the World War II memorial.A country whose institutions stop holding does not stay this country. America’s hardcore Trump base is angry. Its working class is broke. Its vote in Virginia just got erased. Its retirees are about to spend a hundred and twenty dollars on a quarter tank of gas. Its military has nothing to fire if Beijing moves on Taiwan. Its president is repainting the reflecting pool while the marble cracks.The Fivestack airs Monday through Friday at 3 PM ET on Narativ.org. The Narativ newsletter and Narativ.org subscriptions are 35% off through the end of May. 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 President of the United States lost the Saudis. The Commerce Secretary forgot his story. A federal judge found a lost note by Jeffrey Epstein, Elon Musk’s ex-partner says she’s done with right, and Ted Turner — the man who built 24-hour news — died on a day tailor-made for cable news..Trump declared “Operation Project Freedom” on Truth Social Sunday. He told nobody — not Mohammed bin Salman, not Oman, not Kuwait, not the UAE — that he was going to launch a U.S. Navy escort mission through the Strait of Hormuz that needed their bases, their airspace, and their overflight rights to function.Saudi Arabia revoked all three.Within thirty-six hours, Project Freedom was dead on the tarmac. Trump called MBS to fix it. The call did not fix it. The White House dressed up the retreat as a “great progress” peace deal. Iran’s Mohsen Rezaei went on Al Mayadeen Thursday morning and called the proposal “unrealistic,” demanding war reparations as a precondition for any agreement. The Iranians sent the deal back like a wrong order.5️⃣ Mullin’s customs law — DHS reaches into CanadaThe U.S. Department of Homeland Security used a 1930 customs statute — Section 1509 of the Tariff Act, written to verify duty payments on shipped merchandise — to subpoena Google for the full digital life of a Canadian who criticized ICE on X. Hundreds of similar subpoenas have gone to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord since the start of the second Trump term, aimed at anyone who criticized ICE or pointed to ICE locations. The 2017 Inspector General audit of the same statute found one in five Section 1509 summonses exceeded the agency’s legal authority. CBP folded then. DHS has not folded now.4️⃣ The note the DOJ never hadWednesday evening, Judge Kenneth Karas unsealed a yellow legal-pad note in White Plains. The text: “They investigated me for month — FOUND NOTHING!!!” / “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.” / “NO FUN… NOT WORTH IT!!”Epstein’s cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione — a former NYPD officer convicted of murdering four people — found the note in a graphic novel after Epstein’s July 2019 jail-cell incident and kept it. It sat in his court file for years. It is not in the three-million-page Epstein Files Transparency Act release. The Justice Department admits it has never seen the document.It surfaced because The New York Times petitioned the court to unseal it. Without that petition, it would still be a sealed exhibit in a federal courthouse.3️⃣ Lutnick under not-oathHoward Lutnick did not testify Wednesday. He gave a transcribed interview, off-camera, not under oath, in front of the House Oversight Committee for more than four hours. By the end of it the Republican chairman, James Comer, was telling reporters Lutnick had not been truthful.The story keeps refusing to stay still. The first version: Lutnick met Epstein once in 1998, saw the massage table, was disgusted, never spoke to him again. The second version, as the files came out: Lutnick sat next door at 11 East 71st Street for twenty-one years, did Adfin with Epstein in 2012, kept Cantor Ventures correspondence going through 2014, took his wife and four children and a full deployment of nannies to Little St. James in December 2012, accepted a $50,000 contribution from Epstein for a 2017 dinner honoring himself, and emailed Epstein about a museum expansion through 2018.Wednesday produced version three. Lutnick, who had told a podcast that Epstein was one of the greatest blackmailers of all time, told the committee that he had simply been speculating and that Epstein never engaged in blackmail. The podcast audio exists.Rep. Ro Khanna, on camera afterwards: “If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick.”Marjorie Taylor Greene has now publicly described Trump telling Pam Bondi that the Epstein files would hurt his Mar-a-Lago friends. Lutnick is one of those friends. Behind the not-oath, behind the closed doors, the cover-up is still operating in real time.2️⃣ One receipt, no defection — Ashley St ClairThe Washington Post ran Ashley St Clair’s account this morning. She named one chat — “Fight Fight Fight.” She named one administration figure inside it — James Blair. She told the Post the right-wing online influencer machine is paid, scripted, and coordinated. The press treated the interview like a confession.It was an interview.She did not call the FBI. She did not call the RCMP. She did not call NATO StratCom in Riga. A real defector from a foreign-funded influence operation goes to investigators with the contracts, the names, and the wire transfers — and goes to journalists only after that. Christopher Wylie did it with Cambridge Analytica. Frances Haugen did it with Facebook. Cassidy Hutchinson did it with January 6. The Tenet Media indictment did the work for the influencers who never came forward.Musk sent St Clair $2.5 million as part of the paternity dispute. She has been in the right-wing influencer economy since at least 2020. Six years of cash flow is a career, not an awakening. The contracts, funders, and other names are still missing. And Narativ has tied Elon Musk — the father of her son — to the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus. The mother of his child went to WaPo, not the FBI. The receipts are still missing.1️⃣ Turner gone — the man who built 24-hour newsTed Turner died Wednesday at 87. Lewy body dementia. The brash Atlanta yachtsman launched CNN in June 1980, when nobody in the industry believed news could fill twenty-four hours and the rest of cable went to dead air after midnight. He gave a billion to start the United Nations Foundation in 1997. He bought the Atlanta Braves. He kept buffalo on more land than anyone alive.Turner sold the company. The company sold the news. The 24-hour cycle he built to chase truth around the planet is the same cycle that ducked four of today’s biggest stories on its own air.He was no saint. Jane Fonda’s account of being married to him is its own reckoning. Dean said it on the show — sure, he was a piece of work. But Turner believed a country deserved to know what was happening to it as it was happening. He believed news belonged on the air the moment it broke, not at six-thirty after the editor decided what mattered. He bet on the audience. The bet paid. The audience is still there.What he built is no longer chasing the story.The patternFive stories, one news cycle. Saudi Arabia denied a U.S. President basing rights for an operation he announced on Truth Social. Iran called the deal a face-saving fiction and demanded reparations. DHS used a customs law about widget shipments to subpoena a Canadian. A federal judge had to release a document the DOJ had never bothered to find. A sitting Cabinet member admitted he had been lying for twenty years about a convicted sex trafficker. A right-wing influencer handed in one chat name and called it a defection.Six years ago Narativ wrote that the Epstein network was an espionage operation, not a sex scandal. Six years ago Narativ wrote that the influencer economy on the right was a paid information operation. Six years ago Narativ wrote that the Trump-Russia file was a kompromat file, not a paperwork dispute. The stories of this week are not new stories. They are the same story, finally surfacing.The man who built cable to chase that story died Wednesday. The cable he built is no longer doing the work.We are.35% off annual subscriptions on RN — Subscribe to Narativ.org. Subscribe to deanblundell.substack.com. The 24-hour news cycle is no longer chasing this. We are.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Robin Payes, Marnie Screams Into the Void, Grace Alexandra Hayden, Deeanna Burleson, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Today the President of the United States looked at a sustained naval battle in the Strait of Hormuz and called it a skirmish. The Senate looked at a billion dollars for a ballroom and called it modernization. The Met looked at a hundred-thousand-dollar seat and called it culture. A Canadian province being bought through Dutch troll farms got called a poll. And the Kremlin called the coup talk a psy-op while Putin hid in a bunker. Five stories. One muscle-memory move from power: take the thing that’s happening, and call it something else. Our job today was to give it back its real name.5️⃣ Where’s Putin?Vladimir Putin fired the head of his air defenses today. A Ukrainian drone slipped past three layers of Russian air-defense — S-400, S-300, Pantsir — and slammed into a luxury apartment block on Mosfilmovskaya Street, four miles from the Kremlin and less than two from the Russian Defense Ministry. Gen. Viktor Afzalov is gone. Putin himself is in an underground bunker in Krasnodar, on the Black Sea coast, weeks at a time. He has not visited a single military facility in 2026. Cooks, photographers, and bodyguards are now banned from internet-connected phones; surveillance cameras have been installed inside their homes.The May 9 Victory Day parade is four days away. The Duma announced today that there will be no military equipment in this year’s parade. According to reporting we cited on the show, ruling-party MPs have been told not to attend in person — Putin is keeping the political class away from his own movements. Through intermediaries, the Kremlin asked Zelensky for a temporary stand-down on May 9. Zelensky’s reply: only if it becomes a full ceasefire and Russia withdraws.When the Kremlin issues an official denial of a coup, that is the story. Putin is not afraid of NATO. He is afraid of the man down the hall.4️⃣ High Fashion Sells OutThe Met Gala raised seats to one hundred thousand dollars last night. Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos co-chaired — ten million to host. Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York, refused the invite. Beyoncé wore a feathered skeleton. The next morning, the Pulitzer Prize Board gave its Public Service medal to the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.Inflation is at a four-year high. Gas is approaching six dollars a gallon in parts of the country. Twenty-eight million Americans are off Medicaid. Seven hundred and ten thousand medical bankruptcies are projected for the year. And the most prestigious prize in American journalism and the most expensive seat in American culture got settled in the same forty-eight hours, by the same family.High fashion and high journalism are now the same room. They will tell you these are unrelated. The room is the room.This story is today’s Ground News Blindspot. It is barely registering in U.S. media. It is being soft-pedaled inside Canada. We caught it because Ground News flagged it. Get 40% off Vantage at groundnews.com/fivestack.3️⃣ Is Alberta Going to Secede? — Today’s Ground News BlindspotStay Free Alberta delivered more than three hundred thousand signatures to Elections Alberta. The threshold is met. A province-wide referendum on independence is now mandatory, with the earliest vote in October. That is the surface story. The buried story — the one Dean walked through on the show — is the operation underneath it.David Parker, who took over the United Conservative Party and built “Take Back Alberta,” is the same political operator behind Tucker Carlson’s Alberta tour and the convoy network. His new vehicle, the Alberta Republican Party, has been working alongside U.S. figures including Pete Hoekstra and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Per the reporting Dean laid out on the show, half a billion U.S. dollars has been offered as a “transitionary loan” to deliver Alberta to the United States.The disinformation pipeline was exposed this past week: more than forty YouTube channels and hundreds of social-media accounts run out of the Netherlands, paid by MAGA-aligned U.S. money, flooding Alberta with secession content. Inside that operation, the personal data of 2.9 million Albertans — names, addresses, banking information, voter rolls — was funneled into a piece of software called the Centurion app distributed through the Alberta Republican Party. It is now the largest privacy breach in Canadian history. The RCMP raided David Parker’s office and the UCP’s office. Premier Danielle Smith is, this same week, hosting a “Freedom Free Canada” symposium with Pete Hoekstra and Mike Pompeo on Canadian soil.Sixteen percent of one province, foreign-funded, is trying to walk a hundred-percent of its oil out of the federation. Alberta is not seceding. The people running the play might be going to prison. The pattern is the play. Trump did more to break Canada in eighteen months than fifty years of separatist movements managed on their own.2️⃣ The GOP Tries to Slip in a $1B BallroomLate Monday night Senator Chuck Grassley unveiled legislative text for one billion dollars in “East Wing Modernization Project” security as part of the Senate’s reconciliation bill. The bill text states that the money cannot be used for “non-security elements.” Grassley’s spokesperson says it does not fund the ballroom. The White House spokesperson says it does. Take your pick.A federal judge halted aboveground construction last month; an appeals court stayed his order; concrete and rebar continue to go up. Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose the ballroom; twenty-eight percent support it. Reconciliation requires only a simple majority — no filibuster, no Democrats. The same bill carries $38.2 billion for ICE, $26 billion for CBP, $1.5 billion for DOJ, all funded through September 2029.Trump promised the ballroom would be paid for entirely by private donors. The donors keep the ballroom. The country pays for the bunker underneath it. As Dean put it on the show: the bunker sits under the ballroom, so you kind of need the ballroom to cover the bunker.When you can’t get the appropriation through Congress, you call it security. When you can’t get past the judge, you keep pouring concrete. When you can’t pass a budget, you call it reconciliation.1️⃣ Trump Calls It a Skirmish — Two Destroyers, Six Boats, the UAE HitWe opened the show with this. We closed the show with this. Off the top of the broadcast we told you what the Pentagon would not.The USS Truxtun and the USS Mason — two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers — ran a sustained Iranian attack overnight to enter the Persian Gulf. Multiple bearings of small boats. Anti-ship cruise missiles in flight. Shahed drones overhead. Apache gunships called in. Six Iranian fast-attack boats sunk. Cruise missiles knocked down. Anonymous reports from service members back to family members described it as “hell on earth for hours.” The destroyers got two commercial vessels through — including a Maersk ship reportedly carrying U.S. military equipment that had been stuck inside the strait. A larger column tried to follow and turned back under fire.Then this morning, Pete Hegseth stood at the Pentagon lectern and described “a powerful red, white, and blue dome over the strait” delivered as “a direct gift from the United States to the world.” He claimed six Iranian ships tried to run an American blockade and were turned around. They weren’t running a blockade. They were the gunboats that engaged the destroyers. He didn’t mention that immediately after the destroyers cleared, Iran bombed the Fujairah oil terminal in the UAE — half of Oman’s oil distribution outside the strait, on fire. That terminal is a U.S. financial interest. He left it out.The April ceasefire was extended indefinitely. Trump declined yesterday to confirm it still holds. Iran’s parliament speaker told Iranians today: “we have not even begun yet.” Israeli warplanes are coordinating their next round of strikes with Washington. Brent crude is above $112 a barrel. Gas at the American pump is $4.46 a gallon and climbing.Trump won’t call it a war. The Pentagon won’t call it a war. The footage from the Apache gun cameras is calling it. The Wikipedia entry that’s already gone live is calling it: 2026 Strait of Hormuz campaign. A war he names is a war he has to defend in Congress under the War Powers Resolution. A war he calls a skirmish lives in the Pentagon press room and the Truth Social feed and nowhere else.The country pays the price for a war the President refuses to name.🎯 The PatternTwo destroyers ran a battle in the Persian Gulf. The President called it a skirmish. The GOP put a billion dollars for a ballroom in a security bill. They called it modernization. A man paid ten million dollars for a chair at the Met. They called it culture. A province with three hundred thousand signatures, half a billion in foreign money, and 2.9 million breached records wants out of Canada. They called it a poll. The Kremlin is in lockdown over a coup nobody will name. The state media calls it a psy-op.This is power’s first move every time. Take the thing that’s happening and call it something else. Take the war and call it Project Freedom. Take the ballroom and call it security. Take the foreign-funded breakaway and call it grassroots. Take the bunker and call it a parade.Naming things back is the entire job of journalism. That is why we did the Fivestack today, why we will do it again tomorrow, and why your subscription is the thing that keeps it possible.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Thank you Caro Henry, Iulia Huiu, LeftieProf, Niamh Cooper, Fran, 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

The FiveStack with Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev is broadcast LIVE Monday-Friday at 3 PM ET at Narativ.org and it’s 100% free. Sign up today and never miss a show. We opened cold today with breaking news out of FBI HQ: Kash Patel is now threatening to sue anyone who calls him “J. Edgar Boozer.”Yes. Really. The FBI Director — fresh off losing a defamation suit against former assistant director Frank Figliuzzi (he lost because there was evidence he’d been drunk at work) — is apparently so rattled by the new nickname that he’s lawyering up.This is what passes for federal law enforcement in 2026: an FBI Director who indicts James Comey for posting a photo of seashells, and threatens lawsuits against anyone who notices he’s hammered.Dean nailed the through-line: the Epstein class is the victim class. They have so many skeletons that the only available defense is offense. Get angry first. Insult. Threaten. Sue. Anything to keep you from looking at what’s actually in the closet.This is not a coincidence. This is the operating system. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, reportedly said the President has “an alcoholic’s personality” — brazen first, defensive when challenged. Patel has the same profile. Hegseth too. The administration is staffed top to bottom with people maintaining a facade so exhausting it requires chemical assistance.J. Edgar Boozer is just a lawsuit today, but with these guys in charge, it could be a criminal referral.THE SEASHELL STANDARDThe Acting AG went on Fox over the weekend trying to explain why James Comey is being prosecuted for posting “8647” with seashells — when 8647 merch is currently for sale on Amazon in dozens of variants.His answer: “Every single case depends on the investigation that’s done.”Translation: selective prosecution. They have nothing else. The seashells are the case. They’re trying to shove a square, ridiculous peg in a round hole, and they know it.This is exactly the Patel playbook scaled up: when the facts won’t carry the indictment, threaten the messenger.5️⃣ GERMANY GOES, CARNEY WALKS INTO ARMENIATrump pulled 5,000 troops out of Germany — a 14% drawdown — directly retaliating against Chancellor Friedrich Merz for telling the truth: that the United States has been humiliated by Iran and has no exit plan from its own war.Trump’s response: call Merz “totally ineffective.” Yank the troops. Cancel the long-range missile deployment. Make Germany less safe to soothe his own ego.There is no strategic logic. Two real reasons: appease whatever’s left of Vladimir Putin, who’s currently in hiding — and punish a NATO ally for speaking the truth out loud.Meanwhile in Yerevan: Mark Carney just walked into the European Political Community summit — the first non-European head of government ever invited — and cracked the American empire in half. Carney told the room: “The international order will be rebuilt — but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.”That’s the funeral oration for Pax Americana, delivered by a former Bank of England governor who runs the country sharing the world’s longest undefended border with the United States.A non-NATO NATO is forming in real time. Canada is in. Britain is in. Ukraine is in. The bloc is moving without us — and Trump is too busy yanking troops to notice.4️⃣ THE FBI BECOMES ICE WITH BETTER SUITSThe Intercept reported today that the FBI has reassigned 6,500+ agents — roughly 25% of its workforce — to immigration enforcement. That’s a 23x increase over baseline.The agents are being pulled from child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, counterterrorism, and financial fraud.Kash Patel — J. Edgar Boozer himself — is gutting the bureau’s actual mission to chase landscapers and dishwashers.How is the FBI any different from the Gestapo at this point? Same agents, same powers, pointed at brown people instead of oligarchs. The deep state isn’t being dismantled. It’s being repurposed.3️⃣ ALITO BLINKEDJustice Samuel Alito — yes, that Alito, the author of Dobbs — issued an order this afternoon temporarily restoring nationwide access to mifepristone by mail, pharmacy, and telehealth. He stayed Friday’s Fifth Circuit ruling on Louisiana’s request. The order holds until at least May 11 while the full Court considers emergency petitions from Danco and GenBioPro.Don’t pop champagne. The man who told us women lost a constitutional right because the framers didn’t write it down just bought time, not a victory. The drug used in two-thirds of US abortions is one full-court vote away from being unmailable.But here’s the tell: even Alito blinked at the Fifth Circuit. That’s how extreme the lower courts have become — the Dobbs author is now the firewall.The rights apocalypse isn’t coming. It’s here. It’s just on a temporary administrative stay.2️⃣ RUDY OFF THE VENTILATORRudy Giuliani is breathing on his own this afternoon after being put on a ventilator over the weekend. The 81-year-old has pneumonia, complicated by the restrictive airway disease he developed running toward the towers in 2001 — the moment that built the entire mythology he then handed to Donald Trump.He’s still listed as critical but stable at a hospital near Palm Beach. Family and primary doctor at his side. Spokesman Ted Goodman: “He is winning this battle.”Dean’s verdict, on the record: “I don’t give a f**k about Rudy Giuliani.”And he’s right. The man brought the Russian mob into New York by gutting the original five families. He gave Sammy Gravano the snitch deal that let Donald Trump walk away. He spent his late career as the world’s most corrupt bag-man — disbarred, bankrupted, indicted in Georgia and Arizona.Even the famous Ground Zero walk toward the towers? Zev’s increasingly convinced it was staged. Anyone who’s watched Giuliani since knows he’s the biggest wimp in the world — not a man who runs toward chaos unless someone scripted the scene.The 9/11 air he breathed in 2001 is finishing what the legal system started.1️⃣ PROJECT FREEDOM IS A WAR PLANTrump launched “Project Freedom” today — 15,000 troops, 100+ aircraft, guided-missile destroyers, and unmanned platforms — to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.Within hours: Iran’s IRGC fired what it called “cruise missile warning shots” at US Navy destroyers near Bandar-e-Jask. CENTCOM denies any ship was hit. The UAE confirmed an ADNOC tanker was hit by two Iranian drones — Abu Dhabi calling it an “Iranian terrorist attack” and “piracy.” Lebanon banned IRGC activity and started requiring visas for Iranians. Tehran said any US transit is a ceasefire violation. Trump rejected Iran’s 14-point peace proposal as “not acceptable.”The numbers right now: gas at $4.45/gal — up 50% since the war began. US: 13 dead, 381 wounded. Iran: 3,375 killed including 376 children, per the Iran Health Ministry.Trump didn’t end the Iran war. He rebranded the next phase. “Project Freedom” is a euphemism for a Hormuz convoy war — and the bodies are real.The world is leaving. The bag-men are dying. The war is back.The FiveStack with Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev is broadcast LIVE Monday-Friday at 3 PM ET at Narativ.org and it’s 100% free. Sign up today and never miss a show. 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 FiveStack with Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev is broadcast LIVE Monday-Friday at 3 PM ET at Narativ.org and it’s 100% free. Sign up today and never miss a show. PLUS get 35% off annual subscriptions this weekend only.5️⃣ The 60-Day DodgeTrump sent letters to Congress today claiming the Iran war “has terminated” and that hostilities ended on April 7. The Senate killed the war powers resolution 47–50 last night, the sixth time in eight weeks, with Maine Republican Susan Collins crossing for the first time. Asked at the rope line why he would not seek congressional authorization, Trump said “no other country has ever done it” and called the requirement “totally unconstitutional,” then claimed the United States was “in the midst of a big victory” — “a victory like we haven’t had since Venezuela.” Pete Hegseth’s Senate Armed Services testimony Thursday was tighter: “the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire.” Collins answered him in eight words: “It is not a suggestion; it is a requirement.” Shalev said the President was telling Congress in writing that hostilities ended on April 7 — forty-eight hours after he posted himself with a gun on Truth Social and renamed the Strait of Hormuz “the Strait of Trump.” Blundell called it the phase of the presidency where Trump just says anything: “delusional.”4️⃣ The UAE WalksThe United Arab Emirates formally walked out of OPEC and OPEC+ today — the first major-producer departure in nearly six decades — after sending Central Bank Governor Khaled Balama to Washington in late April to negotiate a $20 billion dollar swap line with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The UAE walked anyway. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund killed LIV Golf the same week and announced an 80/20 retreat home from Western investing. Saudi US Treasury holdings dropped $14.7 billion in January alone. Bloomberg’s headline on April 6 said the loop is broken. Blundell named what he sees as the through-line: the Trump family’s net worth has tripled since the inauguration, the payments from the Gulf states for Trump-branded properties are crypto-denominated, and the President “doesn’t give a f**k about your 401” because his future is in Bitcoin. Shalev: if the President wants to kill the dollar down the line, the war is the lever, the petrodollar reversal is the consequence, and crypto is what replaces it.3️⃣ Workers Over BillionairesThe May Day general strike was under way across 600 cities today, with 750 events and 500 organizing groups behind the Workers Over Billionaires slogan. Charlotte-Mecklenburg closed its entire school system because too many staff called out. Blundell said America online is active but America in the streets is not — and called for the kind of full general strike “every housewife in America” mounted during Prohibition: a refusal that did not end until the law itself bent. The number Ro Khanna laid on Hegseth at oversight Thursday is the one that lands: $5,000 per American household, the average cost of the Iran war. Shalev noted that Department of Justice prosecutors also released new “casing” video of White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter Cole Allen — the dog and the officer at the gym door, the magnetometer being torn down, the long rifle materializing somewhere off-camera — questions that Jeanine Pirro’s narrative is not answering.2️⃣ Rome Answers ICEAt 11:07 this morning Pope Leo named Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala — smuggled into the United States in a car trunk in 1990 after three failed attempts to flee El Salvador’s civil war — as the next bishop of West Virginia. He also elevated Howard University chaplain Robert Boxie III, who has called the Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion “un-American” and “un-Christian,” to auxiliary bishop of Washington. The appointment came on May Day and twelve hours after Trump signed a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that pointedly excluded Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Shalev called the move the institutional rebuke from Rome that the Senate would not deliver. Blundell, no friend of organized religion, granted the point: “humanity is a big deal.”1️⃣ The UFC On The LawnForty-five days from now the White House will host its first ever Ultimate Fighting Championship card on the South Lawn — a 15,000-person arena to be built on the people’s front yard. Trump made the announcement personally, said the UFC would bring “some of the greatest champions in the world,” and confirmed construction begins shortly. Kash Patel’s FBI has separately contracted UFC fighters to train federal agents. Blundell called it a carousel of stupidity meant to distract from gas prices, the war, and the Treasury slide. Shalev tied it to Trump’s last UFC appearance — the homoerotic ringside compliment to a fighter the President called “the most beautiful man” — and to the broader spectacle: a fifteen-thousand-seat cage match staged on the lawn of the people’s house while the constitutional check on the war fails six times in eight weeks.Five fights happened on Friday May 1. Trump won none of them. The Senate would not stop the war but Susan Collins crossed and the next vote will be 48–49. Iran offered exactly what a serious negotiator should accept and Trump told CNN he was “not satisfied.” The first American pope put an undocumented Salvadoran in a bishop’s seat in Trump country. The United Arab Emirates flew to Washington for a swap line and walked out of the cartel anyway. And the President of the United States is building a UFC arena on the front lawn while gasoline averages $4.39 a gallon. We are not supposed to be looking at the dollar. We are supposed to be looking at the war. Look at the dollar. History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Jai C. Porter🇨🇦, Stuart Cohen, Dannys, Lori Modafferi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ Hegseth Grilled — “Obliterated” Doesn’t Add UpPete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine took chairs in front of the House Armed Services Committee at ten this morning to defend a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget. Hegseth told the chamber that Iran’s nuclear facilities had already been “obliterated” before Trump launched the war, then told Adam Smith the war was justified anyway because “they had not given up their nuclear ambitions.” Pentagon finance chief Jules Hurst III put a $25 billion price tag on what he called “Operation Epic Fury,” with two destroyed C-130s in the bill. Hegseth attacked Democrats and critical Republicans as “reckless, feckless and defeatist.” “He’s blowing it,” Blundell said.4️⃣ Bondi Will Testify After ContemptHouse Oversight Democrats forced a date out of a fired Attorney General by filing a contempt resolution. Pam Bondi is on the Oversight calendar for May 29 only after Robert Garcia and Summer Lee made clear they would pursue charges that carry jail time. Trump fired Bondi April 2 over the Epstein files, and the Justice Department had previously argued her subpoena “no longer obligates” her testimony. “Compelling her to show up is 75% of the game,” Blundell said.3️⃣ Oil Climbs — UAE Walks OPEC FridayBrent crude opened at $116.53 this morning and settled at $114.62 in the afternoon, up roughly 3% on a Trump Truth Social post and a Defense Secretary on the Hill. Alex Vindman walked Hegseth through the rest of the math: Brent has moved from $72 the day before the war to $117 today, and oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is down 81%. The United Arab Emirates leaves OPEC on Friday — third-largest producer, fifty-eight years inside the cartel. Howard Lutnick, the man supposed to broker the Gulf rescue and whose family trust is borrowed against Tether, did not arrive in time.2️⃣ The Court Turns the Clock BackAt ten-fifty this morning the Supreme Court split six-three in Louisiana v. Callais and gutted what was left of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Alito wrote that the statute “should not have imposed liability on Louisiana” for the second majority-Black district that elected Cleo Fields. Justice Kagan delivered the dissent from the bench and warned any state can now “announce a partisan gerrymander” and walk free. Sunday’s Texas ruling already locked in five Republican House seats; today’s opens the rest of the South — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina. “It becomes apartheid-like,” Shalev said. “Jim Crow,” Blundell answered.1️⃣ Cole Allen Never Fired a ShotThe Washington Post reviewed the high-resolution Hilton surveillance video this morning and reported what Truth Social did not. Cole Tomas Allen ran sixty feet with his shotgun pointed at the ground; a Secret Service officer fired four times; there is no muzzle flash from Allen’s gun. Bullet holes in the wall match handgun rounds, not buckshot. Allen was on a different floor from the president, four locked doors and another magnetometer away. While the Post was publishing, James Comey walked into an Alexandria courthouse to answer for an Instagram photo of seashells arranged into the numbers 8647 — an indictment Blundell called “the most embarrassing paragraph in recent federal legal history.” Three days ago Narativ called this presidency the one that cries wolf. The video is consistent with that read. There was no actual assassination attempt. There was a security breach the administration is using as a prop — to indict Comey, threaten Disney’s eight ABC stations, and let the Defense Secretary call critics “feckless” on the floor of the House.The president invents the threats he wants and prosecutes the people who notice. The court rewrites the law that limits him. The cartel that priced the world for sixty-five years cracks Friday. The fired Attorney General testifies on May 29 because two House Democrats made her. King Charles read Magna Carta into the chamber yesterday and laid a wreath at Ground Zero this morning. Friday closes the sixty-day War Powers clock. The calendar is doing the foreign policy. History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Amy Gabrielle, Natasha K., LC - Silence is Complicity, Robin Payes, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.5️⃣ Carr Comes For Kimmel And DisneyFCC chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation into ABC and Disney on Tuesday, threatening eight broadcast licenses over a Jimmy Kimmel monologue delivered three days before the Washington Hilton incident. Kimmel had quipped that Melania Trump carried “the glow of an expectant widow.” Carr’s office is folding the line into the administration’s case that critics of the president are inciting violence. Shalev framed the move alongside the Comey indictment as one signal repeating in different rooms. “We live in this time when everything this man says is designed to protect the Epstein class and treat him and everybody in it as if they are the victim class,” Shalev said. The license threat lands the same week the Justice Department began treating opposition speech as criminal conspiracy.4️⃣ UAE Walks Out Of OPECThe United Arab Emirates announced it will leave OPEC on May 1, ending nearly 60 years inside the cartel that has set global oil prices since 1960. The exit removes 13% of OPEC’s production capacity and lets Abu Dhabi price its own barrels. Blundell called it “devastating for oil barons, robber barons around the world.” The timing matters. May 1 is also the day the 60-day War Powers resolution comes due in the Senate with the Iran war still unresolved, and Iran sits inside OPEC. Shalev noted the Trump-floated rescue mechanism for Gulf finances may have collapsed inside the same conversation. The cartel that priced the world for sixty-five years is cracking on the day the Senate has to vote on the war.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.3️⃣ Comey Indicted Over Seashells PhotoActing Attorney General Todd Blanche filed a second indictment against former FBI director James Comey on Tuesday, this one built on an Instagram post in which Comey arranged seashells on a beach into the numbers 8647 — shorthand for 86 the 47th president. The first indictment collapsed when prosecutors admitted they had nothing. Blanche’s office is now charging Comey as a criminal conspirator in what the administration is calling the fourth assassination attempt on the president, the Saturday-night magnetometer breach at the Washington Hilton. The theory of the case is that an Instagram post months ago helped produce a man rushing the Secret Service line on Saturday night. “Cash Patel is cosplaying,” Shalev said, “and the fact that Patel feels like he can arrest Jim Comey is ludicrous.” The indictment turns critic speech into a federal felony.2️⃣ Senate Sends GAO Into The Epstein FilesA bipartisan group of senators announced Tuesday that the Government Accountability Office will investigate the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and a New Mexico colleague signed the request. The GAO is the legislature’s independent watchdog, and its findings carry weight in both chambers. Shalev called it “the first trustworthy official investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and the Justice Department’s handling” of the documents. The timing was not accidental. Epstein survivors held a separate event in Washington on Tuesday demanding to meet King Charles, who declined. The Senate moved while the world watched.1️⃣ King Charles Puts Trump On Notice In CongressKing Charles III addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress on Tuesday, the second reigning British monarch to do so after his late mother in 1991, and methodically dismantled the Trump regime’s worldview without naming the president once. Trump was absent by protocol. Charles cited Magna Carta on “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” He described the Saturday Hilton incident and said “such acts of violence will never succeed.” He named Ukraine — “that same unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people” — and both parties stood and applauded. He praised diversity, interfaith respect, climate stewardship, and the rule of law. He closed on Lincoln’s Gettysburg line that the world “may little note what we say, but will never forget what we do.” Blundell called it “the greatest repudiation of Donald Trump in modern history.” Shalev described what he had just watched. “The king of England put Donald Trump on notice.”The pattern across Tuesday is one signal repeating in five different rooms. The bipartisan GAO move, the cartel exit, the indictment of a former FBI director over a beach photo, the FCC threats against a comedian, and the king of England standing in the chamber where the laws are made and reading the founding documents back to the people who wrote them. The institutions that survived the last century are deciding what to do about this one. History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Noble Blend, Rhiannon Frater, Carole, Stuart Cohen, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ DC Rolled Its Eyes And Wolf Blitzer Lost A ShoeThe first thing the room did when the shots rang out was nothing. Wajahat Ali was outside the Hilton when it happened, held back by police as the perimeter went up. “Everything was chill,” Ali said. “The residents of D.C. just rolled their eyes. People are like, did someone try to shoot this mother effer? You think it’s real? You think it’s staged? No one cared.” Inside, Lev Parnas described after-parties continuing as the cops shut down every intersection. Steve Schmidt giggled. Dean Blundell, also inside, said the suspicion was universal. “It was, give me a f*****g break.” The corporate-media reaction broke the other way. Wolf Blitzer told viewers he lost a shoe. He told viewers he thought the shooter was coming for him. “I said, just watch,” Ali said. “One of these corporate media reeks is going to make it all about themselves and talk like they’re in Fallujah. And right on cue, Wolf Blitzer.”4️⃣ MAGA Got Its ThreadsWithin twenty-four hours, every right-wing influencer was on the same line. Rudy Giuliani, Jack Posobiec, Libs of TikTok, GOP lawmakers — we need the ballroom, in unison, before the ballroom had been cleaned. Ali pointed to Ashley St. Clair, the Elon Musk associate who has gone public about how the messaging works. “All these influencers are on the same threads, and they get told to do this, and it’s like pay for play. You do this, you’ll get rewarded. You’ll be a good soldier.” On Saturday it was the ballroom. On Sunday it was the ballroom and DHS funding. By Monday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt was at the lectern naming Hakeem Jeffries, Josh Shapiro, Alex Padilla, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Ed Markey, JB Pritzker, Ayanna Pressley, Monica McGyver, and Jimmy Kimmel — declaring their words “indistinguishable from the manifesto.” The threads, in real time. “Donald Trump talks about the ballroom,” Ali said. “They all talk about the ballroom.”3️⃣ Cole Allen Was A Hotel GuestCole Tomas Allen never reached the ballroom. The Washington Post reported Sunday he was on an upper floor of the Hilton, four locked doors and a flight of stairs away from where Donald Trump was speaking. He had been booked into a hotel room that night. “He’s a resident of the hotel that night,” Shalev said. “That gives you all sorts of access.” Allen has a Caltech mechanical-engineering degree, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory fellowship, a master’s in computer science, and a Teacher of the Month award from C2 Education in Torrance. He is described, in Ali’s words, as “a brilliant guy, Caltech, makes video games on the side for fun, a Christian, a teacher, very smart, very kind, very nice.” Lev Parnas allowed that radicalization explains some of it. Dean and Zev pushed back. “Why would he bother going all the way upstairs to the actual main entrance to get his way in when he was already inside?” Shalev asked. “The whole thing just reeks.”2️⃣ Lev Said Butler Was StagedLev Parnas, who spent the first hours of the WHCD aftermath defending against staging conspiracy theories, said something different on the show. “After a lot of investigative work, a lot of listening and watching what transpired, I truly will say that I believe that the Butler assassination attempt was staged.” He said the same kind of operation had been planned for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and “didn’t work out.” He cited the survival of Cole Allen as evidence that this one was different — “they do not leave witnesses.” But on Butler, where Thomas Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper and Corey Comperatore was killed in the crowd, Parnas’s position is now on record. The first three armed men to come for Donald Trump in twenty-one months were, according to Wajahat Ali, all former Trump voters in their twenties who had been radicalized. The pattern is starting to settle into a sentence Parnas will say out loud.1️⃣ The Crackdown Has BegunNarativ predicted this morning, in The President Who Cried Wolf, that the manifesto framing would be deployed against the broader Epstein-investigative and political opposition.Hours later, Karoline Leavitt named the list at the lectern. Eight Democratic elected officials and one late-night host whose statements were, in her construction, “indistinguishable from the manifesto.” Trump on Truth Social demanded ABC and Disney fire Jimmy Kimmel for an “expectant widow” joke about Melania that ran four days before the shooting. The political product extracted from one Saturday night now stacks: the ballroom, DHS funding, the Kimmel scalp, the named list. Each new day produces another. “If indeed this was not staged, it is incredibly convenient,” Blundell said. “If there’s one thing the Trump regime knows how to do, it’s to take stuff like this and turn it into leverage, turn it into political capital.”The Saturday-night security failure at the Washington Hilton became a Monday-afternoon target list. The list will widen.History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Nicole, Amy Gabrielle, Lyudmila and Daniel, Eric Lullove, Cathy R. Payne, and many others for tuning into my live video with THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Lev Parnas! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.5️⃣ The Soldier Who Bet On His Own MissionFederal prosecutors unsealed an indictment overnight charging a U.S. special forces soldier with using classified information about the Maduro raid to place cash bets on the outcome. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who reports to the Joint Special Operations Command and helped plan and execute the operation, placed 13 Polymarket bets between December 27 and January 26, turning $33,000 into more than $409,000. “That’s 13 bets because the operation kept moving,” Shalev said. “So he had to keep moving. It’s pretty obvious what he did.” Trump, asked about it from the Oval Office, called prediction markets “somewhat of a casino” and said he was “never much in favor of it.” Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket’s advisory board. A $500 million oil futures bet minutes before the Maduro raid forced the former SEC watchdog to resign weeks ago after she pointed at the Trump family. “These predictive market people,” Blundell said, “obviously have a very close relationship with trend-setting, news-making people who understand when and how some of the world’s worst or best events are going to happen.”The Polymarket story is a n example of a story we only found on GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.4️⃣ Ellie Leonard Transcribes The Wolff-Epstein Emails And Exposes The PR ManEllie Leonard, a Narativ contributor who publishes at The Panicked Writer, has transcribed 1,800 pages of emails between Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein — believed to be the only complete read of the entire correspondence. Her reporting establishes that Wolff was Epstein’s paid reputation repairman, writing clean-up pieces including a 7,000-word whitewash for The New Yorker after Epstein’s conviction for procuring an underage prostitute. Shalev noted Wolff’s email volume to Epstein spiked the moment Virginia Giuffre surfaced her Prince Andrew and Epstein allegations, as Wolff worked to discredit her and the journalists covering the story. “He looks like the biggest weasel and leech in the entire Epstein files now,” Blundell said. Leonard has been harassed by Wolff and Michael Cohen for the reporting. The publishing houses that kept handing Wolff book deals, both hosts said, knew exactly what they were buying.3️⃣ The White House Scraps The Records Law And Clears The Filing CabinetsThe Washington Post reported at 5 a.m. Friday that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel ruled the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional on April 1, and the next day White House Counsel David Warrington sent every Executive Office staffer a memo rewriting the rules. Mandatory became “should.” Prohibited became “whenever possible.” The 2017 version required staff to use official email; the new version suggests they do. “He’s doing something really bad right now,” Shalev said of the timing. Blundell added that the memo lets the administration “hide all the records, delete whatever they want” with no paper trail once they leave office. The post-Watergate law was written to stop exactly this. The White House just walked away from it.2️⃣ GOP and Dems split On A Maxwell Pardon And Ehud Barak’s Cousin Runs The OperationHouse Oversight Chair James Comer said yesterday his committee is split on pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for testimony — testimony that Shalev forecast will clear both Trump and Clinton. Two additional exit ramps are active: a direct pardon from Trump and a motion to vacate the charges at the Southern District of New York. Shalev’s Narativ.org reporting this morning names Daphne Barak — cousin of Ehud Barak, himself accused by Virginia Giuffre — as the operator of a four-year PAC campaign to spring Maxwell, hiring operatives to harass survivors on social media. “Half the committee facilitated the rape and the abuse and possibly the murder of hundreds, maybe thousands of children from around the world,” Blundell said. “And half of them are split.” Marjorie Taylor Greene said publicly that Trump himself ordered Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche to bury the Epstein files. Blanche, now the attorney general, ran Maxwell’s interview before her transfer to a minimum-security camp.1️⃣ Trump Sinks To 33 Percent And The Women Are GoneAP-NORC has Trump at 33 percent approval, his second-term low, and the internals show the floor caving. Women: 28 percent. “When everyone realized Nixon was done was when he hit 25 percent,” Shalev said. “And women right now are trending three points above that.” Hispanic approval 25 percent. Black 14 percent. Independents have collapsed from 60 percent to 23. Even the Republican base has softened to 68. The Iran war is the accelerant, with Brent crude at $107 and gas above $4 heading into the midterms. The White House Correspondents Dinner lands tomorrow — a staged victory lap as the numbers say the opposite. “These numbers are the real indicator of how much America hates the president of the United States,” Blundell said.A soldier bets on his own mission while Polymarket quotes odds on the Maxwell pardon, the records law goes dark, and the 33 percent president walks into a correspondents dinner built to look like a victory. History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Robin Payes, Noble Blend, Miss Myra, Jeanne Elbe, 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

5️⃣ Laura Loomer LosesA federal judge in Florida, a Clinton appointee, granted summary judgment to Bill Maher and HBO, killing Laura Loomer’s $150 million defamation suit before it reached a jury. “Summary judgment, which means the judge laughed at it,” Blundell said. The suit targeted a September 2024 Real Time bit in which Maher named Loomer as the president’s likely mistress. Her own deposition sank the case — her income went up in 2024, she still flies on Trump’s plane, she still gets into the White House, and she could not name one person whose opinion of her had changed. Witnesses testified she had told them she “gave Trump the best b*****b of his life,” and her father, Jeff Loomer, reportedly declined to rule out another involuntary psychiatric hold for her, saying he could not deny the claim. “Laura Loomer is the president’s mistress,” Shalev said. “That’s why she has access to the president. In this case, these b******s are a national security risk.”4️⃣ The New Navy Secretary Is Interesting On day 55 of the Iran war, Trump ordered the US Navy to “shoot and kill” any Iranian boats laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. In the same 24 hours, Pete Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan 13 days into the job and installed Undersecretary Hung Cao as acting. “It is stunning that in the middle of a war, this guy has been on the job for 13 days, has now been ousted because essentially he disagreed with what the president was asking him to do,” Shalev said. Cao, a Christian nationalist with a documented record of evangelical-cult rhetoric and race-based KKK jokes on The War Room, once warned that Monterey, California, was becoming a witchcraft capital. “The guy who thinks Monterey is going to become the witchcraft capital of the world is now in charge of the United States Navy,” Shalev said. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has already seized two commercial ships and left a third stranded, and Trump says there is “no time frame” on ending the war.3️⃣ Lutnick Continues Epstein Cover-Up Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testified at House Appropriations this morning. Rep. Madeleine Dean confronted him directly — “Why did you lie to the New York Post about your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?” — then laid out the Lutnick family tariff-refund scheme Rep. Jamie Raskin is now investigating. Lutnick deflected every Epstein question to his May 6 House Oversight interview, the same line he used on Sen. Chris Van Hollen in the Senate the day before. “Let the record reflect,” Dean said. “You’re dodging the question. The cover-up continues.” Dean closed by calling on him to “resign before you are fired.” Nobody on the committee asked about Tether — Cantor Fitzgerald, now run by Lutnick’s son Brandon, custodies the $132 billion in Treasuries backing the stablecoin, took a $600 million stake that Tether itself financed through a loan to the Lutnick family trust, and is now reserve custodian for USAT, the new GENIUS Act stablecoin. “Tether is a crypto company that owns Lutnick’s family fortune and owns Cantor Fitzgerald and has it rigged,” Shalev said.2️⃣ Senate OKs Ice Surge In Pre-Dawn VoteTrump reposted Michael Savage’s Newsmax segment to Truth Social — a screed calling India and China “hellholes,” attacking ACLU attorney Cecillia Wang by ethnicity, and invoking Andrew Jackson’s defiance of the Supreme Court on Cherokee removal, misattributed as “Stonewall Jackson.” “It’s the most racist thing I’ve ever read in my life that a president has ever put out,” Shalev said. The SCOTUS majority signaled on April 1 that it will strike down Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, with a ruling by end of June, and Savage’s Jackson reference is the framework: if the Court rules against him, ignore it. In the same overnight cycle, the Senate cleared S.Con.Res.33 at 3:49 AM, 50-48 party-line, setting the framework for ICE and Border Patrol funding through FY2035. “They are moving at lightning speed before the next 195 days to take control of the United States elections,” Blundell said. ICE staffing announcements are expected inside 72 hours.1️⃣ Eric Trump, Pentagon Robotics ManufacturerEric Trump went on Fox Business this morning to celebrate a $24 million Pentagon contract awarded to Foundation Industries, a robotics firm where he serves as Chief Strategic Adviser and investor. The product is Phantom 2, a humanoid robot to be deployed to Ukraine to inspect and transport weapons on the frontlines. Maria Bartiromo congratulated him on air. Combined with Donald Trump Jr.’s $620 million Pentagon loan in December and the brothers’ stakes in drone maker Powerus, rare earth magnets, and related plays, the family has now collected “about $770 million now that they’ve made from government contracts in the last 12 months,” Blundell said. Scott McFarlane’s reporting catalogs the parallel bucket list — Trump pushing to replace Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill, mint a new $250 note with his own face, rename Dulles Trump International, rebrand the Washington Metro “WMAGA,” and fund NIH research into “Trump derangement syndrome.” “He wants the world to look like his brain,” Blundell said.Loomer sued herself out of court, the Navy Secretary got purged mid-combat, the Commerce Secretary ran out the clock, the president pre-positioned defiance of the Supreme Court, and the president’s son rolled up $24 million of the Pentagon on live TV. Corrupt administration, top to bottom. History Rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Cat: Poli-Psych, LeftieProf, Noble Blend, Leah Anderson, 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

FIVESTACK just posted our biggest live Substack audience ever — 6,000 of you watched us as we were live. Thank you for spending your time with us. Come back every day! Monday -Friday at 3 PM ET5️⃣ Patel’s “Never Intoxicated” Presser — And Who Trump Hires On PurposeThe FBI Director of the United States of America stood at a DOJ podium yesterday and told a room of reporters he has “never been intoxicated on the job.” That’s the sentence. That’s what we’re doing now. Acting AG Todd Blanche stood beside him — Patel’s boss, for those keeping score — and told reporters he hadn’t read The Atlantic story he was there to dispute, but assured everyone parts of it were “blatantly false.” Reporting he hadn’t read. Blatantly false. Sure, buddy.Patel’s response to the allegations that he’s had “bouts of excessive drinking” and unexplained absences from the Bureau? A $250 million defamation lawsuit, a rant about the “fake news mafia,” and a cute line about being “an everyday American who loves his country [and] loves the sport of hockey” — that last one a reference to video of him chugging beers with the US Olympic gold medal hockey team in February. An everyday American. Running the FBI.Zev’s point cut to the bone: this is who Trump hires on purpose. Not despite the red flags — because of them. Compromised people are controllable people. Patel was put there to do two things: protect Trump and punish Trump’s enemies. Everything else — the Atlantic reporting, the 700 agents reassigned, the unexplained absences, Jamie Raskin launching a House investigation today and demanding Patel submit to an alcohol test under penalty of perjury — is noise around the core function.As I said on the show: “He’s doing the job he was hired to do. The drinking is the side quest. The Bureau being hollowed out is the main quest.”4️⃣ Lutnick Calls Canada “Insulting.” Shaheen Tells Him Why.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick walked into a Senate Appropriations hearing today to defend the 2027 budget and instead got handed his ass by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Last Friday at a Semafor event, Lutnick’s assessment of Canada’s trade negotiating strategy was, and I quote, “They suck.” Today he doubled down, calling it “outrageous” and “insulting and disrespectful to America” that Canadian provinces won’t stock American spirits on their liquor shelves.Howard. Buddy. My guy. You want to know why they won’t stock your bourbon?Shaheen laid it out plainly: Canadian tourism to New Hampshire is down 30% year-over-year. Tourism is the second-largest industry in her state — 70,000 jobs. Small businesses on both sides of the border are cratering. Her question, which Lutnick could not answer: “How does insulting our closest ally and neighbor help the businesses in my state of New Hampshire, and states all across this country, who are hurting because of the loss of Canadian business and tourism?”Lutnick’s response was to lecture her about how Canada “leans on” the $30 trillion US economy, as if that was the gotcha. Shaheen came back with the line of the day: “When we have allies and partners, we should try and work with them — not insult them.”As a Canadian, let me translate for Howard: we’re not buying your liquor, we’re not visiting your states, we’re not signing your deals, and we’re not going to. You called our Prime Minister a governor. You called our country the 51st state. You tariffed us for fun. We have long memories and short tempers and we are done. The Carney government said today they’re in no rush. Why would they be? Every day Lutnick opens his mouth, Canada’s leverage goes up.3️⃣ MTG: Trump Personally Told Bondi To Bury The Epstein FilesMarjorie Taylor Greene went on the Shannon Joy Show yesterday and said the quiet part on a megaphone: Donald Trump “flat out” told then–Attorney General Pam Bondi, “Do not release the Epstein files.”Per Greene, Trump was “blocking everybody” — Bondi at DOJ, Speaker Mike Johnson in the House, Majority Leader John Thune in the Senate. His stated reason, in Greene’s telling of their final conversation before he branded her a traitor and she resigned from Congress: “My friends will get hurt. People you know, Marjorie. People at Mar-a-Lago.”Let me say that part again, slowly. The President of the United States told his Attorney General to suppress federal evidence in a child sex trafficking investigation because his friends at his private club might get hurt.Greene is not a credible narrator on most days. On this one, the corroboration is doing the work. She said essentially the same thing to The New York Times in December. Bondi reportedly told Trump in May that his name is “all over the files.” The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Bondi for a deposition on the redactions and the 53 pages of FBI interviews NPR confirmed were scrubbed — she didn’t comply, claiming the subpoena doesn’t apply because she’s no longer AG. And the “client list” Bondi vowed to release in February 2025? Suddenly didn’t exist by July.Zev connected it to a pattern we’ve tracked for two years: the Epstein story is not a sex scandal. It’s a compromise operation. Seventeen or eighteen countries now have open Epstein investigations. London is dismantling the network in real time. The question is no longer what was on Epstein’s island. It’s who got put where because of what was on Epstein’s island — and whether the sitting President of the United States is one of them.2️⃣ Mask Off — China Is Arming Iran. The Touska Is The Proof.On Sunday, the USS Spruance fired on and boarded the Iranian-flagged container ship MV Touska in the Gulf of Oman as it tried to run the US naval blockade into Bandar Abbas. Six hours of warnings ignored. Rounds into the engine room to disable the propulsion. Marines on deck. The ship is part of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines — IRISL — which the US sanctioned in 2019 as “the preferred shipping line for Iranian proliferators.”Here’s the part that matters. The Touska‘s last stops before Iran: Gaolan port in Zhuhai, China, and Taicang port north of Shanghai, per satellite analysis. Gaolan is known — per The Washington Post — for shipping sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for solid rocket fuel that Iran needs to rebuild its missile program. US security sources say the cargo is “dual-use”: metals, pipes, electronic components consistent with ballistic missile manufacturing. Nikki Haley — and I cannot believe I am about to favorably cite Nikki Haley — said it on X: the ship “was headed from China to Iran and is linked to chemical shipments for missiles.”This is not speculation anymore. This is a boat. With a captain. Loaded in a Chinese port. Pointed at Iran. Full of missile-grade chemicals. In the middle of a ceasefire the United States is trying to negotiate.China’s response: “concern” over the “forcible interception” and a demand that everyone honor the ceasefire. Last week they denied arming Iran and threatened “countermeasures” if Trump imposed a 50% tariff over it. Today the Touska is sitting in US custody like a subpoena with an anchor.The mask is off. China is the quartermaster. The war Trump says he won is being resupplied in real time by the country he’s flying to meet with next month.1️⃣ Trump Loses Iran. Ceasefire Goes Indefinite. London Meets Without Him.And here it is. The top story. The one that reframes everything below it.Trump announced yesterday afternoon — on Truth Social, of course — that he’s extending the Iran ceasefire indefinitely. No end date. No deadline. Until talks “are concluded, one way or the other.” This from the man who said four days ago an extension was “highly unlikely.”What actually happened: the talks collapsed. Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Islamabad for a second round of negotiations — with Witkoff and Kushner in tow, the same geniuses who brought you the Gaza disaster — was scrapped. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said there were no negotiations to attend. Tehran wants the naval blockade of Hormuz lifted before they’ll even sit down. Trump refuses. Khamenei hasn’t signed off on anything. The Iranian government, per Trump himself, is “seriously fractured.” He’s not wrong. But neither is he winning.Meanwhile, in London and Paris, the grown-ups are meeting. Forty countries on a UK-chaired call earlier this month — France, Germany, Canada, UAE, India — planning a neutral multinational mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The United States was not invited. France and Britain have explicitly framed the initiative as separate from Washington’s blockade policy. Macron and Starmer co-chaired. Merz said Germany would contribute mine-clearing. Meloni showed up in person.And — the part that should end careers if journalism still existed — the UK is set to announce legislation next month moving Britain closer to the European Union, explicitly because the Iran war has soured the “special relationship” with the United States. The war Trump started. The ceasefire he can’t close. The allies he insulted. The strait he can’t reopen. London is quietly de-coupling from Washington and re-coupling to Brussels, and the American press is covering Kash Patel’s bar tab.On Chinese social media, they’re already calling Beijing the real winner of the Iran war. A Weibo user’s line of the week: the White House’s “credit score” wouldn’t be enough “to unlock a shared bike.”The ThroughlineFive stories. One spine.Trump hires broken people on purpose (Patel). He insults the allies who’d bail him out (Canada). He protects the network that compromised him (Epstein). The adversary arming the enemy he’s “at war” with is the same country he’s flying to see next month (China/Touska). And while he loses the war, the allies he mocked are quietly building the post-American order without him (London).This is not five stories. This is one story told five ways. And the story is: the American presidency is being run by a compromised man, staffed by compromised people, losing a war to a coalition of compromised states, while functional democracies quietly step around him.Zev’s closing line on the show: “The adults are meeting in London. The drunks are at the podium in Washington. Pick a side.”Thank you Leah Anderson, Micheal Scott, Sandra Tuttle, Kim G, 🇨🇦 Natalie Woodn’t 🇨🇦, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.5️⃣ Vance Off The Plane, China On The BoardVice President JD Vance didn’t even bother traveling Islamabad for talks on Iran, trump claimed it was for security concerns but no Iranian delegation had left for Pakistan. On CNBC’s Squawk Box, Trump described intercepting an Iranian vessel carrying “things on it, which wasn’t very nice,” calling the cargo “a gift from China, perhaps” — the first time a sitting U.S. president has described Beijing rearming Tehran’s air defenses. Former Iranian negotiator Mohammad Marandi posted a public warning telling Iranians to leave the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait immediately, and said ships near the Strait of Hormuz should prepare to abandon. A direct threat to US vessels who have been blockading Iranian ports. Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran has “new cards on the battlefield,” language Blundell read as confirmation of the Chinese systems. A Daily Mirror report said Trump asked Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine for a full ground invasion of Iran and the nuclear codes over the weekend, and that Caine walked out of the meeting. The ceasefire ends tomorrow night.4️⃣ Ukraines Counter-Offensive Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Tuesday that the Druzhba pipeline, the Soviet-era crude artery Ukrainian drones knocked offline in January, is repaired and ready to resume. The restart unlocks the €90 billion EU loan that Budapest had been blocking and releases the next Russia sanctions package Hungary had vetoed. Overnight, Special Operations Centre Alpha of the Security Service of Ukraine hit the Samara line dispatch station — the mixing point where high- and low-sulfur crude becomes the Urals export blend — cutting Russian production by as much as 40 percent. In the same window, Peter Magyar won Hungary’s election on a platform of forcing Viktor Orbán out and redistributing Orbán’s captured media licenses. Ukraine now runs 85 percent self-sufficient on munitions and air defense and has signed production deals with the same Gulf states that stopped buying drones from the Trump crime family. Two levers on one pipeline of money: Washington squeezes Iran’s barrels off the market and lifts Russia’s ledger; Kyiv cuts the ledger at Samara and drops Budapest’s veto.3️⃣ Palantir Puts It In WritingPalantir Technologies posted a 22-point manifesto to X over the weekend — billed as a summary of CEO Alex Karp’s 2025 book The Technological Republic, co-authored with head of corporate and legal affairs Nicholas Zamiska. The planks include “hard power in this century will be built on software,” a call for universal national service and an end to the all-volunteer force, a claim that “the question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” a line that “the post-war neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone,” and the assertion that “some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain dysfunctional and regressive.” Blundell’s piece, which went viral within hours of publication, called Palantir the first private corporation in recorded history to fuse four powers civilizations had kept apart: the surveillance apparatus of the state, the targeting engine of the military, the ideological machinery that decides what information travels, and the patronage of Jeffrey Epstein — who put $40 million into the company and corresponded with Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Elon Musk for five years after his conviction. Blundell called it “the digital East India Trading Company,” the private corporate army that ran sovereign states for 150 years until the Crown absorbed it into the Royal Navy. The current Vice President is funded by Thiel; the man behind the manifesto is Karp.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.2️⃣ The Epstein Test Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking Committee he would not be “a sock puppet” and vowed independence from the White House. Elizabeth Warren raised Warsh’s pre-disclosure holdings in Jeffrey Epstein-era financial vehicles during the hearing. Mark Carney endorsed the nomination on the basis of having worked with Warsh years earlier. Blundell’s read on air: Warsh may be a technocrat of some narrow competence, but any confirmed business with Epstein after the 2008 conviction is a single disqualifier Warsh has not yet answered. “Would he be a puppet? No one knows,” Blundell said. “But if he did any business with Jeffrey Epstein post-conviction, he should be kept as far away from America’s leading financial regulatory body as humanly possible.” Republican Senator Thom Tillis has a separate hold on the nomination tied to the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into Jerome Powell. Republicans hold a 12–10 margin in committee; one Republican no-vote ends the nomination.1️⃣ Hegseth Kills The Flu Shot Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that the United States military will no longer require any service member to take the flu vaccine — effective immediately, voluntary for all active duty, reserve, and Department of Defense civilians. Hegseth framed the reversal in religious terms: “Your body, your faith, and your convictions are not negotiable,” and told the force that “that era of betrayal is over.” The Department of Defense has required the flu vaccine for 77 years, since the late 1940s. Blundell’s on-air read: the order is not a health policy — it is a loyalty transaction aimed at the 19 to 20 percent of service members who swear evangelical allegiance alongside their oath to the Constitution. “Pete and Donnie are trying to carve away a certain group by giving them what they want,” Blundell said. “I did this for you. You need to do something for me when the time comes.” Context: the same weekend, Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine refused Trump’s request for the nuclear codes and walked out of a meeting about a 200,000-soldier ground invasion of Iran. Hegseth is buying a cohort because Caine is not.Washington’s oil blockade lifts Russia’s ledger while the Vice President is funded by the company writing the next regime’s playbook; the same week, the Secretary of Defense trades a 77-year military vaccine mandate for a loyalty cohort while the Joint Chiefs chair walks out on a ground-invasion briefing. The pieces are moving in the same direction. The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, Andy Collen, Noble Blend, Skutt Hope, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ The Strait of ‘Iran’, Open but ChainedIranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared the Strait of Hormuz “completely open” on Friday morning. President Trump quote-posted “THANK YOU!” in all caps and then, in a second Truth Social post the same morning, confirmed the U.S. naval blockade would remain in force “until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100 percent complete.” “It’s easy to be cynical when you hear pronouncements of victory,” MeidasTouch Chief Washington Correspondent Scott MacFarlane said on The Fivestack, noting the conspicuous Republican silence and Ann Coulter’s reaction: “yay, the strait that was open before we began bombing is open again. Everybody pretend this is a huge victory for Trump, so he’ll end this catastrophe.” Host Zev Shalev pointed out that the ceasefire depends on Hezbollah, which is not a party to the agreement, and on a prospective Axios-reported deal unfreezing $20 billion in Iranian funds in exchange for uranium. “It sounds a lot like the Obama deal,” Shalev said. Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, declining to mention the president by name, told reporters she had “record food pantry needs right here, right now, this week” in her state.4️⃣ Mejia Wins New Jersey in a BlowoutProgressive Democrat Analilia Mejia, backed by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, won the special election to fill Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill’s House seat, defeating Republican Joe Hathaway by a wide margin. “That suburban New Jersey district is not blue-blue,” MacFarlane said. “Democrats fought like hell to win that seat in 2018. They fought like hell to preserve it in ‘20, ‘22, and ‘24. If that’s uninteresting, if that’s not contested in a serious way, it’s a barometer of where things are headed.” Trump has predicted a Republican landslide in November; thirty-six House Republicans have already announced they will not seek reelection — a record. Shalev noted that the administration’s urgency on Iran is reading less like foreign policy and more like campaign management.3️⃣ The Blanche CoupActing Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, is converting the Department of Justice into a one-man enforcement arm, Shalev said. Blanche this week told his department to “move on” from the Epstein files while 2.5 million documents remain sealed. His office moved to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of a dozen Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. And Blanche is personally overseeing an expanding criminal inquiry into former CIA Director John Brennan, with six or more witnesses queued. U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, MacFarlane reported, separately filed a motion Friday seeking to have the Justice Department refund restitution fines paid by a pair of January 6 defendants — money that had been earmarked for the victims’ fund covering the 140 police officers injured that day. “That symbol means something,” MacFarlane said. “We are still auditioning for Trump’s approval.”2️⃣ Oil Prices and the Limits of the Victory LapCrude prices tumbled on Araghchi’s announcement — WTI down roughly 12 percent, Brent down 10.5 percent — but gasoline prices at the pump are unlikely to deliver relief before November, and Republican campaign strategists know it. “Gas prices go up by an elevator,” MacFarlane quoted his former CBS colleague Jill Schlesinger. “They go down by a slow spirally staircase.” At a Thursday press opportunity, Trump, asked how much longer Americans would pay high gas prices, replied, “Well, they’re not very high.” “He doesn’t seem to have a real grasp on what his economy is doing to the everyday person,” Shalev said. MacFarlane’s harder point: “Trump’s running the Biden playbook. Which failed. It doesn’t work.” The GOP’s midterm plan — run hard on the Trump tax cuts this spring — has been swamped by pump prices and grocery receipts.1️⃣ Warning: The January 6 Blueprint Is Back, from Inside the White HouseFormer Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who served as senior technical advisor to the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack, joined the show to walk through his newly published analysis tying Trump’s March 31, 2026 voting executive order to the 2020 playbook drafted at South Carolina’s Tomotley Plantation. “Tomotley Plantation was bought by Lin Wood for about $7.9 million,” Riggleman said. “Tomotley is where they gathered everybody right after the election, right after November 3rd, to come up with a plan to use executive orders and legal frameworks to steal the election.” The 2026 executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile a federal Citizenship List, gives the Postmaster General uniform rule-making authority over mail ballots, and provides criminal prosecution authority over state and local election officials who do not comply. “Jamie Raskin likes to say the biggest indicator, the biggest symptom of a forthcoming coup is a recently attempted coup,” MacFarlane said. Riggleman’s alarm is that the same network — Flynn, Powell, Byrne, Waldron — has simply moved from a hotel conference room to inside the White House, with more sophisticated tactics and no Pat Cipollone left to block them. “When you pardon people who tried to overturn an election, you really have eliminated the moral hazard and the safety net,” MacFarlane said. Seditious conspiracy, he reminded viewers, “means you conspire to overturn the government or democracy or an election. It’s hard to think of a more fundamentally pernicious thing to do.” The Department of Justice is now trying to vacate those convictions.The Iran story is the distraction. The Blanche story is the coup. The big story rises in the East — and the next one starts at the ballot box. History rhymes. That’s how we know sooner.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Jim Bourg, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Robin Payes, Iulia Huiu, LeftieProf, and many others for tuning into my live video with Scott MacFarlane! 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

Trump stepped onto the White House lawn on his way to Vegas today and said something that may actually be true: Iran is close to agreeing to no nuclear weapons — not for 20 years, not for 30, but permanently. He also confirmed the second aircraft carrier was sent “in case we don’t make a deal” and said if they do, “it’ll be leaving very soon.”We’ve heard “close to a deal” before. But this time was different. The Lebanon-Israel 10-day ceasefire is confirmed. Netanyahu and Lebanese President Aoun spoke directly for the first time in 34 years. A photo op is expected at the White House this week. Pakistan’s mediation is holding. The S&P hit a record high. Something is moving — even if we’ve been fooled before.I said you’d have to give him at least some credit if he gets it done. The problem is the price. “He’s able to solve these things by sacrificing all the things America used to stand for,” Lawrence said. “Liberty, equality, justice, diversity. He says, well, I’ll get rid of all of that and then I can solve the wars. Of course you can — because then you’re not in disagreement with anybody.”On Trump’s press gaggle:The inflation numbers he was crowing about this morning? The ones he called “incredible”? The IEA said this morning Europe has six weeks of jet fuel left. Gas is $4.14 nationally. Real wages are down. The S&P is pricing in a peace deal that hasn’t been signed. Dana called it perfectly: “I only hear diarrhea of the mouth. None of this is really true or happening.”Trump claimed he has now “solved 10 wars.” He was at 8 this morning. He added two in an hour on his way to the airport.On the Pope:Trump, Vance, and Mike Johnson are all attacking Pope Leo XIV now — four consecutive days. Leo was in Bamenda, Cameroon today calling the world “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” who spend billions on killing. Giorgia Meloni — Trump’s closest European ally — defended the Pope publicly. Trump attacked her too. The Archbishop of Canterbury stood with Leo. Bishop Barron, on Trump’s own Religious Liberty Commission, called the attacks “entirely inappropriate.” WaPo’s Karen Tumulty: evangelical leaders who stayed silent through two terms are starting to speak.As Lawrence said: “Politics is addition. He keeps subtracting.”On Swalwell:This show went deep on Swalwell today — deeper than most. Lawrence and Dana landed somewhere important: it’s harder when it’s our side. “I wanted him to be a good guy,” Lawrence said. “I thought there’s got to be one good guy who could lead the Democratic Party.” Dana: “There is a grief with that. You don’t want to believe it.”The discussion went to something bigger — the predator class, the pattern of men at the highest levels of power choosing abuse, and the asymmetry of accountability between parties. “If you’re going to be that kind of guy, you’ve got to be a Republican,” Dana said. “Because it’s only the Democrats who are busy policing themselves.”Lawrence’s answer to that was the one worth sitting with: “If there is no party actually advocating for justice and the rights of women — we need to be better. If we’re not, the Democratic Party deserves to die and we need to build another one that actually is.”The Senate blocked war powers for the fourth time — 47-52. The NYT says Republicans are privately anxious. The IEA says six weeks. The ceasefire expires in five days. The election EO is quietly already in effect — 75 career election officials replaced, 10 of whom worked to overturn 2020. Check your voter registration. Now.Dean Blundell returns next week. And next week on Narativ — the most explosive investigation we have ever published. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.Follow Lawrence Winerman and Dana Dubois: Daily Whatever ShowSubscribe to Narativ: Narativ.orgThank you NeuroDivergent Hodgepodge, Robin Payes, Fran, Leah Anderson, ShālahBPookie - TheRebelCrone, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman! 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

Pakistan’s army chief was in Tehran as we went to air today. The ceasefire expires April 21. Three American aircraft carriers are closing in. The diplomacy and the military buildup are happening simultaneously — and as Olga put it on today’s show, it feels exactly like a trap.“The Americans are piling all their resources into a part of the world where you can’t really escape,” she said. “It’s a tiny sliver of water they have to protect. Iran has two routes they can block — 20% of global goods through Hormuz, another 15-20% through the Red Sea with the Houthis. We’re on a timeline. Iran is not.”Here’s what we covered today.BREAKING — PAKISTAN IN TEHRANField Marshal Syed Asim Munir landed in Tehran within the hour before we went live, meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister in an emergency bid to extend the ceasefire. Pakistan’s PM Sharif is simultaneously in Saudi Arabia, heading to Turkey and Qatar. The US has not formally agreed to extend the ceasefire. The White House says it “feels good about a deal.” Treasury Secretary Bessent — who called the Strait of Hormuz “the Straits of Vermouth” at his press briefing — promised gas with a three in front of it by summer. The S&P 500 hit a new high. Markets are betting on a deal. Six days left on the clock.5. CONGRESS CRACKS, TEXAS RISESEric Swalwell is gone. Ruben Gallego called him a predator who led a double life — then gave a press conference that raised more questions than it answered. James Talarico, 36, former public school teacher, just announced $27 million raised in Q1 — 98% small dollar, all 50 states, polling within three points of both Cornyn and Paxton. Democrats haven’t won statewide in Texas since 1994. The party is losing California and finding its future in Texas on the same afternoon. The Senate war powers vote happens this week.4. SEBASTIAN GORKA WANTS COUNTERTERRORISMJoe Kent resigned as NCTC director in March, on the record, rejecting Trump’s claim that Iran posed an imminent threat. Now Sebastian Gorka — who called the Iran war “Operation Epic Fury” and said “God bless our warfighters” — wants the job. Olga, who investigated Gorka in 2015, confirmed on air that he was photographed with the Order of Vitéz, a Hungarian group with Nazi ties. “We went from a white nationalist to literally a Nazi,” she said. The position requires Senate confirmation. The same Senate voting on war powers this week.3. POPE LEO VS. TRUMP, DAY 4Pope Leo landed in Cameroon. English-speaking separatists declared a three-day ceasefire in his honor. Trump attacked him for the fourth consecutive day. Conservative Catholic bishops on Trump’s own Religious Liberty Commission are now publicly rebuking him. “Who attacks the Pope?” Olga asked. “You’d have to have screws loose.” Trump also went after Italian Prime Minister Meloni — a former ally — for defending the Pope. Politics is about addition. He keeps subtracting.2. FIVE IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES AGAINST HEGSETHHouse Democrats filed five articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth today — abuse of power, war crimes, serious misconduct. They won’t pass. That’s not the point. “Trump is going to use him as a scapegoat,” Olga said. “The worse things get in Iran, the more he’s going to pile it on Hegseth.” The double-tap strike in the Caribbean. The Signal chat. The disclosure of classified information while Whitcoff’s phone was in Moscow. It’s all being documented now. Every Republican vote to protect him is a vote Democrats run against in November.THREE CARRIERS, THE RED SEA, AND A TRAPThe USS George H.W. Bush is rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Three carriers in theater by ceasefire expiry. Iran this morning threatened to shut all trade in the Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea. The Houthis have done it before. Nine Iranian vessels have turned back. Six German ships are stranded in the Gulf. Treasury sent warning letters to two Chinese banks. Trump told Fox Business the war is “very close to being over.” He has said this repeatedly.“He was sold a war he didn’t understand,” Olga said. “He thought he’d come in, have Israel assassinate the Ayatollah, and that’s it. This is an ideological regime. They will die before submitting to the West. And Iran knows Trump has already blinked — he’s worried about gas prices, the economy. He wants out. They have the upper hand and they know it.”THE BIGGER PICTUREOlga closed with something worth sitting with. China and Russia provided satellite targeting data on US and Israeli positions. Russia provided 50+ Israeli targets to Iran. North Korean troops rotated through Ukraine. The axis is coordinating. Trump called Xi, who said China wasn’t sending MANPADs to Iran. “What is the likelihood that Xi would tell him — yeah, we’re sending MANPADs to the Iranians?” Olga asked. “He’s going to say of course not. And Trump takes his word for it.”Meanwhile Orbán — the linchpin between the Kremlin’s operations, the MAGA movement, the AFD, France’s National Front, the Heritage Foundation — lost power in Hungary this week. “They’re on the Titanic,” Olga said. “We just can’t let up.”Dean Blundell returns next week. Two special guest co-hosts tomorrow — details coming.Follow Olga Lautman: OlgaLautman.Substack.comSubscribe to Narativ at Narativ.orgThank you Lev Parnas, Beth Cruz, Ang Traders, ESBC NFL And SportsBetting, Grace Lovelace, 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

There’s a pattern hiding in plain sight. Each story today reads like a separate news cycle. A military standoff in the Persian Gulf. An election office captured by loyalists. A congressman accused of rape. A new pope who refuses to blink. A Canadian prime minister reshaping the Western alliance. But pull back and look at all five at once, and what you’re watching is a single crisis playing out across five fronts simultaneously — the story of a government that has isolated itself from the world, captured its own institutions, and is now confronting the consequences.Zev Shalev and former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman broke it all down on today’s FIVESTACK. Here’s what they found.🚨 BREAKING: China Defies the BlockadeThe numbers tell the story before anything else does. Before the Iran war began, more than 120 ships per day were moving through the Strait of Hormuz. In the past 48 hours: 28 total.That is what a blockade looks like — until a sanctioned Chinese tanker pushed through it today anyway.China has warned it will keep the Strait open. And Denver Riggleman, who spent years in NSA intelligence, isn’t treating this as posturing. He flagged that China may be arming Iran with FN-6 MANPADs — infrared, shoulder-fired missiles. The reason that matters: radar warning systems don’t detect them.“That’s how you shoot down jets,” Riggleman said.Meanwhile, the strategic picture is darkening for Washington. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is in Beijing. Saudi Arabia is pressing Trump to stand down. The coalition Trump needed to make the blockade stick is not there — because Trump spent years systematically alienating the people who might have been in it.“Xi and Putin don’t like him anymore,” Riggleman said. “He’s isolated who he wanted to be our new allies.”Zev Shalev brought it back to the money — as he always does, because the money is always the thread. Trump’s net worth went from functionally broke to $6.5 billion, plus $10 billion in crypto. There’s the “Board of Peace” — $1 billion per country entry fee, nine or more countries in, $1.25 billion of USAID funds funneled into it, with contracts flowing back to Trump-linked companies. Eric Trump invested in Israeli drone company Extend eleven days before the Iran war started. There’s a $750 million contract vehicle, and a $20 billion Andurel contract awarded in March.Zev’s framing: “A criminal organization inserting itself into every global monetization process.”The blockade isn’t just a military story. It’s the business model.5. The Swalwell AccuserA woman held a live press conference in Beverly Hills today with attorney Lisa Bloom. She is a model and software entrepreneur. She says she met Eric Swalwell in 2018, that she knew his wife was pregnant, and that he offered to help her software company make connections.On their third encounter, she says she believes he drugged her drink. She arrived at his hotel room incapacitated. She says he raped her, and that he choked her until she lost consciousness.“I thought I died,” she told the press conference.Denver Riggleman had history with Swalwell — he went after him hard over the Fang Fang Chinese intelligence story, and Swalwell reached out to him directly during that period. Riggleman was careful about the legal dimensions of today’s accusation, but he didn’t hedge on the pattern.“Past performance is indicative of future performance,” he said.Zev was blunter: “Of all the politicians you would have hoped would have turned out to be a decent guy, he ain’t.”For the record: Swalwell has not been charged. But the press conference was on the record, with counsel present, and the specificity of the allegations was not vague.4. ProPublica: Trump Gutted Every Election SafeguardProPublica published the receipts today. Seventy-five career election integrity officials are gone. They were replaced by twenty-four loyalists. Ten of those twenty-four actively worked to overturn the 2020 election results.Running point on “election integrity” for the federal government is now Heather Honey. Zev’s assessment: “She made this s**t up. Everything she said was completely false.” She was present at Michael Flynn’s February summit where activists pressured Trump to declare a national emergency to seize control of the midterm elections.Denver Riggleman, who has tracked election interference architecture since January 6th, walked through what’s coming next: Executive Order 14248, being drafted by the same Sidney Powell, Cleta Mitchell, and Patrick Byrne network that tried to overturn 2020. The draft order would nationalize elections, authorize the seizure of voting machines, and mobilize ICE in election contexts.Riggleman pushed back against the simple version of the “steal” narrative, but his nuance made the danger more precise, not less:“You can’t steal 50 states. But when you’re talking about specific swing districts — 70 to 80 districts that really matter, down to one county — that’s where you have trouble.”Why is Trump doing this now? Riggleman had a direct answer: “He’s doing this to stop the investigations that are going to come out of the House if Democrats take over — the impeachment process. He knows how much corruption, how much grifting is going on.”The conclusion isn’t pessimistic, but it is blunt: “If it’s too big to rig, there has to be an overwhelming mobilization of voters in 2026.”3. Pope Leo XIV Doesn’t FlinchTrump attacked Leo XIV on Truth Social. Called him “WEAK on Crime.” Claimed credit for his election. Then posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, deleted it, and told people it was “me as a doctor.”Leo’s response: “I have no fear of the Trump administration.”Today, Leo sent a formal letter warning of “majoritarian tyranny.”Denver Riggleman has watched the Trump movement from the inside — he has family members who believe Trump is “the imperfect vessel executing spiritual warfare.” He watches the Jesus meme and reads something important in it: “I think he believes now what’s being said about him. He’s drank a lot of his own bathwater. The Jesus meme is a tipping point.”Zev saw the strategic self-destruction clearly: “He’s giving away the mantle of moral authority to the Pope. Saying to Pope Leo, yeah, you go tell everyone what’s right and wrong, I’m just going to keep being the criminal.”And for those worried about Leo’s durability in this fight: “The papacy survived Attila, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler. It will survive Truth Social.”2. Carney Wins the Majority. Canada Builds What America Abandoned.Mark Carney secured a parliamentary majority through Monday’s by-elections — 174 of 343 seats. The man who ran explicitly on “Canada is not for sale” now has a mandate.Zev said what used to be unthinkable to say on an American broadcast: Canada could become “an adversary, a competitor to the United States. I can’t even believe we’re saying those words.”Riggleman was specific about what’s been lost: “Canada could be the leader as a trusted partner of NATO, because right now America is not trusted by any country in the world.”On Friday, Starmer and Macron host a Paris summit — forty nations. The description: basically doing NATO without the United States, against the United States.Riggleman’s verdict on where MAGA’s isolationist project has landed: “MAGA wanted a nationalistic, isolated government. And they got all they voted for.”On JD Vance specifically, Riggleman — a military veteran — did not mince words: “A Lima Delta. He doesn’t have the moral compass to be a true American on the world stage. He’s a joke. He’s an embarrassment.”1. The Blockade (The Full Picture)Everything in today’s show runs back through the blockade — the Iran war, the drone contracts, the Board of Peace grift, China’s defiance, Lavrov in Beijing, Saudi Arabia pressing Trump to stand down.Zev’s closing read: “Donald Trump is about as isolated and alone in the world” as the blockade cracks around him.Denver Riggleman, who has spent years learning to follow money through intelligence networks, stripped it to its core: “The main objective of the Trump family is to make money. The longer he can draw this out, the more money they pour into their pockets.”The blockade isn’t holding. But that might not be the point. For the people profiting from the conflict, every day it continues is a revenue event.The PatternStep back. Look at all five stories at once.A military blockade the world refuses to honor. A Congress in active ethical collapse. An election apparatus being captured in broad daylight, piece by piece, loyalist by loyalist. A pope who became the moral authority Trump created by attacking him. And Canada, with Europe, quietly building the new Western alliance — without Washington at the table.These are not separate news cycles. They are one story about a government that has systematically dismantled every check that might have stopped it, alienated every ally that might have supported it, and is now discovering that the world doesn’t actually need its permission to keep moving.The blockade is the metaphor. And it’s cracking.THE FIVESTACK airs weekdays on Narativ. SUBSCRIBE TO Denver Riggleman, former U.S. Congressman (R-VA) and former NSA intelligence officer.Thank you Lev Parnas, Natasha K., Robin Payes, Lucia Romano, MBA, Suzanne Sky, and many others for tuning into my live video with Denver Riggleman! 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

Wajahat Ali of The Left Hook is sitting in for Dean Blundell, who’s away. Before the countdown, Zev and Waj tore into Donald Trump’s escalating holy war with Pope Leo — the blasphemous AI image of Trump as a healing Christ-figure, his tarmac slam calling the first American Pope “a very liberal person” who “likes crime,” and his press conference insistence that the image was just “me as a doctor.” As Waj put it, “this man is the most blasphemous, hedonistic vulgarian we’ve seen in a long time.” The broader picture: allies are walking away. Chrystia Freeland told MSNBC that America is “behaving in ways that are very hard for us to understand.” Canadian tourism to the U.S. is down 35%. Denmark is hardening around Greenland. NATO refused to help force open the Strait of Hormuz. “If this mother-effer did nothing except play golf for the past year and a half,” Waj said, “America would be better off.”5️⃣ Swalwell’s Campaign Collapses in 48 HoursCalifornia Congressman Eric Swalwell, 45, was the frontrunner to replace Gavin Newsom until Friday, when the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN published sexual misconduct allegations from four women, including a former staffer. By Sunday night his campaign was suspended. “Even milk from Saturday is more fresh than Eric Swalwell,” Waj said. “If someone suspends their campaign, that means there’s a there there.” The bigger question is whether he stays in Congress. Zev noted the obvious hypocrisy: “It’s very difficult to explain how you can keep him in office when you’re also asking for complete transparency on Epstein. Those two things can’t coexist.” Waj connected it to the larger pattern — Weinstein, Diddy, the Epstein class, Madison Cawthorn getting axed the moment he mentioned Republican orgies. “You scratch my back, I scratch your back, you hide my scandal, I’ll hide your scandal.” The demand: a culling.4️⃣ Bondi Refuses Epstein Subpoena in Open Cover-UpFormer Attorney General Pam Bondi was subpoenaed to testify tomorrow before the House Oversight Committee on the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files. She won’t show. The DOJ says she doesn’t have to because she’s a private citizen now — a dodge Zev called “absolute ridiculous.” Former presidents testify. Former First Ladies testify. Former Secretaries of State testify. “Now we’re saying a former Attorney General somehow doesn’t have to, if they’re involved in the crime that is the cover-up?” Waj called it bigger than Watergate: “This Epstein cover-up is the biggest political cover-up I’ve seen because it spans years, multiple players, foreign countries, banks, so many powerful people. And the person mentioned the most in the Epstein files is Donald Trump.” Zev and Waj also dug into Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez reporting on Zorro Ranch, and circled back to Melania’s unprompted six-minute podium denial — the Barbra Streisand effect in real time.3️⃣ Orban Falls in Historic Hungarian LandslideSunday in Budapest, 16-year authoritarian Viktor Orban — Steve Bannon’s original “Trump before Trump” — was voted out in the biggest democratic rebuke of the global far-right in years. Peter Magyar’s center-right Tisza party took 138 of 199 parliamentary seats, a constitutional-majority wipeout. JD Vance was sent to rally for Orban. Netanyahu’s son was sent. Russia meddled. None of it worked. “Fascism, Orban, Netanyahu, MAGA, Trump, and strongmen are not inevitable,” Waj said. The winning message wasn’t identity politics — it was anti-oligarchy, anti-corruption, anti-brogarchy. Zev flagged the precursor signal for November: Magyar came out of nowhere in two years, and American voters are sick of the same thing. “The Epstein story is the Rosetta Stone that shows people it’s a big international cabal of powerful wealthy men raping girls and getting richer.”2️⃣ Turkey Charges Netanyahu With Genocide — 4,596 YearsIstanbul prosecutors formally charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 34 senior Israeli officials with genocide and crimes against humanity over the October 2025 interception of the Sumud Gaza aid flotilla — the one carrying Greta Thunberg. The indictment could carry 4,596 years in prison. Waj pointed out what mainstream coverage missed: the week before Israel’s illegal war with Trump kicked off, former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett openly said “Erdogan’s next,” and Ben-Gvir doubled down. “So Erdogan’s like, all right, mother-effers, this is my retort.” The Turkish military is not a paper threat — effective in Libya, effective in Syria. “You don’t want to mess around with Turkey, folks.”1️⃣ U.S. Navy Blockades Iran as Allies Refuse to JoinAt 10 a.m. Eastern this morning, the U.S. Navy began enforcing a full maritime blockade of all Iranian ports at the Strait of Hormuz — one of the most consequential military actions in the Middle East in decades. The trigger: failed peace talks in Istanbul, handled again by JD Vance. Iran called the bluff. NATO refused to join. The allies said no. “If the world’s most powerful superpower cannot force Iran to open up the Strait through threats of force, that makes us look weak,” Waj said. “If Iran is not flinching to our threats, that makes us look weak. And the fact that our allies are not coming to our aid — it makes us look weak and unreliable.” Enter China. Zev’s closing read: Netanyahu needs a forever war to stay out of jail, Trump needs a forever distraction to stay out of the Epstein files, and the world is quietly choosing a different superpower to align with.A Jewish journalist and a Pakistani-American Muslim lawyer, teaming up against fascism, corruption, and rapists — on a Monday afternoon in April 2026.SUBSCRIBE TO WAJ AT THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali.TOMORROW: FORMER CONGRESSMAN Denver Riggleman IS IN FOR DEANThanks to all our guest hosts this week pitching in this week. Please subscribe and follow them. The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Cat: Poli-Psych, Caro Henry, "Sushi"(Jen) of MIND HAVEN, Robin Payes, and many others for tuning into my live video with THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali! 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

DEAN IS OUT THIS WEEK5️⃣ Melania’s Epstein Press Conference BackfiresIn an unprecedented move, First Lady Melania Trump held a surprise press conference in front of the White House press corps to deny any knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, any relationship with Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, and any involvement in criminal activity. The denial came just hours after Brazilian former model Amanda Ungaro — who was brought into Epstein’s orbit at age 16 by modeling agent Paolo Zampoli, the same man Melania claims introduced her to Donald Trump — posted a blistering message on Twitter addressed directly to the First Lady: “I was around you for 20 years. Shut your mouth when speaking about me because I will expose everything I know.” Ungaro, who recently described in a Globo Television interview being on the Lolita Express as a teenager surrounded by 14-to-16-year-old girls while Epstein and Maxwell disappeared into the back bedroom, went further: “I will take legal action against you and your pedophile husband.” Lev Parnas, who has sources close to both Ungaro and the Trump inner circle, revealed that he’s been working with Congress to secure sworn testimony from Ungaro before the Oversight Committee, and to subpoena the Epstein confession tapes author Michael Wolff is reportedly sitting on. Meanwhile, FBI 302s and archived emails place Melania squarely in Epstein’s world during the late 1990s — including a sworn statement from one of Epstein’s assistants that it was Jeffrey who introduced Melania to Donald, not Zampoli. “She perjured herself so many times in that statement yesterday, just from my sources and the things we’ve been looking into,” Parnas said. The question isn’t whether Melania was part of Epstein’s world — the evidence overwhelmingly suggests she was. The question is what she did there, and why the cover-up continues from the White House itself.4️⃣ Trump’s 250-Foot Monument to HimselfThe White House released new designs for a proposed 250-foot triumphal arch to be built near the Lincoln Memorial along the Potomac River. When a CBS reporter asked President Trump who the arch was for, he pointed to himself and said, “Me.” The structure would tower 100 feet above the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and 150 feet above the Lincoln Memorial — a monument to a president who preserved the Union, now dwarfed by a vanity project for one who is dismantling it. This comes on top of the $400 million White House ballroom, the renaming of the Kennedy Center, and a planned presidential “library” that more closely resembles a condo hotel. “We’re living in an authoritarian country right now, folks, because in normal democracies, things like this don’t happen,” Parnas said. “There would be people that would tell them no. But we threw that out the door because now Donald Trump says I want an arch and you got people lining up saying, where do we sign, sir?” With inflation surging to a two-year high and Americans struggling with rising energy and food costs, the ostentatious monument is the ultimate let-them-eat-cake moment from a president who keeps building palaces while the country burns.3️⃣ Iran Peace Talks: The Three Amigos Head to PakistanVice President J.D. Vance departed Joint Base Andrews for Islamabad to lead weekend peace talks with Iran, joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — a delegation Zev Shalev described bluntly as “a Russian asset, a Saudi asset, and probably an asset for Peter Thiel and the Russians.” Before boarding, Vance offered his negotiating philosophy on Iran’s nuclear enrichment: “My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane because she and I have an agreement.” The talks come as the two-week ceasefire buckles, with Israel killing 300 people in Lebanon on Wednesday alone while claiming Hezbollah isn’t covered by the truce. Iran accuses the U.S. of violating the ceasefire. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. And Russia, as Parnas pointed out, is laughing all the way to the bank — profiting from the chaos on both sides of the oil price swings while its ally Pakistan hosts negotiations that go nowhere. “What I’m hearing is the people that Trump is dealing with are people that Vladimir Putin has connected them to,” Parnas said. The talks aren’t designed to succeed. They’re designed to look like diplomacy while the war machine keeps running.2️⃣ Hungary Could End Orban’s 16-Year Reign SundayHungary holds parliamentary elections this Sunday that could end Viktor Orban’s 16-year grip on power, with independent polls showing opposition leader Peter Magyar of the Tisza Party leading by double digits. In a remarkable display of election interference, Trump posted a full endorsement on Truth Social urging Hungarians to vote for Orban, calling him “a truly strong and powerful leader with a proven track record of delivering phenomenal results.” Three days earlier, J.D. Vance stood on a stage in Budapest and called Trump on speakerphone to deliver the endorsement live — though Trump sent him to voicemail the first time. The critical question now is what happens if Orban loses. “Does he leave? How does he leave?” Parnas asked. “If Trump didn’t leave, is Viktor Orban just going to say, you know, OK?” Vance has already laid the groundwork, pointing to supposed Ukrainian interference in Hungary’s elections — an absurd claim given Ukraine is fighting for its survival. Expect Orban to contest any loss, claim fraud, and lean on Trump for support. It’s the authoritarian playbook, running in real time.1️⃣ Kamala Harris Signals 2028 Run — But Is This the Right Time?At Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention in a packed Times Square hotel ballroom, former Vice President Kamala Harris gave her most explicit signal yet about a 2028 presidential run. When Sharpton asked directly if she’d run again, the crowd erupted chanting “Run again! Run again!” Harris waited for silence, then said simply: “I might.” Parnas was unequivocal in his response: the timing is wrong. “We need fresh blood. Enough with the Trumps, the Bidens, the Harrises. We need to move on,” he said. His argument was strategic, not personal — any 2028 announcement now plays directly into Trump’s hands by giving MAGA something to unite against ahead of the midterms. “Right now it’s Trump against Trump’s accomplishments or problems. You put somebody into that race, now all of a sudden Biden’s in the mix, the past is in the mix.” With the economy cratering, inflation surging to 3.3 percent, a war with no exit strategy, and a government still partially shut down, Democrats have everything they need to win the midterms on the merits. The last thing they need is a premature 2028 horse race handing Trump a foil.The Epstein cover-up, the monuments, the sham peace talks, the authoritarian playbook abroad and the 2028 question at home — every story today comes back to one thing: whether Americans are paying close enough attention to stop what’s happening before it’s too late.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Lyudmila and Daniel, Karen Hinton, Leah Anderson, Noble Blend, 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

5️⃣ Canada’s Endless Acronym Becomes an Elon Musk OpA clip of NDP MP Leah Gazan using the full “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” acronym on the floor of Parliament exploded online after Elon Musk amplified it through Alberta separatist David Parker of Take Back Alberta, who repackaged it as proof that Canada is forcing citizens to rattle off a 15-letter identity pledge. “That is an op,” Dean said flatly on the show. “One woman, Leah Gazan, not very well respected in this country.” Zev, who is gay, gently pushed back on the acronym sprawl itself: “I remember the time when it was just the LGBT community. It was fine. Now it’s this endless acronym.” The pair agreed the underlying cause — missing and murdered Indigenous women — deserves real funding, and that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s $7 billion cut to Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations is the actual scandal being buried under the viral mockery. Instead, the American right has hung a caricature on Canada that has nothing to do with how Canadians actually talk about identity or advocacy.4️⃣ $1.5 Billion Traded in Five Minutes Before Trump’s Iran CeasefireWhile Melania sucked up the oxygen, Zev flagged what may be the bigger financial story of the week: roughly $1.5 billion moved through prediction markets and oil in the five minutes before Donald Trump abruptly reversed his threat to “destroy Iranian civilization” and pivoted to a ceasefire posture. “People are getting hugely rich off the American military,” Zev said. “This man knows how to play the media. He knows how to play the market. And he’s doing it for mucho bucks right now.” The ceasefire itself is already wobbling, NATO allies are openly refusing to bail Trump out, and the president spent the day not on war strategy but on a rage-post against his own former MAGA influencer base. The pattern Zev and Dean kept returning to is that every military spasm of this presidency has come with a suspiciously well-timed trade, and no one in Congress is treating it like the securities-fraud story it increasingly looks like.3️⃣ Pam Bondi Tries to Dodge Her SubpoenaFormer Attorney General Pam Bondi is now claiming she doesn’t have to appear before the House Oversight Committee on the 14th because she’s “no longer in the DOJ,” and the White House has quietly co-signed that dodge. Scott McFarlane, joining the show fresh off his departure from CBS News, reported that Republicans on the committee are not celebrating the move. “They haven’t ruled it out,” Scott said of reissuing the subpoena to private-citizen Bondi. “The fact that they haven’t declaratively said now she’s off the hook means she’s not off the hook.” Lev Parnas, working his own sources, said Chairman James Comer is “getting a lot of pressure” from Nancy Mace, Thomas Massie, and other Republicans who want Bondi back under oath. The legal hook matters: as attorney general she couldn’t plead the Fifth, but as a private citizen she can — which, Zev noted, is almost certainly why the administration engineered her exit from DOJ in the first place. Scott’s framing stuck: the Epstein files are “a chronic condition” for the Trump administration, and Bondi’s disappearing act is making it worse.2️⃣ Trump Melts Down on Truth Social at Tucker, Megyn, Candace, and Alex JonesIn what Dean called “the longest Truth Social post he’s ever put out, the angriest he’s ever been,” Trump unloaded on Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones — the same MAGA influencer ecosystem that put him in the White House — calling them “low IQs,” “nut jobs,” “bankrupt,” and “losers just trying to latch on to MAGA.” He mocked Tucker as “a broken man” who “should see a good psychiatrist,” dragged Alex Jones over the Sandy Hook lawsuits, and sneered at Megyn Kelly over the Rosie O’Donnell debate moment from a decade ago. “He has no defenders,” Zev said. “He has no one left, you know, in the world to defend him.” Dean read the meltdown as evidence the regime’s shelves are empty: “The tariff shelf is empty, the excuse shelf is empty, you’ve got his entire media influencing ecosystem turning on him. Something’s afoot, friends.” That Trump is spending a wartime afternoon writing a multi-page screed at his own former cheerleaders tells you exactly how bad the internal picture looks.1️⃣ Melania Trump’s Unprecedented Epstein Denial Is a Preemptive StrikeThe First Lady, who almost never speaks publicly, walked in front of the White House press corps this afternoon and delivered an on-camera statement denying she was ever friends with Jeffrey Epstein, denying Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump, and demanding Congress hold a public hearing for Epstein’s victims. She named The Daily Beast. She named James Carville. She named HarperCollins UK. She called the reporters “devoid of ethical standards, humility, and respect.” Scott McFarlane, texting live with Epstein survivors during the segment, relayed their reaction: “It’s all a deflection from Pam Bondi and a ploy to put the burden back on survivors.” Lev Parnas was blunter: “She wouldn’t have come out unless there was chaos going on.” Lev connected the dots to Michael Wolff’s recent appearance on Michael Cohen’s podcast, where Wolff said he has tape of Epstein describing Melania having sex with Trump on a plane — an admission Lev says he has already forwarded to Congress. “Trump, knowing Trump the way I know him, for him to have Melania come up and seeing her as angry as she was, this is definitely preemptive. Something’s about to break.” Zev pointed to Narativ’s own reporting from the Epstein Files — a 2016 congratulatory email placing Trump meeting Melania on a weekend Epstein-Florida trip, and a 2019 sworn FBI proffer from a former Epstein assistant stating Epstein introduced Melania to Donald — that directly contradicts the story Melania told from the podium today. Dean’s read cut to the heart of it: “The Epstein files were dead and buried in the court of public opinion for the last month. And for her to come out and reignite this conversation… she’s like, let me make it way worse.” The First Lady of the United States does not break a years-long public silence to deny a story that’s already out. She breaks it to get ahead of one that’s coming.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you J Dziak, Cat: Poli-Psych, "Sushi"(Jen) of MIND HAVEN, LC - Silence is Complicity, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell and Scott MacFarlane! 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

5️⃣ Vance Campaigns for OrbánVice 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 SubpoenaFormer 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 MinutesWithin 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 DyingLess 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 WarThe Fivestack led today with a Narativ exclusive investigation Zev wrote overnight: an exhaustive analysis of market data between February 28 and April 7, 2026, documenting 100 percent correlation between 13 presidential Truth Social posts on Iran and corresponding moves in Brent crude. Every escalation post drove prices up. Every de-escalation post drove them down. Thirteen for thirteen. “I was trying to figure out whether Donald Trump and his network of oil syndicate allied countries benefited from running up a pump and dump scheme on the oil prices during yesterday’s so-called ceasefire announcement,” Zev told viewers. The April 7 timeline is the smoking gun. At 8:06 AM, Trump posted “WHO KNOWS?” — language Zev read as “a man performing uncertainty about a decision that had already been made.” At 12:02 PM, Brent crude began falling 7.3 percent on no public news at all. Twenty-one minutes later, Axios published a story citing U.S. and Israeli officials confirming de-escalation. At 3:50 PM, the Polymarket Iran ceasefire contract surged from roughly 2 percent to 38 percent on about $60.5 million in pre-announcement volume — three hours before Trump announced the deal publicly at 6:32 PM. By Tuesday morning, Brent was at $90.13, down 18.5 percent in two sessions, the largest two-session move since the Gulf War. “Donald Trump has been so cynical about this, that he’s actually just in it to make money for himself, make money for Russia, make money even for the Iranians, definitely make money for the Israelis and the Saudis and the UAE,” Zev said. “This has been a bit of an exercise in running up the stock price or the price of oil per barrel.” Thirteen American servicemen came home in caskets while someone was thinking about selling high. Someone knew when the bombs would fall, and someone knew when the guns would go quiet.Five stories, one throughline: the people running this war made money on it, and the moment the trade stopped working they lit Beirut on fire.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Cheech Previti, Robin Payes, Elaine Cimino, Cathy R. Payne, Marnie Screams Into the Void, 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

5️⃣ A Major Named American ExpressThe story of the daring F-15E rescue Trump took a victory lap for this morning got a lot weirder once the photos came out of the wreckage Iranian forces picked through in Isfahan. Geneva Convention ID cards. State of Israel automated border-control receipts. American Express cards. American flag underwear. “God, what is wrong with these guys?” Malcolm Nance, a former Navy SERE instructor, said on the show. “Don’t be bringing your ID cards on missions.” Nance, who studied the crash site photos for hours, told Dean and Zev he no longer believes the two C-130s were shot down at all — he thinks they came in nose-first, hot, loaded, blew a tire on landing, the second one plowed into the rut, and U.S. forces destroyed both planes themselves to keep them out of Iranian hands. “That’s not a crash. They were parked side by side and they were just like, f**k it, we blow it.” Either way, the souvenirs Tehran is now holding up on state TV — credit cards, flight bags, a major’s personal effects — are exactly what a sanitized special-operations recovery is never supposed to leave behind.4️⃣ Hegseth Purges the BrassWhile Trump sets ultimatums on cable news, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is quietly gutting the military’s senior ranks. Last week he removed several officers up for one-star promotion, four of them Black women. The pattern is now numerical, not anecdotal. “In the last 160 years since the Civil War, presidents have only fired 11 four- and five-star military officers,” Nance said. “Donald Trump has fired nine in one year.” McArthur. McChrystal. Now nine more in twelve months. “He’s a racist white supremacist,” Nance said of Hegseth, “and he was mad when they wouldn’t get rid of Blacks and women — guys who had served 30-plus years at the highest level of meritocracy in the United States.” Dean called it the most blatant top-down discrimination in the modern military. The men being installed in their places will be the men holding the phone tomorrow night when Trump’s 8 PM deadline expires.3️⃣ Iran Already Won the StraitTrump spent today fantasizing about America “charging tolls” once it takes the Strait of Hormuz. Nance, who has transited the strait roughly a dozen times — including under fire in the 1980s tanker war — said it cannot be done. “They control the Strait by the implicit threat that they could mine it. Not one mine has to be seen. They’ve got 33,000 small boats that could land in Dubai in three hours.” The U.S. Fifth Fleet has been pulled back from Bahrain to Norfolk. Iran has been systematically degrading Kuwaiti desalinization plants, the UAE’s Habshan-Fajra pipeline pumping stations, and now the South Pars gas field. “Iran has not moved once from their position in 39 days,” Dean said. “No ceasefire. You will never control the Strait. Bring it on.” Meanwhile Iran is making a fortune — physical barrels are selling at $150 spot in Yanbu, and Tehran has already cleared roughly $14 billion since Trump lifted sanctions on their supertanker traffic. The longer the war runs, the richer the regime gets.2️⃣ Bibi Goes RogueThe biggest single problem in the war right now, Nance said, isn’t the Pentagon — it’s Jerusalem. “I’m saying this as a friend of Israel. They are rogue now.” Israeli aircraft have hit near the Bushehr nuclear power plant three separate times. The IAEA has put out formal warnings about what happens if a containment building cracks. Today the Israelis destroyed the South Pars natural gas field — the same field Tehran warned them about two weeks ago, the field that supplies Qatar’s LNG industry. “Netanyahu doesn’t give two f***s about Qatar,” Nance said. “I personally believe Netanyahu is trying to fail that state.” The pattern is unmistakable: refineries, power plants, gas fields, civilian infrastructure. Bibi isn’t fighting a war against the regime — he’s trying to collapse Iran into a failed state, drag the United States in behind him, and survive his own corruption trial in the noise.1️⃣ Tuesday, 8 PM. Hell and Damnation.Trump set the clock today: Tuesday, April 7, 8 PM Eastern. Reopen the Strait of Hormuz or America hits Iran’s power grid and bridges. “That is not military targeting. That is collective-punishment warfare against a country of 90 million civilians,” Zev said in the cold open. Nance was blunter: bombing civilian energy infrastructure on a mass scale to punish a population is, by definition, a war crime — and the order, as written, is technically lawful, which means the new compliant generals Hegseth installed will carry it out. But the bigger problem is that Trump doesn’t have the horses. Six U.S. aircraft were lost over Iran in 24 hours. The American public has turned against the war. Even Trump admitted it on the lawn today, complaining that “the American people don’t want me to do that.” Then, four seconds later, threatened to do it anyway. “He hates that he is tied down by the American public,” Dean said. “How dare they stop him from having his fun.” 27 hours until the deadline. The pilots are home. The strait is still closed. And the man holding the trigger is a drunk monkey with a machine gun, dancing in a circle with Pete Hegseth and shooting up in the air.Tomorrow night at 8:01 PM Eastern, we find out whether the bluff was a bluff.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Robin Payes, Rick Kohut, ann schneider, Leah Anderson, Lalisa, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ Noem’s Husband ExposedCross-dressing photos of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s husband Bryon surfaced today — hundreds of messages sent to multiple women showing him in fake breasts and pink spandex as part of what’s being described as a “bimbofication” fetish. Dean Blundell, who broke the story on his Substack, walked through the messages in detail, including exchanges on a fetish platform where Bryon paid tribute to a user listed as “slave” and discussed transitioning fantasies. “She did execute some Americans. She did hurt hundreds of thousands of migrants and people of color in the name of Jesus. She hates trans people and cross dressers. So I can’t ignore that either,” Blundell said. The irony was not lost on either host — the woman who ran Trump’s deportation machine had her own family secret blow up in public, possibly leaked by an undocumented immigrant on the app who recognized who Bryon was. Noem was already quietly removed from DHS weeks ago and reassigned to a made-up “Special Envoy” role. Now we know why.4️⃣ Trump’s Library Is a HotelPresident Trump unveiled renderings of his presidential library Monday — a Miami skyscraper with his name on it, a gold statue of himself, a golden escalator, and Air Force One in the lobby. Then he told reporters he doesn’t “believe in libraries or museums” and confirmed it would “most likely” be a hotel. The 2.6-acre site was donated by Miami Dade College — a public institution giving away public land for $10. “This is a money laundering center. This is a convention hall. This is a hotel. This is a place for people to pay five times what the market value for a condo is just to say thanks to Donald Trump,” Blundell said. Shalev pointed out that foreign governments — the Saudis, Qataris, UAE, Russians — will pour money into the building, turning what should be a place of public study into a generational revenue stream for the Trump family. “Every single thing is only viewed as a money-making opportunity for these guys,” Shalev said. “There’s not a single thing that is about public service.”3️⃣ SCOTUS Shreds Birthright OrderThe Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Trump’s executive order to strip birthright citizenship from children born to undocumented parents, and his own appointees tore the argument apart. Chief Justice Roberts called the administration’s examples “very quirky” and questioned how they could expand to millions of people. Justice Kagan pointed out the government’s own brief was mostly about temporary inhabitants, not undocumented immigrants. The highlight came when Justice Gorsuch asked Solicitor General John Sauer whether Native Americans would qualify as birthright citizens under the administration’s test — and Sauer said he didn’t know. “You’re on their soil, dickhead,” Blundell responded. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered the sharpest line of the day, asking whether pregnant women would be “brought in for depositions” to determine their babies’ citizenship. Trump sat in the courtroom for 90 minutes, the first sitting president to attend oral arguments. A decision is expected by June.2️⃣ Johnson Says We’re Not at WarAt 9 PM tonight, Trump will address the nation claiming the Iran war could end in “two, maybe three weeks” — while Speaker Mike Johnson insists the United States is “not at war.” The House voted 219-212 to kill a bipartisan War Powers resolution, with Johnson calling the War Powers Act “unconstitutional and frightening.” Shalev laid out what Trump will try to sell tonight: that the war is good for America, that $4-a-gallon gas is patriotic, and that NATO allies who won’t join the fight deserve to be abandoned. Blundell catalogued the reality — AWACS sawed in half by Iranian missiles, stratotankers destroyed on the tarmac in Saudi Arabia, 17 U.S. military installations gone, the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control. “This is operation cover the s**t up as fast as you can and offer 17 different narratives,” Shalev said. Trump told Reuters he’s “absolutely” considering withdrawing from NATO, and MBS put the U.S.-Saudi relationship “on hold.” The free world is closing its airspace to American military equipment for the first time in history.1️⃣ Lutnick Federalizes Your BallotCommerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — whom Shalev called “the crypto secretary” for his ties to stablecoin Tether — stood behind Trump in the Oval Office and laid out the architecture of a federal election takeover. A new executive order directs DHS and the Social Security Administration to compile a national “citizenship list” of eligible voters, with USPS assigned to deliver mail ballots only to names on that list. “They’re just going to send the mail-in votes to Republicans, basically, or white people,” Blundell said. Oregon and Arizona filed suit within minutes. Shalev connected Lutnick’s role to the larger corruption: Tether was under investigation for massive Russian money laundering, Lutnick sold his business to his children who got a loan from the crypto company, and now this same man with zero election authority is inserting the federal government between every American and their ballot — seven months before the midterms. “The whole thing is just a crypto venture,” Shalev said, “and it’s designed to build himself a fortune.”Five stories, one pattern: every public institution — the military, the courts, the postal service, the presidential library — gets turned into a private revenue stream or a tool of authoritarian control.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Elaine Cimino, LC - Silence is Complicity, Leah Anderson, Steven Luker, Lalisa, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Before the countdown even started, Dean Blundell broke news from a fresh court filing: the ATF was unable to match the bullet recovered from Charlie Kirk’s autopsy to the rifle allegedly used by Tyler Robinson. The bullet fragmented on impact with bone, making conclusive ballistics analysis impossible — though the spent shell casing at the scene did match Robinson’s weapon. Robinson’s defense team filed a motion requesting a six-month delay to review the evidence. Meanwhile, Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby, who orchestrated Robinson’s surrender, abruptly resigned after 30 years on the job. “This is the biggest story in the world that nobody’s talking about because it’s getting buried,” Blundell said. The case that made Kirk a MAGA martyr — complete with Capitol posters and a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his wife — now has serious evidentiary questions at its core.5️⃣ Let Them Eat CakeFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill renaming Palm Beach International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport, effective July 1 with airport code DJT — and the Trump family had already trademarked the name plus luggage, flight suits, and plastic shoe protectors. Meanwhile Eric Trump unveiled renderings of a 50-story presidential library tower in Miami, gold arches and Air Force One in the lobby, funded by a tax-exempt foundation planning to raise a billion dollars with no restrictions on foreign donations. The original fund was dissolved after failing to file basic paperwork, with $63 million in media lawsuit settlements unaccounted for. Senators Warren and Blumenthal are demanding answers. An airport, a tower, and a trademarked merch line — none of it is about legacy. It’s revenue streams wrapped in presidential immunity.4️⃣ Gas Hits $4Gas crossed $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022, with the national average hitting $4.02 — up 34.7% in a single month, the largest spike ever recorded in the United States. Larger than after Katrina, larger than after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Diesel is at $4.59 and analysts say $5 is possible if the Strait of Hormuz stays contested. Every gallon is a war tax from a conflict Americans didn’t vote for and weren’t consulted on, delivered by an administration that promised energy dominance.3️⃣ NPR/PBS Funding Ruled UnconstitutionalA federal judge struck down Trump’s executive order defunding NPR and PBS, ruling it violates the First Amendment. Judge Randolph Moss called it “viewpoint discrimination and retaliation,” noting the order specifically cited NPR articles about queer animals and a PBS documentary about a transgender teenager. The ruling connects directly to the broader media landscape — with Oracle’s Larry Ellison moving to acquire CBS and CNN, building what Shalev called “not just a surveillance state but a censorship state” designed to control what Americans see, hear, and believe for the next decade.2️⃣ Judge Halts White House BallroomA second federal judge handed Trump a major loss Tuesday. Judge Richard Leon halted construction of the $400 million, 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, ruling the president lacks authority to fund it through private donations from Amazon, Google, and Palantir — companies with billions in government contracts. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner,” Leon wrote. Blundell put it more simply: “He’s the Billy Mays of presidents — he’s always selling someone on his idea.” Trump is expected to keep building regardless, just as he ignored the Supreme Court on tariffs.1️⃣ SCOTUS Guts Conversion Bans / Allies Reject Trump’s WarTwo number one stories today. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates the First Amendment, with Justice Jackson dissenting alone, threatening protections in 30-plus states — on Transgender Day of Visibility. Shalev called it “a Russian copycat policy” and “a pathway to criminalizing homosexuality,” noting Russia banned another LGBTQ organization called Coming Out the same day. Then came the revelation that Kristi Noem’s husband Byron was outed as a cross-dresser on fetish sites while his wife pushed anti-LGBTQ policy in Jesus’s name. And on Day 31 of the Iran war, the coalition of one is collapsing. Defense Secretary Hegseth, who declared Iran “neutralized” last week, is now begging NATO allies for help keeping the Strait of Hormuz open — the same allies Trump called cowards. Italy blocked landing rights, Spain denied overflight, and Qatar asked for its jet back. “They’ve lost the war,” Blundell said. “They’re not willing to admit it, but they’re currently defeated.” Trump’s response to allies: “Build up some delayed courage. Go to the Strait and just take it.”One year of the Fivestack. Two chill middle-aged snacks doing their best to inform the people — and a whole lot more work to do to bring democracy back.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Cheech Previti, Pamela, Leah Anderson, Lalisa, Eric Lullove, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ No Kings — 8 Million MarchTwo days after the largest single-day protest in American history, the question is what happens next. Eight million Americans turned out across all 50 states in over 3,300 organized events demanding an end to the Iran war, democratic backsliding, and the suppression of the Epstein files. “250 years of American history, there has never been a bigger protest against its own government, ever,” Dean said, noting the numbers have doubled from the previous No Kings march. Yet Sunday morning shows barely mentioned it — Kristen Welker was the only anchor to reference it, calling it “tens of thousands.” Dean revealed that FCC chair Brendan Carr sent notes to media executives warning them not to cover the march, and the regime is now threatening to charge television executives with treason for showing the footage. “When 9 million people show up, that’s a f*****g revolution,” Dean said. “That’s the beginning of a civil movement that Donald Trump can’t stop.”4️⃣ Russia Targeted US Base for IranUkrainian President Zelensky dropped an intelligence bombshell this weekend: Russia took satellite images of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on three consecutive days — March 20th, 23rd, and 25th — before Iran attacked the base on March 26th, injuring a dozen American troops and destroying an AWACS command-and-control aircraft and multiple stratotankers worth hundreds of millions. Former Congressman Denver Riggleman, who joined the show as a surprise guest straight off the plane, broke down the significance. “This means we have a massive gap not only in how we’re actually responding, but we have a massive gap in our counterintelligence operations,” Riggleman said, calling for the U.S. to seize all Russian economic assets, arm Ukraine with every long-range weapon available, and deploy jammers against Russia’s GLONASS navigation system. Trump’s response to the Russian-assisted attack on American servicemembers: “They do it and we do it.”3️⃣ Bunker Under the BallroomThe $400 million East Wing “ballroom” renovation is really a secret military complex. Trump let the truth slip on Air Force One this weekend, revealing that underneath the ballroom is a massive bunker and command center — something he had been hiding behind the cover story of a ceremonial ballroom with Corinthian pillars. Riggleman explained that what’s really being built is a massive SCIF — a sensitive compartmented information facility — and raised critical questions about other entrances, exits, and whether similar bunkers are being constructed around the country as part of a continuity of operations plan. Dean pointed out that the New York Times renderings reveal bizarre design flaws including stairs that lead nowhere and a front facade with no door, while the building is being funded by private — possibly foreign — donors. “Leave it to Donald Trump to build a brand new ballroom that has no f*****g door,” Dean said. Riggleman warned: “I am worried about 2028, and if this thing is complete by 2028, what that means if he does refuse to leave.”2️⃣ Exclusive: Tether Owns the Lutnick EmpireNarativ published a new investigation revealing Jeffrey Epstein’s direct role in designing the cryptocurrency capture of America — for Vladimir Putin. Emails from the Epstein archive show Epstein pitching an intermediary with a plan to deliver to Putin a vision for Russia to leapfrog America’s financial dominance using cryptocurrency, describing it as a Sputnik-level event. The connections run deep: Epstein’s crypto advisor Brock Pierce invented Tether, the stablecoin whose $133 billion in treasuries are held by Howard Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald — and Lutnick sold Cantor to his kids through a trust funded by a Tether loan. Riggleman called for a crypto investigative task force, estimating Trump family crypto holdings may be close to $10 billion, with 19 of the 25 largest investors in Trump-backed crypto being foreign entities. “It’s almost like it is the Epstein regime,” Zev said. “It’s not the Trump regime.”1️⃣ Greater North America — The Donroe DoctrineSecretary of War Pete Hegseth stood at U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Doral and redrew the map of the Western Hemisphere. Everything north of the equator — from Greenland to Guyana, Alaska to Ecuador — is now America’s “immediate security perimeter,” which he’s calling Greater North America. Dean connected it directly to the Greater Israel expansionist plan and identified the religious through line: Hegseth is framing this as a Christian nationalist mission, tied to the Seven Mountains Mandate and Project 2025’s concept of “re-hemisphering.” Riggleman broke down how the plan maps onto Project 2025’s framework where global powers each claim their own hemisphere, with the U.S., Russia, China, and Israel each carving out territory. “This is an attempt by the Donald Trump regime, by Pete Hegseth, to paint his expansionism as a mission from his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Dean said.Former Congressman Denver Riggleman joined the show as a surprise guest from Zev’s house — straight off the plane, sharing a microphone, and bringing receipts on the Trump family’s capture of the military-industrial complex. His six-part series on the Trump crime family’s drone and defense industry corruption is at denverriggleman.substack.com.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Marnie Screams Into the Void, Iulia Huiu, Kristen Lepionka, Pamela, LC - Silence is Complicity, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5. Kash Patel Hacked by IranThe FBI director got hacked by the enemy he’s supposed to be fighting. An Iran-linked hacking group called Handala breached Kash Patel’s personal Gmail account and published photos, emails, and personal documents online dating from 2010 to 2022 — and the DOJ confirmed the material is authentic. Among the leaked files: photos of Patel in Cuba smoking cigars next to cars with Cuban plates, his personal resume, and years of correspondence. The FBI is now offering a $10 million reward for information on the hackers, which as Zev noted means the best the bureau can do about its own director getting compromised is offer a bounty. Dean had his own take: “He’s an honorary screeched-in citizen of Newfoundland — we need to remove that designation right now.” Meanwhile, the White House’s own social media accounts posted two unexplained videos to X and Instagram Wednesday night — one showing someone’s feet with a woman’s voice asking “It’s launching soon, right?” — deleted 90 minutes later with millions of views and zero explanation.4. Johnson Kills DHS BillThe Senate passed a bipartisan bill to fund DHS at 2:20 this morning — everything except ICE — a compromise to end the six-week shutdown that has 510 TSA officers quitting and airports in chaos. Speaker Mike Johnson killed it hours later, calling it a “crap sandwich” and announcing his own eight-week stopgap that funds all of DHS including ICE. Dean’s assessment was more blunt: “It’s not a crap sandwich, it’s a s**t sandwich.” Johnson’s version goes back to a Senate that just left for a two-week recess, with Schumer already calling it dead on arrival. The NTSB chair is still driving five hours to crash sites because she can’t fly through her own country’s airports. Nobody is governing — they’re just positioning.3. Fulton County Sues Over Ballot SeizureA federal court hearing happened today in Georgia that may be the most important legal proceeding you haven’t heard about. Fulton County is suing to get back more than 650 boxes of 2020 election ballots that the FBI seized in a January 28th raid — ordered by Kurt Olsen, the Trump lawyer who was part of the original scheme to overturn the 2020 election and is now the White House’s director of election security. As Zev put it: “A man who tried to steal an election is now in charge of investigating elections, and his first act was to send the FBI to seize the ballots from the county that helped flip Georgia for Biden.” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was physically present at the seizure despite having zero authority over domestic elections. Dean connected the dots: “These are the same f*****g people and they’re running it back.”2. Tomahawks Running OutThe United States has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks of war with Iran, and Pentagon officials describe remaining stockpiles as “alarmingly low” — some using the word “Winchester,” military slang for out of ammunition. The math is devastating: the U.S. produces between 90 and 100 Tomahawks per year, each costing $3.6 million and taking two years to build. In four weeks, this administration burned through a decade of production. Dean laid out the profiteering angle — the Trump family has secured $1.5 billion in defense contracts through 32 companies since the war began. “He’s basically burning through our ammunition on purpose,” Dean said. Raytheon says it will take a minimum of five years to replenish what’s been fired.1. 10,000 More Troops to the Middle EastThe Pentagon is drawing up plans to send 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East — infantry, armor, the 82nd Airborne — joining 5,000 Marines already en route. Their staging area: within striking distance of Kharg Island, the small strip of land that handles 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. Trump extended his pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure to April 6th, claiming talks are going well while Iran says no talks are happening. “You don’t move 10,000 ground troops into theater to negotiate,” Zev said. “You move them to invade.” Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut, and Russia earned $7 billion in the first two weeks of March selling oil that used to flow through it. April 6 isn’t a peace deadline — it’s a deployment window. And tomorrow, millions of Americans will be in the streets for the third No Kings rally, with more than 3,000 events planned in all 50 states.The FBI director is compromised, the government is shut down, the ballots are seized, the missiles are spent, and the troops are moving. Tomorrow, America answers.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Pamela, Leah Anderson, Lalisa, Skutt Hope, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ The Dictator Holds CourtDonald Trump’s first full cabinet meeting played out like a scene from Pyongyang, with sycophantic praise from every corner of the room while the president fell asleep three times, rambled incoherently for seven minutes, and sat with hands visibly caked in makeup. Dean Blundell described it best: “Trump’s cabinet meeting was a 47-car pileup, and he was driving all 47 cars.” Trump used the televised spectacle to attack Supreme Court Justices Barrett and Gorsuch as “sickening” after the tariff ruling, dismissed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s offer of aircraft carriers to help in the Persian Gulf, and sat stone-faced while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth excoriated the media for reporting the truth about America’s broken war machine. Senator Markwayne Mullin was introduced as the new DHS Secretary, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Trump that Venezuela wants to build him a statue, drawing comparisons to the kind of flattery reserved for dictators.4️⃣ Congress Flees TomorrowDay 40 of the DHS shutdown arrived with Congress preparing to leave town for recess, abandoning TSA screeners who haven’t been paid and travelers facing 10-hour security lines at major airports. ICE agents at the southern border are handing out water bottles to migrants because they have no resources to process them. The air safety crisis deepened after an Air Canada flight and a LaGuardia fire truck nearly collided on the tarmac because the truck had no transponder and the airport’s overloaded radar system was being managed by a single air traffic controller. Dean cancelled two upcoming U.S. trips over safety concerns, warning that with spring break travel surging, the system is on the verge of catastrophic failure.3️⃣ DOJ Runs a Loyalty ProgramMichael Flynn received a $1.2 million taxpayer-funded settlement from the DOJ for “malicious prosecution,” despite having pleaded guilty twice and being a man who served as a foreign agent for Russia and Turkey, participated in January 6th, and became a QAnon leader. Meanwhile, Kash Patel’s grand jury testimony was released completely redacted except for his invocations of the Fifth Amendment, raising serious questions about what the nation’s top law enforcement official is hiding. In a Miami courtroom, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appeared in shackles but refused to cooperate with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s request that he falsely claim Venezuela interfered in the 2020 election to bolster Trump’s narrative. And in a bizarre side deal, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated Pakistan’s rebuilding plan for New York’s Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan in exchange for Pakistan’s acceptance of crypto currency. 2️⃣ 10 Tankers: Iran’s Real SignalTrump claimed Iran sent 10 oil tankers to the United States as a peace gesture, but the real story is who actually controls Iran now. The power behind the regime is Ahmad Vahidi, the Interpol-wanted terrorist responsible for the 1994 Argentina bombing and the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, who served as the first commander of the IRGC Quds Force. A new generation of extremist hardliners has replaced the old guard, and those tankers weren’t a peace offering — they were a demonstration that this new leadership controls Iran’s oil infrastructure and can turn the spigot on or off at will.1️⃣ Kharg Island: A Suicide MissionThe Pentagon is planning a ground assault on Kharg Island, the tiny speck in the Persian Gulf that handles 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, using the 82nd Airborne and Marines. Trump gave Iran a Friday deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, timed to the end of the trading week to prop up stock prices. But as Malcolm Nance laid out on Narativ Live, a million trained Basij soldiers are waiting in fortified positions built over 47 years, armed with missile systems that can lock onto targets and fragment into secondary warheads. The island has one runway that Iran would destroy immediately, the USS Gerald Ford is in port and not operational, and the Abraham Lincoln is out of ammunition in the Indian Ocean. The Trump family’s motive became clearer when Dean revealed that Eric and Donald Jr. have each accumulated roughly $10 billion by rolling up drone manufacturing and AI automation companies across the defense sector — effectively owning a piece of the entire U.S. military industrial complex. This isn’t just a war for oil or ego. It’s a war to feed a family monarchy.The Five Stack is ticking — and the clock is running out.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Lev Parnas, Cash Flow Collective, Robin Payes, Pamela, Lalisa, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — FiveStack viewers get 40% off. Click the button below to access the discount.Malcolm Nance read Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution live on air: "Congress shall have the power to declare treason. That means a new Congress next January could declare treason.” And that’s how the Treason Ticket was born - Every Democrat running in 2026 should be running on the treason ticket.5️⃣ Generals Turn on HegsethRetired Major General Randy Manner, U.S. Army, went on camera and called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a “potential war criminal” and “a disgraced National Guard major kicked out of the D.C. National Guard.” That is not partisan commentary. That is a retired general officer putting a marker down that the man running America’s wars has no business being anywhere near a command structure. Retired General James Mattis followed by calling Trump’s entire Iran strategy “delusional.” Senior military leaders are now publicly warning that the civilian leadership is unfit and potentially criminal. When generals start using words like war criminal and delusional about their own chain of command, that is not dissent. That is a distress signal.4️⃣ Iran Is a Kill Box and Trump Knows ItMalcolm Nance joined the show for an extended segment and laid out in brutal detail why a ground invasion of Iran would be catastrophic for American forces. The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and Iran has spent 40 years turning it into a kill box with pre-positioned anti-ship missiles, explosive drone boats, naval mines, and Basij suicide commandos willing to ram American vessels. Karg Island, where 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, sits inside that kill zone, and any attempt to seize it means threading a carrier group through waters Iran controls from both sides. Nance described the geography as a shooting gallery and noted Iran has 600,000 Revolutionary Guard troops, a battle-hardened force that fought an eight-year war with Iraq. Trump rejected the JCPOA in 2018 even though Iran was complying with every condition, and now he is demanding the same terms back while bombing them. Iran rejected his recycled 15-point proposal today and laid out five conditions of its own including sovereignty over the Strait and an end to all strikes. Meanwhile, someone made $580 million on suspicious oil trades timed perfectly to Trump’s social media posts, the SEC enforcement chief who flagged it was fired, and Paul Krugman called it what it is: treason. Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution says Congress has the power to declare treason. A new Congress in January 2027 could do exactly that.3️⃣ Epstein Estate Paid Off Jane Doe 4The House Oversight Committee released deposition videos of Epstein’s attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn, and Kahn made a critical mistake. In the morning session he confirmed under oath that the estate settled with Jane Doe 4, the woman who accused both Epstein and Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old. By the afternoon someone had clearly gotten to him because he walked it back, suddenly claiming he didn’t recall Trump’s involvement. But the damage was done. He already confirmed the payment in a deposition where Trump was named in the question. Indyke sat through six hours claiming he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes despite serving as his personal attorney for decades and collecting roughly $40 million from the estate. Jane Doe 4’s attorney Lisa Bloom has refused to discuss any details of the settlement, which tells you everything about the nondisclosure agreement attached to it. You don’t pay $40 million to lawyers and accountants because they did a great job. You pay that kind of money because you need them to go the distance covering up something enormous.2️⃣ Democrat Flips Mar-a-Lago DistrictEmily Gregory flipped Florida House District 87 last night, the district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, beating his personally endorsed candidate by 2.3 points in a district Trump carried by 9 in 2024. That is a 21-point swing. Twenty-nine state legislature seats have now flipped from red to blue since Trump took office. The treason ticket is not a slogan. It is a constitutional strategy. Article 3, Section 3 gives Congress the power to declare treason, and a blue wave in November could put a Speaker in place with the authority to prosecute.1️⃣ Tether Owns the Lutnick EmpireNarativ’s investigation revealed the full scope of how Tether, a foreign-owned crypto company registered in the British Virgin Islands, now effectively owns Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s family fortune. When Lutnick joined the Cabinet he sold Cantor Fitzgerald to his children, who couldn’t afford it, so Tether loaned them the money. Cantor holds $133 billion in U.S. Treasury securities backing Tether’s stablecoins, and if the Lutniks default, Tether becomes first-in-line creditor for the entire firm. The man deciding whether to intervene is Commerce Secretary Lutnick himself. Tether’s CEO told associates before the appointment that Lutnick had promised to run interference against any investigation, and sure enough, Deputy AG Todd Blanche shut down every crypto probe including the DOJ and SEC investigations into Tether the moment he took office. This is the same mechanism Lutnick and Epstein used to help crash the market in 2008, just rebooted with crypto instead of mortgage-backed securities. If Tether collapses, $133 billion in Treasuries get dumped and the U.S. financial system takes the hit. That is not a conflict of interest. That is a financial weapon of mass destruction in the hands of people who have used one before.The through line of today’s show is simple. Market manipulation timed to bombing campaigns. Estate payoffs to silence rape victims. A foreign crypto company that owns the Commerce Secretary. A defense secretary that generals are calling a war criminal. This is not governance. This is a criminal enterprise operating in plain sight. And Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution gives the next Congress the power to call it what it is. Every Democrat running in 2026 should be running on the treason ticket.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — FiveStack viewers get 40% off. Click the button below to access the discount.BREAKING: NTSB FIRST PRESSER AFTER AIR CANADA CRASH The NTSB revealed today that the deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night was caused by an overlapping series of systemic failures. Air Canada Express Flight 8646, a CRJ-900 carrying 72 passengers from Montreal, struck a Port Authority fire truck on Runway 4 at approximately 100 miles per hour, shearing off the cockpit and killing both pilots — Captain Antoine Forest and First Officer Mackenzie Gunther. Two controllers were on duty doing the jobs of four people, the same staffing practice flagged after the Reagan National midair collision in January 2025. The fire truck had no transponder, making it invisible to the airport’s ASDE-X surface detection system, which never issued an alert. A critical radio transmission ordering the truck to stop was stepped on by another call, and the NTSB does not yet know whether the firefighters ever heard the command. The cockpit voice recorder shows Captain Forest grabbed the controls just two seconds after touchdown and tried to steer away. He had six seconds. An NTSB investigator was stuck in a TSA security line in Houston for three hours because of the DHS shutdown, and Chair Jennifer Homendy drove five hours from Washington rather than attempt to fly.5️⃣ DHS Deal BrewingSenate Republicans and the White House are discussing a potential deal to end the six-week partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by funding every part of the agency except ICE’s deportation arm. Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed new optimism after a White House meeting Monday night, and Senator Katie Boyd Britt was seen in intense conversation with Minority Leader Schumer on the Senate floor afterward. Democrats have not signed off — Schumer wants restrictions on warrants and masks, and Thune says he won’t negotiate reforms without funding. Meanwhile, more than 400 TSA officers have quit, callout rates have hit 55 percent at Houston Hobby, and some airports may close entirely.4️⃣ Rothschild Bank Raided in Epstein ProbeFrench police raided the Paris headquarters of Edmond de Rothschild bank last Friday as part of the expanding Jeffrey Epstein investigation, confirmed by Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press. The target is former bank employee and UN diplomat Fabrice Aidan, whose name appeared in more than 200 Epstein documents including emails sent directly to Epstein between 2010 and 2016. France, the UK, and multiple other countries are now actively investigating the Epstein network — the United States, where the FBI director is firing the agents who would do this work, is the glaring exception.3️⃣ Blood for OilAt 6:50 a.m. Sunday, fifteen minutes before Trump posted on Truth Social that he was halting strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, $580 million in oil and stock futures moved in a single burst. Oil dropped 11 percent. Stocks surged. Paul Krugman wrote today in “Treason in the Futures Markets” that somebody close to Trump clearly knew what was coming. Trump started a war that bottled up one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, then lifted sanctions on Russian oil so Putin could fill the gap — Russia earned $7 billion in the first two weeks of March. Every escalation and every de-escalation is a market event, and every single one benefits Russia. American soldiers and Iranian civilians are dying so Vladimir Putin can fund his war on Ukraine.2️⃣ MBS Pushes Ground WarThe New York Times reported today that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been pushing Trump in a series of calls to continue and escalate the war against Iran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East. MBS has specifically advocated for ground operations, including seizing Kharg Island — the hub of Iran’s oil infrastructure — with American troops. Qatar announced today it has pulled out of mediation entirely, with its foreign ministry saying its focus is now “entirely dedicated to defending our country.” The man who ordered the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi is telling an American president to send American soldiers to die on an island in the Persian Gulf.GROUND NEWS ANALYSIS OF MBS SAUDI STORY Here’s an example of why we love Ground News. Instead of breaking down the story of left vs right, the categorized viewpoints around the idea of escalation.If you like this analysis and want access to more, sign up for Ground News with our special 40% offer. 1️⃣ Two Pilots DeadEverything that went wrong at LaGuardia connects to everything else on today’s show. The DHS shutdown that left TSA unable to function. The understaffing that put two controllers in a tower doing four jobs. The fire truck without a transponder. The radar that couldn’t track it. The radio call that was blocked. And when you arrive at LaGuardia today — if your flight hasn’t been canceled, which half of them have — you’re greeted not by TSA officers ensuring your safety but by masked ICE agents. This is what a country looks like when its government stops functioning, not because it can’t, but because the people running it have decided that functioning is not the point.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Ellie Leonard, Robin Payes, ann schneider, Leah Anderson, Suzanne Sky, 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — FiveStack viewers get 40% off. Click the button below to access the discount.BREAKING: Two Pilots Dead at LaGuardiaAn air traffic controller at LaGuardia Airport cleared a Port Authority fire truck onto an active runway at 11:40 PM Sunday, then screamed “stop” at least ten times as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 barreled in from Montreal at 150 miles per hour. Both pilots were killed instantly. Flight attendant Solange Tremblay was ejected from the aircraft while still strapped to her seat, thrown dozens of feet from the wreckage — her daughter called it “nothing short of a miracle.” The escape slides never deployed, leaving 72 passengers to organize their own evacuation in the dark, scrambling over the wings. “The flight attendant in the front got ejected from the plane, so we really did not have direction,” said passenger Rebecca Liquori. Dean noted the controller “has got to live with this for the rest of his life” and pointed out that air traffic controllers have the second-highest burnout rate of any profession in the world. The crash came at an airport already buckling — earlier that same day, travelers endured hourslong security lines because of TSA staffing shortages tied to the DHS shutdown. LaGuardia is 40% below safe staffing levels, controller retirements have surged from four a day to 15-20 during the shutdown, and DOGE fired 400 FAA employees back in February 2025. It is the first fatal accident at LaGuardia since 1992.5️⃣ Trump Blocks TSA Deal, Sends ICE to AirportsSenate Majority Leader John Thune had a deal with Chuck Schumer to end the 43-day DHS shutdown — fund everything except ICE, get TSA workers back on the job, end the airport chaos. Trump killed it on Truth Social. “Donald Trump doesn’t give a f**k if that lasts,” Dean said, describing how Trump told Thune he wanted to keep the fight going for political leverage. “I don’t care how dangerous flying the friendly skies of the United States are. Because it’s more important to me that I look like I win this fight.” Trump’s solution: deploy untrained ICE agents to 15-20 airports starting Monday. “None of them are trained to do any TSA work, any screening, none of that,” Dean noted. “They’re trained for customs and border enforcement.” Meanwhile, ICE agents were filmed at airports without masks, some directing travelers to TGI Friday’s, others leaning on mezzanine railings with their heads in their hands. “I don’t know what the f**k we’re doing here, but we’re here.”4️⃣ SAVE Act: Do It for JesusTrump appeared at an event in Tennessee and delivered what may be the most revealing moment of his presidency. He told Republican senators to tie voter ID and proof of citizenship to the DHS funding bill — the SAVE America Act — and skip Easter recess to get it done. Then he said it: “Make this one for Jesus.” Dean, who grew up in the evangelical faith, broke it down: “When you’re out of answers, when you need them to do something, you tell them it’s their God-given duty. Jesus died for you so you could pass the SAVE Act.” Trump was laughing as he said it, unable to keep a straight face. “He knows he’s misusing Jesus’s name,” Zev observed. “The idea that Jesus would have endorsed anything Donald Trump is doing is nonsensical.” The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote — targeting communities of color, women, trans people, and anyone who’s undergone a name change. Trump has made it clear: this bill is more important to him than funding TSA, more important than airport safety, more important than ending the shutdown.3️⃣ SCOTUS Signals Kill on Mail-In VotingThe Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could eliminate mail-in ballot grace periods in 18 states just in time for November’s midterms. The RNC is challenging Mississippi’s own Republican-passed law allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive five days later. Only the three liberal justices appeared sympathetic. “This is part of the SAVE Act,” Dean said. “The SAVE Act is just this enormous go f**k yourself — we don’t want you voting. If you’re Black, if you’re trans, if you’re a woman, if you’ve undergone a name change, we want you to stay as far away from the polls.” A ruling by June would reshape the midterm elections.HERE’S HOW GROUND NEWS ANALYZED THIS STORYGround News tracked coverage across the political spectrum: left-leaning outlets framed it as voter suppression targeting minorities and the elderly, center outlets focused on the legal question of federal versus state authority, and right-leaning outlets called it an election integrity measure to prevent late-arriving ballots from swinging results. Get 40% off Ground News by clicking here:2️⃣ Columbus Statue Returns to the White HouseWhile two pilots lay dead at LaGuardia, the White House installed a 13-foot replica of the Christopher Columbus statue torn down in Baltimore in 2020, rebuilt with pieces of the original. They also reinstalled the Confederate General Albert Pike statue. Dean had a take that surprised: “I actually applaud the return of the Christopher Columbus statue. Because to me, that’s truly what America was built on — a lie.” Zev pushed back, insisting America’s foundational ideas — government for and by the people — remain “the most incredible, beautiful things the world has ever been given.” Dean countered with data: Canadians have a 40% greater chance of moving between economic classes. The two sparred over whether America’s promise was real or myth, eventually agreeing the country needs “a reset of some sort.”1️⃣ Iran: Trump’s Ghost TalksTrump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran expired with no strikes and no explanation — just a Truth Social post about “very good and productive conversations.” Iran’s response: “There is no dialogue between Tehran and Washington.” Dean called it what it is: “Donald Trump had an entire two-day negotiating session with the Iranian regime that no one knew about — including the Iranian regime.” Zev noted that Trump’s entire financial future — his crypto holdings, his business interests — is tied to the region he accidentally set on fire. “I probably would invent an imaginary negotiation too,” Dean admitted. The new deadline is Friday. Iran is still enriching uranium. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. And the president of the United States may be talking to no one.The Spring from Hell is here. Trump is blocking deals, invoking Jesus, deploying ICE to airports, and negotiating with ghosts — while two pilots lie dead on a runway. Welcome to the FiveStack.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Lev Parnas, Cat: Poli-Psych, Robin Payes, Iulia Huiu, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — FiveStack viewers get 40% off. Click the button below to access the discount.5️⃣ Bari Weiss Kills CBS News RadioAfter nearly a century on the air, CBS News Radio is dead. Bari Weiss announced she’s shutting down the division Edward R. Murrow built and laying off 6 percent of the CBS newsroom, with 700 affiliated stations given two months to find a replacement. “She is systematically destroying everything,” Zev said of Weiss, calling her unqualified for the position and noting the only qualification she has is supporting Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. Dean traced the pattern further: “Does money even matter to the bottom line of what they’re trying to accomplish with this consolidation? I don’t think ratings matter.” With CBS Evening News cratering to 3.83 million viewers under Tony Dokoupil and the Ellison family now acquiring CNN through the Warner Bros. Discovery deal, the consolidation of American media under Trump-aligned ownership continues at speed.4️⃣ Staley’s Wife Files for DivorceAfter 40 years of marriage, Debora Staley has filed for divorce from former Barclays CEO Jes Staley, the banker banned from the UK financial industry over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. All documents are sealed. “They’re doing a performative divorce more likely than anything else in order to separate their assets so she can control them going forward,” Zev explained, noting that British regulators are investigating Staley’s ties again. Dean didn’t hold back: “Do you know how many women, how many girls slash women have accused Jes Staley of sexual abuse? I counted 38.” With JPMorgan’s $290 million Epstein settlement and more litigation coming, the Epstein reckoning is now forcing the people who enabled it to scramble for financial cover.HERE”S A STORY YOU MAY HAVE MISSED WE FOUND ON GROUND NEWS:Saudi Arabia's oil officials are privately projecting crude could spike to $180 a barrel if the Iran war's disruption of energy supplies persists past April, according to the Wall Street Journal. Oil is already above $110 with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial traffic. Economists surveyed by the Journal put the probability of a global recession at 50 percent if prices reach $138. Don’t miss another story like this. Fivestack viewers get 40% at groundnews.com/fivestack3️⃣ Epstein’s Lawyer: “I Knew Nothing”Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein’s personal attorney for decades and co-executor of his estate, sat before the House Oversight Committee and told Congress under oath that he had “no knowledge whatsoever” of Epstein’s crimes. His name is on NDAs covering payments totaling up to $280 million to victims. He signed off on settlements during the estate process. And yet he claims he knew nothing. “This isn’t perjury. This is flat out lying,” Dean said. “Just flat out lying about what this man helped Jeffrey Epstein get away with for 20 years.” Congressman David Min, a former law professor, said after the hearing that Indyke likely perjured himself “over and over and over again,” revealing that Indyke couldn’t explain $725,000 in structured cash withdrawals designed to avoid federal reporting, that multiple women described him helping them with apartments and immigration issues, and that he reportedly told women not to talk to police. The FBI and Department of Justice had never even interviewed Indyke before this deposition.2️⃣ Trump Ally Weaponized ICE Against His ExThe New York Times reported that Paolo Zampolli, the man who introduced Donald Trump to Melania and a figure in the Epstein files, used his White House connections to get ICE to detain and deport the mother of his child during a custody battle. Zampolli reached out to top ICE official David Venturella, who personally called the Miami office to ensure agents picked up Amanda Ungaro before she was released on bail. Dean laid out the deeper connection: Zampolli was recruited into the modeling world by Jean-Luc Brunel, Epstein’s associate who died in a French jail. He brought Melania into the Epstein world and is now serving as a presidential special envoy with what amounts to diplomatic cover. “Every single person around Donald Trump that is impugned by the Epstein files has been given some type of cover,” Zev noted, connecting the pattern of Trump surrounding himself with compromised figures from both the Epstein and Russia networks.Ice Detains 7-Year-Old Canadian GirlAlso on today's show: Dean broke the story of Ayala Lucas, a seven-year-old Canadian girl with autism currently being held by ICE at the Rio Grande Valley Central Processing Center near McAllen, Texas. Her mother, Tanya Warner, is a Canadian citizen from British Columbia who had been living legally in the United States for five years with a Texas driver's license, a work visa, and a green card. The family was crossing the border legally when agents took her inside for routine fingerprinting and never let her out. Ayala has been subjected to 24-hour lights, noise, and overcrowding — sensory chaos that an autistic child cannot process. She is one of at least 40 Canadian children currently in ICE detention. "Get this young girl home," Dean said, calling on the Canadian government to intervene. "As a father, this thing crushed me."1️⃣ Trump and Bibi: Boots on the GroundThree weeks into a war Congress never authorized, the United States is deploying ground forces to the Middle East. The USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group departed San Diego March 18th carrying 2,500 Marines and 20 F-35B fighter jets. Trump admitted he killed Iran’s entire leadership and now has no negotiating partner, saying “there’s no one to talk to” and then adding “I like that.” Netanyahu appeared publicly and confirmed a ground component is necessary, telling reporters “you can’t do revolutions from the air.” Dean connected the escalation directly to the Epstein cover-up: “If you wanted to know how serious Donald Trump is about getting out from underneath this whole pedophile conversation, he’s willing to sacrifice 8,000 men and women.” Zev tied the thread tighter: “Epstein worked for Israel and Epstein worked for Russia. The fact that we are at war at the behest of Bibi Netanyahu is important because the reason Donald Trump is in power is partially because of Jeffrey Epstein.”The through line across all five stories is the same network protecting itself, whether through media consolidation, performative divorces, perjury before Congress, weaponizing federal agencies, or launching unauthorized wars.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Lev Parnas, Ellie Leonard, Cat: Poli-Psych, Dee Batiste, "Sushi"(Jen) of MIND HAVEN, 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — FiveStack viewers get 40% off. Click the button below to access the discount.5️⃣ Trump’s Pearl Harbor Clanger Donald Trump invoked the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor at a White House press conference Thursday — while Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stood beside him. A Japanese reporter asked why the U.S. didn’t warn allies before attacking Iran. Trump’s response: “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Takaichi had arrived bearing 250 cherry trees as a gift and hoping to strengthen the alliance. Instead she got a reminder of the most painful chapter in the relationship. “She brought 250 cherry trees. He brought 1941,” Dean said. “There’s probably nothing worse you could do than mention Pearl Harbor next to the Japanese Prime Minister.” Trump needs Takaichi to send naval vessels to the Strait of Hormuz. Japanese media is playing the clip on a loop. Decades of diplomatic bridge-building between the two countries — Obama at Hiroshima, Abe at Pearl Harbor — undone in 30 seconds for a punchline.4️⃣ $200 Billion for IranPentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Congress Thursday for $200 billion in additional war funding on top of the existing $1 trillion defense budget. “It takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth said. The U.S. has struck over 7,000 targets in Iran with no end date in sight. Even Republican Sen. Roger Marshall called the figure “a little tall.” HERE’S THE HEADLINE WE WOULD HAVE MISSED WITHOUT GROUND NEWS:This story is getting 60% right-wing coverage — if you consume left-leaning media, you’re probably not seeing it. Iranian lawmakers are moving to impose tolls and taxes on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declared that maritime traffic “will not return to its pre-war status.” Tehran lawmaker Somayeh Rafiei said countries must pay taxes for strait transit. The $200 billion war just got more expensive. Find this story and thousands more at groundnews.com/fivestack — 40% off.3️⃣ Joe Kent’s Bombshells on TuckerFormer National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent sat down with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night for his first public interview since resigning over the Iran war, while the FBI investigates him for alleged classified leaks. Kent told Carlson there was no U.S. intelligence supporting an imminent threat from Iran — confirming what the ODNI’s own worldwide threat assessment says. He described Israeli officials bypassing U.S. intelligence channels to go directly to policymakers, shifting the red line from “no nuclear weapon” to “no enrichment at all,” killing any possibility of a deal. Kent also connected the war to the unresolved murder of Charlie Kirk, saying his NCTC found leads suggesting a potential foreign nexus to the assassination that the FBI and DOJ shut down. “This is a guy who was sitting in the DNI’s office, seeing all the intelligence, saying there’s no real threat from Iran,” Zev said. Lev Parnas added: “The most important thing is the timing — it had nothing to do with imminent threat. It had to do with Russia and Israel.”2️⃣ Gabbard Contradicts Trump, RFK on the RopesDNI Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the House committee Thursday, one day after telling the Senate she went to the FBI’s Fulton County raid “at the request of the president” — directly contradicting Trump, who said Bondi sent her. Today’s testimony was strikingly different. “She was basically a lot more demure, did not really answer any questions related to Fulton County,” Zev observed. “She got smacked on the wrist for yesterday.” Dean noted the body language: “Number one, you know when your kid knows he’s in trouble? That’s what we got today from Tulsi Gabbard.” Asked directly whether she possessed intelligence pointing to foreign interference in Georgia’s 2020 election, Gabbard repeatedly deflected: “We are continuing to look into this matter.” Meanwhile, RFK Jr.’s standing with Trump’s inner circle has hit “a new low,” per the Wall Street Journal. A federal judge blocked his revised vaccine schedule. Zev reported that a good source says Mehmet Oz may soon take over at HHS, which may explain Kennedy’s increasingly erratic behavior.1️⃣ Bondi’s Perjury TrapHouse Democrats walked out of AG Pam Bondi’s closed-door Epstein files briefing Wednesday night. She showed up early, refused to go under oath, and then said she wasn’t even sure she’d appear for her April 14 subpoenaed deposition. “She’s got this choice to make,” Zev explained. “She can either protect the president and perjure herself, or she damages the president by telling the truth — in which case she’s doomed anyhow. It’s either jail, perjury, or political exile.” Reps. Dan Goldman and Ted Lieu have formally requested a special counsel to investigate Bondi for perjury after she testified in February that “there is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime” — despite Trump being referenced over 38,000 times in the Epstein files. Five Republicans voted for the subpoena. Impeachment articles have been filed. And today, Epstein’s longtime lawyer Darren Indyke is testifying behind closed doors. Dean drove home the through-line: “They’re all women. Every single woman he’s put out on the ice flow — Bondi, Gabbard, Noem. They are cannon fodder to him.”Five stories. One pattern. A president who invoked Pearl Harbor to justify a war his own intelligence says was unnecessary, while his cabinet faces perjury charges, his attorney general can’t answer a yes-or-no question, and Epstein’s lawyer sits in the deposition chair.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. 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

Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan. 5️⃣ SAVE ACT: TRUMP RIGS MIDTERMS LIVEThe Senate spent today in marathon debate on the SAVE America Act — a bill Trump says will “guarantee the midterms.” It requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, affecting 21 million Americans who don’t have easy access to those documents. It hands DHS — currently under investigation, currently leaderless — access to every state’s voter roll. As Zev reported in his investigation published yesterday, this is the legislative component of the same operation Warner named this morning: DOGE on voter rolls, Gabbard in Fulton County, the SAVE Act on the Senate floor. Sequential steps in a coordinated effort. The V-Dem Institute confirmed this week that U.S. democracy has dropped 22 points — from 79 to 57 — the steepest single-year decline ever recorded. As Zev said: the only thing standing between where we are and a full dictatorship is the elections. Everyone needs to be paying attention this November.4️⃣ THE NOEM/LEWANDOWSKI CORRUPTION RINGThree House committees launched a formal probe this morning into Corey Lewandowski, Kristi Noem’s special advisor — and, as Dean noted, her lover — who served as shadow chief of staff inside the Department of Homeland Security. They want Signal chats. They want contract records. Every contract above $100,000 apparently required approval from either Noem or Lewandowski personally, which is how you run a shakedown operation out of a cabinet department. According to Scott McFarlane’s exclusive, Lewandowski was going around to contractors and demanding 25, 50, 150 thousand dollars in exchange for access and approvals. Noem already told Congress under oath that Lewandowski had no role in contract approvals. Democrats say that’s perjury. She’s been referred to the DOJ. As Dean said: Tulsi, meet Kristi. It’s your future.3️⃣ IRAN: KILLING LEADERS WHO COULD END THE WARIsrael killed Iran’s intelligence minister this morning — the third senior Iranian leader killed in 48 hours. Netanyahu’s stated strategy is to assassinate Iran’s internal security leadership hoping to trigger a popular uprising. His own former generals don’t believe it will work. Johns Hopkins professor Vali Nasr put it directly: there’s enormous hatred of the Islamic Republic, but now there’s also considerable hatred of the United States and Israel. Four million people turned out publicly in Tehran for Larijani’s funeral. The regime is not hiding underground. As Dean noted, Israel is killing the very leaders most capable of negotiating a way out — and Netanyahu has good personal reasons to keep the war going, since it suspends his own bribery and fraud charges. Oil hit $108 a barrel. Gas is $3.84 a gallon, up 29% since February 28. Vance is calling it a blip. It isn’t. This doesn’t resolve before Halloween at the earliest, and the inflation from it hasn’t shown up in any official number yet.Today’s show is brought to you by GroundNews. Dean said it best on air: after watching Sunday pundits spin in circles, going to GroundNews is like a digital wash. The Iran story is the perfect example — U.S. outlets cover the strategic rationale for killing Iranian leaders. Pull up GroundNews and you see Arab press, European outlets, and Iranian diaspora media covering the same war in a completely different register. Same event, different reality. That’s media bias in real time.2️⃣ EPSTEIN’S LAWYER UNDER OATH THURSDAYTomorrow, Darren Indyke — Epstein’s personal attorney for more than two decades, manager of 64-plus shell companies, holder of power of attorney over Deutsche Bank accounts, and co-executor of a $577 million estate signed two days before Epstein died — testifies before the House Oversight Committee. Last week, accountant Richard Kahn confirmed five clients who paid Epstein: Wexner, Dubin, Sinofsky, the Rothschilds, and Leon Black. He also confirmed Epstein talked about Trump “a lot” — and that the estate settled a claim involving an accusation related to the president. As Zev noted, the Richard Kahn deposition video still hasn’t been released. Where is it, Chairman Comer? Meanwhile, AG Pam Bondi has been subpoenaed for an April 14 deposition and faces what Zev described as four separate subpoenas now converging on her — one of which apparently comes with some form of immunity offer if she comes in and tells the truth. She’s been very quiet lately. Jail face, as Dean observed. The financial architecture of how powerful men became subservient to Epstein’s network goes under oath Thursday.1️⃣ GABBARD LYING UNDER OATH Senator Mark Warner opened the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing with a charge: Tulsi Gabbard organized an effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and provide pretext for the president’s unconstitutional effort to seize the 2026 elections. Then he proved it in real time. Gabbard could not explain how Trump knew to send her to Fulton County before the warrant was even served. She admitted she was there “at the request of the president” while claiming she had no idea what was in the warrant — a story that falls apart the moment you ask the obvious question: then why was the president sending the director of national intelligence to a local FBI raid on 2020 ballots? On foreign interference, she admitted by omission — she couldn’t name a single foreign threat to the 2026 midterms, despite that briefing being required by law and requested by the committee for months. And on Iran, she cut the paragraph from her own written testimony stating Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” with no efforts to rebuild — the paragraph that directly contradicts the president’s imminent threat justification for the war. The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. 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

ZEV SHALEV AND DEAN BLUNDELL MARCH 17, 20265️⃣ Israel Kills the ExitIsrael killed Ali Larijani overnight — Iran’s de facto leader since U.S.-Israeli strikes wiped out the upper echelons of the Iranian government on February 28, and by all accounts the most pragmatic figure left in Tehran with the credibility to negotiate. The Israeli military also confirmed the killing of Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force. Zev put it bluntly: “Why is Israel killing the only people that America can talk to? If you want the war to end, you wouldn’t be chopping off the head every single time.” Dean noted that the IRGC, like the FSB, is built to survive decapitation — there are thousands ready to fill every position Israel eliminates. With every U.S. ally — UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia — refusing Trump’s demand to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, the war has no coalition, no exit strategy, and now no one on the other side with the standing or the will to make a deal.4️⃣ Trump’s Own Terror Chief: The War Is IllegalJoe Kent — Trump’s hand-picked director of the National Counterterrorism Center, an 11-combat-tour Green Beret whose wife was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019 — resigned this morning. His resignation letter, posted on X, was direct: “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. I cannot in good conscience support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.” Kent is the highest-ranking Trump administration official to resign over the Iran war. Trump responded by calling him “weak on security” and said it was “a good thing he’s out.” Pentagon briefings to Congress had already contradicted the “imminent threat” claim — officials told lawmakers Iran was not planning to attack unless struck first. The U.S. now has no director of its National Counterterrorism Center during a war, and Trumpworld is bracing for a Tucker Carlson interview with Kent.3️⃣ Kushner’s $5 Billion War DividendWhile his father-in-law wages an unauthorized war across the Middle East, Jared Kushner is raising $5 billion for his private equity firm Affinity Partners — from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, the same governments Trump is pressuring to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz. Kushner previously raised $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund while serving as a White House adviser during Trump’s first term. A White House ethics waiver allows him to conduct private business while advising on Middle East policy. The Strait of Hormuz closure has pushed oil above $100 a barrel, enriching the Gulf states Kushner is courting. As Dean put it, the financial architecture of Trump’s Middle East policy runs in one direction: toward people who are paying Kushner.2️⃣ Trump Eyes Cuba as the Lights Go OutCuba’s national electricity grid collapsed entirely today — a total blackout across the island. Hours later, Trump told reporters it would be a “big honor” to take Cuba. He is not speaking in the American “we.” As Dean noted, he is speaking in “I” — I can take it, I can do what I want, I can have it. Venezuela is already under U.S. control after the military capture of Maduro. Cuba’s energy crisis has been building for months, starved of Venezuelan oil now under American influence and Russian oil diverted by the Iran war. The next administration, whoever leads it, will inherit the bill for rebuilding countries Trump has decided to acquire. As Zev observed, America itself could use that investment.1️⃣ Narativ Investigation: The Plot to Steal 2026 Is in MotionToday Narativ published an investigation connecting what appears to be an operational network to interfere in the 2026 midterm elections — running from the Kremlin through DOGE, Palantir, Tulsi Gabbard, and Russell Vought, and now directly into America’s voter rolls. Democracy Docket reported this week that DOGE has been formally assigned to review state voter rolls. DOGE’s own depositions — aired on Narativ Live the night before — revealed auto-delete Signal, ChatGPT keyword lists used to discriminate, and all government data flowing into Peter Thiel’s Palantir. On January 28, Gabbard personally oversaw the FBI seizure of 700 boxes of voter rolls and ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, with Trump on speakerphone. Narativ’s Epstein files reporting establishes that Epstein introduced Thiel to FSB-trained operative Sergey Belyakov in July 2015 and to Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin in October 2016. Lev Parnas tells Narativ his sources reveal that Putin told Trump: it doesn’t matter who votes — it matters who counts the votes. As Zev said on air: “That is exactly what is happening.” Read the full investigation at narativ.org.The five stories today are not separate. They are one: a war built on a lie, an insider who said so out loud, a family member cashing in on the carnage, a hemisphere being reorganized by force, and an election already under attack. None of this is what democracy looks like.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you This Will Hold, Sushipheliac 🍣🍥🍣(Jen Rust), Kristen Lepionka, Pamela, Leah Anderson, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Before the countdown, breaking news: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, with Trump announcing it on Truth Social just before noon. She plans to work from the White House full-time during treatment, raising immediate questions about who is steering the ship during a war with no exit strategy and a president who spent the weekend threatening reporters with treason.5. TSA Agents Walk Out as DHS Shutdown Hits One MonthOne month into the DHS funding lapse and America’s airports are falling apart. TSA agents missed their first full paycheck and hundreds have quit outright, with callout rates tripling from 2% to 6% and hours-long security lines crippling major airports in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans and Austin. Airports in Denver, Seattle and Las Vegas are now begging the public to donate grocery gift cards and food to federal employees who are working without pay. “This is a father of three that lives at home with his mom, has a full-time job and they’re not paying him to do that job,” as one agent’s situation was described. “What they’re doing instead is saying, be a real patriot and show up and work for free.” The timing could not be worse — this is March break, the war with Iran has elevated security concerns, and the government cannot even pay the people keeping the skies safe.4. Afghan Veteran Dies in ICE Custody Within 24 HoursMohammad Nazeer Paktyawal fought alongside U.S. special forces in Afghanistan for ten years, earning distinguished awards for translating and protecting American troops. He was legally evacuated after the fall of Kabul, had a pending asylum case, a completed USCIS interview, and six children — one an American citizen. On Friday morning, ICE agents in unmarked vehicles arrested him in his Dallas driveway in front of his kids. By Saturday he was dead — the 24th person to die in ICE custody this fiscal year, putting the administration on pace to nearly double last year’s record. “If you think you are safe in the United States of America because you did work for the United States of America, no one’s safe in the United States of America,” Blundell said. “It doesn’t matter what you did for America.”3. Trump Is Losing the Youth Who Elected HimA Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll shows 70 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds disapprove of Trump, with only 51 percent of his young voters certain to vote in the midterms versus 77 percent of Harris voters. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, called the Iran war “so insane” and said Trump had “betrayed” his supporters. But the disaffected youth aren’t moving toward Democrats — they’re radicalizing further right into Nick Fuentes territory, with 31 percent of Republicans under 50 now self-identifying as racist and a majority of GOP men under 50 denying or doubting the Holocaust. “This griper movement is going to be much more violent than anything in the MAGA movement,” Blundell warned, pointing to Tucker Carlson’s embrace of Fuentes and the question of who inherits the party after Trump.2. Six Airmen Named as Every Ally Refuses to HelpThe Pentagon released the names of the six American airmen killed when their KC-135 refueling tanker crashed over western Iraq, bringing total U.S. deaths to 13 in a war Congress never authorized. Trump is now publicly demanding that NATO allies send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz — and every single one is saying no. Germany’s defense minister asked what two frigates would accomplish when the most powerful navy on the planet has already “won the war.” Trump, in a Financial Times interview, warned NATO countries that their refusal would mean “a very bad future.” On Air Force One he accidentally told the truth: “I really am demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory. It’s the place from which they get their energy.” As Shalev noted, threatening to delay the March 31 summit with Xi Jinping may be the one smart move left — 60 percent of Hormuz oil flows to Asia.1. Trump Threatens Reporters With TreasonThe President of the United States said Sunday that reporters covering his war should be charged with treason — which carries a minimum of five years in federal prison and a maximum of life. In a 400-word Truth Social rant, Trump accused the media of spreading Iranian propaganda and said outlets publishing critical coverage “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON.” On Air Force One he doubled down, calling ABC “maybe the most corrupt news organization on the planet,” refusing questions from a female reporter he called “a very obnoxious person,” and declaring “I actually think it’s pretty criminal.” FCC Chair Brendan Carr immediately followed up by threatening to revoke broadcast licenses. “It doesn’t get more Putin-esque or North Korea-esque than that,” Blundell said. As Shalev pointed out, the real treason is being committed by a president providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies through a war that has enriched Russia, empowered China, and destroyed the American economy.THE PATTERNDay 421: Donald Trump started a war, lost control of it, can’t get a single ally to help clean up his mess, and is now threatening to imprison the reporters who tell the truth about it. As Blundell’s father Jimmy used to say: you catch more flies with honey than you do with s**t. And never beat the horses you’re trying to win the race with.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Ellie Leonard, Caro Henry, Robin Payes, Pamela, Don't Stop Me Now - TLawrence, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ DOJ Pregames the Midterm StealThe Justice Department has sued 29 states and Washington D.C. demanding unredacted voter rolls — driver’s licenses, partial Social Security numbers, all of it. They’ve lost in California, Michigan, and Oregon. Now they’re appealing. And buried in those emergency motions is the sentence that tells you exactly what this is really about: “Absent a final court determination on this matter, there is no other process to ensure a fair election in 2026.” They don’t need to win the lawsuits. They need the language. Lose the case, keep the quote, question the midterms in November. As Dean put it, Trump is “deathly afraid” of what the polls are already showing — and this is what fear looks like when it has lawyers.4️⃣ Marines to the StraitDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the Strait of Hormuz. Up to 2,500 Marines, ships, jets, and armor. The USS Tripoli is being rerouted from Japan. Iran has struck at least three vessels since Tuesday, Brent crude is above $100 a barrel, and gas prices are up 65 cents nationwide. Dean didn’t mince it: Iran has been militarizing the strait asymmetrically for 47 years, they’ve effectively created an “Iran Easy Pass” letting China and India through while targeting American-aligned shipping, and sending Marines into that environment is “unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.” The war was supposed to be quick. It isn’t.3️⃣ Trump Hands Putin $150 Million a DayIn the middle of fighting a war with Iran, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Russian oil. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced it Thursday night. The Kremlin’s reaction was triumphant. Ukraine said it was in mourning. Europe refused to follow. The Treasury Department issued a general license allowing 128 million barrels of Russian oil at sea to be sold anywhere in the world — and Russia is now receiving more than $150 million per day in extra revenue. “It’s plainly obvious who’s calling the shots here,” Zev said. Dean connected it directly to the desperation thread running through the whole show: a patch deal with Russia for oil, Cohen and Loomer weaponized against independent journalists — “it’s the last legs of this administration, of this regime.”2️⃣ Six Americans Dead in Iraq CrashAll six U.S. Air Force crew members aboard a KC-135 refueling tanker that crashed over Iraq Thursday are dead. It was a midair collision with another KC-135. Both aircraft had taken off from Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. Dean invoked Ken Harbaugh and Denver Riggleman — decorated veterans both, and both “beside themselves” over the loss. “My heart goes out mostly to the families of those soldiers,” Dean said. The crash brings total U.S. deaths in the Iran war to 13 — and the KC-135, the circulatory system of this air campaign, is an asset that cannot easily be replaced. The U.S. burned through four years of smart munitions in four days. Now they’re losing the planes that keep the remaining aircraft in the air.1️⃣ Iran’s Leader: Wounded, In HidingThree days after Mojtaba Khamenei was proclaimed Iran’s new Supreme Leader, he has not appeared in public, has not appeared on video, and has not issued a public statement. Three Iranian officials told the New York Times he was injured on February 28 — the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli attack — including injuries to his legs. Two Israeli intelligence officials independently confirmed the assessment. Iran’s state media has been calling him the “wounded war veteran” supreme leader. When the foreign ministry was asked directly whether he had assumed command, the spokesman said only: “Those who have to receive the message have received the message.” Dean’s read: it doesn’t matter. “The regime is not going away. Not going to stop.” The IRGC is layered, the sleeper cells are activated, and the ideology doesn’t require a functioning figurehead. The U.S. declared war on a country of 93 million people that has been preparing for this for 47 years — and nobody told Trump that.Before all of it — a note on what’s happening to this show. Michael Cohen went on Rumble with Lara Trump and announced a podcast with Laura Loomer. The same week, coordinated accounts seeded the FiveStack community trying to turn the hosts against each other. Different messages to different people. Classic friction operation. Dean addressed it directly: “There is no DM that’s going to get between us.” Zev: “This is a place where people can talk about things they care about — and if you’re here to throw us off our game, we’re going to ban you.” The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Lev Parnas, Ellie Leonard, This Will Hold, Centered America, Cat: Poli-Psych, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ DOGE Bros Can’t Define DEI Under OathViral deposition clips this week showed DOGE staffers testifying under oath about how they gutted America’s government — and it was worse than anyone imagined. A GSA-embedded staffer admitted the team used ChatGPT to generate a “Yes/No DEI?” column to decide which National Endowment for the Humanities grants to kill, then wiped their tracks by conducting all communications on Signal, the encrypted app banned on government devices. “They relied on AI that was given to them,” Dean said, pointing out they couldn’t do the job they were hired to do without a deep understanding of the programs they destroyed. In one exchange that captured the absurdity, a questioner asked whether the staffer could find “heterosexual” or “white” anywhere on the DEI target list — the young man in his college cardigan searched for thirty seconds and said no. Over $100 million in humanities grants were retroactively canceled, 65 percent of NEH staff fired, and Jewish-themed grants flagged and cut. Zev called it a complete failure: DOGE saved nothing on the deficit while causing immeasurable damage to the people who relied on that funding.4️⃣ Trump Hedges on Sleeper CellsWhen asked about Iranian sleeper cells inside the United States, Trump said he’d been briefed and that “we know where they are, we have eyes on all of them” — then added two words: “I think.” Zev zeroed in on the qualifier, asking why the president only thinks he knows, and warned it could be pretext-building for a future false flag event. Dean recalled that just days earlier on the Fivestack, they’d predicted a false flag targeting U.S. interests in Canada — and the next day, someone shot up the U.S. embassy in Toronto. “You can literally set your watch to the Putin playbook with this regime,” Dean said, drawing the line from the executions of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preddy to the Iran war to Venezuela, all justified by the same formula: they were going to come after us, so we had to go first. Zev noted Trump immediately pivoted to blaming Biden’s border policies, wetting the ground so that when something happens, the narrative is already built.3️⃣ Kushner’s Nine-Day Peace MissionJared Kushner was quietly appointed Special Envoy for Peace on February 19. Nine days later, Trump launched a war on Iran. Zev called him the most financially conflicted person in the history of the U.S. presidency — billions from the Saudis through Affinity Partners, huge payments from Leon Black’s Apollo while he was in the White House, and a relationship with Netanyahu that goes back to childhood, when the Israeli prime minister used to sleep in Kushner’s bedroom during visits to the family home. Dean laid out the real architecture: the appointment gave Kushner government immunity, shielding him from prosecution as a private citizen taking foreign money. CREW sent a letter this week demanding Kushner file his legally required financial disclosure within 30 days of his appointment — a deadline he’s expected to miss because, as Zev put it, filing would show exactly how much he stands to gain from the war he was supposed to prevent.2️⃣ Oil Hits $100 — Largest Disruption EverThe International Energy Agency said it in plain language: the Iran war has caused the largest supply disruption in the history of global oil markets. Twenty million barrels a day used to pass through the Strait of Hormuz; the IEA now calls it a trickle. Dean reported three supertankers sinking and on fire in the strait as they spoke. Thirty-two IEA member states agreed to release 400 million barrels from strategic reserves — the biggest coordinated release ever — and it didn’t stop the climb to $100 a barrel. Even Lindsey Graham acknowledged the U.S. has run out of ammunition, something Dean noted didn’t happen at the end of World War II. Meanwhile, Trump told crowds the Strait of Hormuz is in fine condition and declared victory.1️⃣ Khamenei Promises EscalationTrump stood in front of a crowd in Kentucky and declared “we won” — then in the same speech said “we don’t want to leave early, we’ve got to finish the job.” Hours later, Iran’s new supreme leader answered him. Mojtaba Khamenei, whose wife, sister, and niece were killed in the February 28 opening strikes, issued his first statement: the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, every U.S. base in the region will be attacked, and the Axis of Resistance fights on. Dean warned the situation is far worse than the administration admits, pointing to 93 million Iranians, tens of thousands of Shahed drones and missiles still in storage, and an asymmetric insurgency that hasn’t even begun. U.S. intelligence assessments completed after the war started found absolutely no sign of the regime weakening — the opposite, in fact, as the bombing has only hardened public support. “Donald Trump hasn’t just put you in danger in the interim,” Dean said. “9/11 might be light work compared to what we might see over the next several years.”The through-line: an administration that uses AI and banned apps to gut institutions without accountability, builds false-flag pretexts while blaming Biden, hands immunity to the most compromised man in government, and declares victory in a war its own intelligence says is nowhere close to over — all while Americans face generational consequences they haven’t begun to understand.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Nick Paro, Amy Gabrielle, Caro Henry, Karen Gordon, Jude T Conway, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ Kahn Names Epstein’s Five ClientsJeffrey Epstein’s personal accountant Richard Kahn sat for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee today and confirmed the names of the five clients who paid money directly to Jeffrey Epstein: Les Wexner, Glenn Dubin, Steven Sinofsky, the Rothschilds, and Leon Black. Democratic Congressman Suhas Subramanyam told reporters Kahn confirmed the Epstein estate reached a settlement with a person who accused President Trump, and also revealed a non-American head of state had financial transactions with Epstein. “This is the very first time we’ve got someone from Epstein’s community going, yep, we paid off an accuser, someone who accused Donald Trump of raping her as a minor,” Dean said. Zev speculated the unnamed foreign head of state could be Putin, noting Epstein bragged about managing wealth for the Russian president and that Russia appears in every corner of the Epstein files. Kahn managed every dollar of Epstein’s empire across 64 known entities for 22 years, yet Democratic members said he claimed inability to recall emails and texts he was directly involved in. Darren Indyke, Epstein’s longtime attorney and co-executor, testifies March 19.4️⃣ Zorro Ranch: Searching for BodiesWhile Kahn testified in Washington, a thousand miles away in the New Mexico desert, state investigators swarmed Jeffrey Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch searching for buried bodies. Investigators arrived Sunday after the latest Epstein file release on January 30 contained an anonymous tip from a former ranch employee claiming two foreign girls were buried in the hills and that seven videos from inside the property exist. Dean revealed that James Comer went on Jesse Watters and accidentally admitted Trump stopped an investigation into Zorro Ranch in 2019 — a confession neither host seemed to realize was explosive. “Why on earth would he stop an investigation into the grounds around Zorro Ranch looking for bodies of possible murder victims?” Dean asked. Zev connected it to the broader pattern: Bill Barr’s Justice Department shut down every Epstein investigation after his death, and those same files are being hidden again now.3️⃣ Trump Lies About the SchoolThe New York Times, CNN, BBC Verify, Bellingcat, NPR, and the Washington Post have all confirmed a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Minab school compound, killing between 165 and 180 people — most of them children at a girls’ school adjacent to an IRGC facility. Trump told reporters today he doesn’t know anything about it, the same lie he has repeated for 11 days since the strike. Dean laid out that weapons experts identified the missile as a U.S. Navy Tomahawk land attack missile, sold only to four allies and never to Iran, and that the school had been separated from the adjacent munitions site since 2016 — meaning the targeting data was outdated by a decade. Zev raised the question nobody in Washington will answer: who provided the targeting intelligence, and was the school strike a deliberate setup designed to destroy America’s moral standing?2️⃣ Strait of Hormuz on FireThree more merchant ships were attacked in the Gulf today, raising the total to 14 vessels hit since the war began. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard vowed not to allow a single liter of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passes. The International Energy Agency announced a 400-million-barrel reserve release to stabilize markets while oil climbed past $120 a barrel — a windfall for Putin that could fund the restart of Russia’s military. Dean reported the U.S. Navy is flatly refusing to escort merchant ships through the strait and the USS Gerald Ford has left the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Canada inked an LNG and oil deal with India to replace what can no longer move through Hormuz, and the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia all announced arms deals with Ukraine for interceptor drones and drone technology — completely changing the equation for Zelensky.1️⃣ Witkoff’s WarZev called it Witkoff’s War: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held private, unsupervised phone calls with Russian official Yuri Ushakov — Putin’s foreign policy handler — on matters of war and peace, with no State Department or intelligence community oversight. On those calls, Ushakov told them Iran was on the verge of a nuclear weapon, a claim the IAEA had already debunked. Witkoff went on CNBC and said “we can take them at their word” while intelligence officials confirmed Russia was actively providing Iran with targeting data. “He’s their handler — there is no other term you could use,” Zev said of Ushakov’s relationship with Kushner and Witkoff. Dean connected it all back to Epstein: “Could it be as simple that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are two of Jeffrey Epstein’s best clients, and they’re willing to destroy the world around us just to hide their perversion?” Zev’s answer: this is a KGB operation from the 1980s designed to destroy America, with Epstein, Trump, and Putin as its three arms.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Robin Payes, Grace Lovelace, Angie T, Leah Anderson, 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

This episode of The FiveStack is brought to you by Ground News — the app we use every day to find the stories that matter. Get 40% off the Vantage plan at groundnews.com/fivestack or just click this button.5️⃣ Iran War Day 11: 140 Wounded, 7 DeadThe Pentagon confirmed 140 American service members wounded, eight severely, with seven dead on Day 11 of the Iran war. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised the most intense bombing day yet while the IRGC vows Iran will decide when this war ends. Former Danish intelligence officer Jacob Carsbo, author of the bestseller “Subverted” and Denmark’s former top Middle East spook, joined the show and warned that Iran has 47 years of preparation behind it. “They seem to believe wars are a computer game,” he said of the Trump administration. “They didn’t even evacuate non-essential personnel at the embassies.” Dean put the real death toll closer to 20-22, saying “this is a regime of unprepared cacostocracists” fighting a war “only for hubris.”4️⃣ Witkoff and Kushner Trapped Trump Into WarZev laid out the Narativ thesis: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner walked Trump into a war that serves Russian and Saudi interests. Witkoff went on CNBC and said “we can take Russia at their word” that Moscow wasn’t sharing targeting data with Iran — while intelligence confirms Russia was doing exactly that. Kushner holds $2 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund with another $137 million payment due in August. “Jared and Steve go to Iran to negotiate in terrible faith because they know they’re going to attack Iran,” Dean said. Zev connected all three threads: America was lured into the war by Russian-compromised envoys, lured into bombing a girls’ school to destroy its moral standing, and had its post-war plan destroyed when the initial strikes killed the IRGC successors Trump planned to install.We checked the Witkoff-Epstein connection on Ground News and the bias meter tells you everything. Trump’s special envoy tied to Russian mob real estate, Jeffrey Epstein’s financial network, and now the architect of a fake diplomacy that trapped America into war — and it’s virtually invisible in right-wing media. It barely registers in mainstream outlets. The only places covering it consistently are independent journalists and a handful of left-leaning sources. That’s the kind of blind spot Ground News was built to expose. When you can see who’s covering a story and who’s burying it, the silence becomes the story. Get 40% off Ground News at ground.news/fivestack.3️⃣ Toronto Consulate Shot UpTwo men fired multiple rounds at the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue in Toronto at 4:29 a.m., making it the 15th attack on American diplomatic targets across five continents since the war began. Carsbo confirmed Iranian intelligence and the Quds Force have been nurturing sleeper cells worldwide for decades, from Scandinavia to Latin America. Dean warned the Trump regime will weaponize the attack to frame Canada as IRGC-friendly, noting Trump called Prime Minister Carney “his governor of Canada” the same day. “This war is coming home to North America quite quickly,” Zev said.2️⃣ U.S. Bombed the Girls’ SchoolBellingcat, the New York Times, BBC Verify, and CNN have all confirmed a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Minab school compound, killing between 165 and 180 people including students at a girls’ school next to an IRGC facility. Trump initially claimed Iran bombed the school, then said he was “willing to live with that report.” Zev raised the critical question nobody else is asking: “Who gave them that information? Because whoever gave them that information knew there was a girls’ school next to the IRGC facility they were trying to strike.”1️⃣ Trump Inc. Cashes In on WarEric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — whom Dean dubbed “Uday and Kuse” — merged their golf course holding company with Powerus, a Florida drone manufacturer now targeting the Pentagon’s $1 billion drone procurement budget. Ukraine offered the White House a $20 million drone defense system seven months ago and was ignored, while Trump’s sons filed the first RFP to supply drones to the military their father commands. Dean closed with Thomas Massie’s revelation that Trump personally threatened to destroy him for pushing the Epstein Act: “Everything we talked about today is to protect one man.”The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Ellie Leonard, Nick Paro, Robin Payes, Angie T, Pamela, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ Khamenei’s Son Takes PowerIran’s Assembly of Experts, 88 clerics in total, did not hesitate for a single minute in naming Mustafa Khamenei, 56, as the country’s new Supreme Leader — one week after a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike killed his father, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with his mother and brother. Mustafa was already considered more hardline than his father before the assassinations, and Trump’s response was to say he’s “not happy with the choice” and that the new leader “won’t last long.” As Blundell put it, “You’ve just put the craziest son of a b***h in the bloodline in power — the bloodline of the people that Donald Trump literally just murdered in cold blood.” The Ayatollah is not merely a head of state in Iran; he is seen as Allah’s representative on earth. A camel herder in Kuwait found empty ATACMS and HIMARS missile containers this weekend, confirming Kuwait allowed the U.S. to fire precision-guided munitions into Iran from its territory. Blundell called it what it is: “Donald Trump has started a generational blood war — signed on behalf of the United States when America has not given approval for this war.”4️⃣ Russia and China Join the War Against AmericaThe Washington Post confirmed what multiple U.S. officials have now verified: Russia is providing Iran with satellite imagery and targeting intelligence on the locations of U.S. warships and aircraft. This is the first confirmed evidence of a major U.S. adversary actively participating in the war effort against American forces. Meanwhile, China has deployed its Liawang-1 signals intelligence vessel to the Gulf of Oman and is supplying Iran with ballistic missiles and the chemicals needed to manufacture them. When asked about Russia’s targeting of U.S. forces aboard Air Force One, Trump said “I still trust Putin.” When asked about China’s intelligence ship, he said “I’m not worried about it.” An estimated 23 American service members are dead, some potentially from intelligence shared by Russia with Iran. Shalev called it plainly: “This is a Chinese-Russian-Donald Trump-Israel alliance to destabilize America. This is treason.”3️⃣ The Western Alliance Is ShatteredThe Western alliance that held together through the Cold War, two Gulf Wars, and the war on terror is fracturing in real time. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Parliament the UK would not join U.S.-Israeli offensive strikes, then reversed course and offered to send two aircraft carriers and 50 F-35Bs to help rotate American forces. Trump responded on Truth Social: “We don’t need people to join wars after we’ve already won.” This on the same day Iranian missiles pummeled U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait’s social security building burned to the ground. Blundell revealed exclusive intelligence that Trump’s next pretext to break Canada is already built around Iran — Canada’s Border Services Agency has been investigating 95 cases involving high-ranking members of the Iranian regime living in Canada, with 28 formally identified as inadmissible and only one removed. Blundell warned that Iranian sleeper cells may have already been activated and Trump will use IRGC networks in Canada as a ready-made excuse to escalate against America’s northern neighbor.2️⃣ Oil Spikes, Economy in Free FallG-7 leaders met Monday to discuss tapping emergency oil reserves as crude prices spiked to levels not seen since the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and walked away with nothing. Brent crude spiked overnight to just under $120 a barrel. Diesel hit $4 to $5 a gallon, strangling the supply chain that keeps the American economy moving. Roughly 400 oil tankers are sitting idle in the Strait of Hormuz while Iran dares anyone to try to pass. Trump’s solution, offered on Fox News: “Some shipping company’s got to have the guts to give it a go.” He then told Americans they should consider it “an honor” to pay sky-high gas prices because they’re taking out a terrorist regime.1️⃣ Trump Locks the Doors With the SAVE ActWhile war rages and the economy craters, Trump announced he will not sign any legislation until the Senate passes the SAVE Act — a bill designed to rig the November elections. Blundell’s detailed breakdown exposed the scope: the bill requires documentary proof of citizenship to register, but 146 million Americans lack valid passports and the bill does not accept driver’s licenses, Real ID, or even military ID. It kills online voter registration in 42 states, requires in-person registration for any change including moving apartments or changing your name after marriage. That last provision alone would disenfranchise an estimated 69 million American women whose birth certificates no longer match their legal names. The bill also creates criminal penalties for anyone who registers a voter without proper documents. Blundell was blunt: “Every single piece of this bill is designed not to suppress, but to gut voters’ rights. He’s coming for the female vote, the migrant vote, the color vote, the poor vote, the old person’s vote.”A transnational criminal organization has seized control of the United States, launched a treasonous war that serves Russia and China, and is now locking the doors so no one can vote them out.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. Thank you J Dziak, Cat: Poli-Psych, francine hardaway, Robin Payes, Niamh Cooper, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

5️⃣ Bloomberg Reveals Secret DEA Probe of EpsteinBloomberg’s Jason Leopold dropped a bombshell: the DEA opened a secret investigation into Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 centered on money laundering, drug trafficking, and procuring Eastern European women for high-profile clients. The probe grew out of Operation Chain Reaction, a long-running investigation targeting associates of the Genovese crime family. An informant told agents Epstein was funding and distributing ecstasy, ketamine, and methamphetamines. Former congressman Denver Riggleman, who joined today’s show, put it simply: “Criminals that crime usually do other crimes because they like to crime.” Dean Blundell connected it to Trump’s pardoning of the former Honduran president, a convicted Sinaloa cartel kingpin, and the administration’s dismantling of OCDETF, the very task force that built the Epstein case. As Riggleman noted, “Whether you get shot on purpose or shot on accident, you’re still getting shot” — the investigations are gone regardless of why.4️⃣ America Begs Ukraine for Drone HelpIn what Dean Blundell called “schadenfreude at its f*****g greatest,” the United States is now turning to Ukraine for help defending against Iranian drone strikes — the same country the Trump administration abandoned. Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer who runs AI targeting company Rig, explained that Russia is providing Iran with specific coordinates and imagery to target American installations, while the U.S. military is burning through munitions firing hundred-thousand-dollar missiles at twenty-thousand-dollar Shaheds. Ukraine, out of desperation, built the world’s most advanced drone warfare capability — and during a recent NATO exercise, took out American troops with drones while the U.S. had no idea what to do. Riggleman warned that AI-powered drone swarms with no humans in the loop are coming next, and “America is not prepared because we’re shortsighted.”3️⃣ Epstein and the Oslo AccordsZev revealed new reporting connecting Epstein to the derailing of the 1990s Middle East peace process. Between the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake and the collapse of negotiations, Epstein made 17 visits to the Clinton White House. The Norwegian prime minister who helped negotiate the Oslo Accords was arrested last week for corruption tied to Epstein. Zev argued this isn’t ancient history — the same network, the same players including Netanyahu, who opposed the peace talks then and encourages war with Iran now, have controlled American foreign policy for decades. “We would never have gotten here,” Zev said, “if the peace talks back in the 90s had been successful.”2️⃣ Michael Wolff: Epstein’s Double AgentInvestigative journalist Ellie Leonard joined the show with explosive findings from 1,800 pages of emails between Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein. Wolff signed an NDA to read an advance copy of James Patterson’s Epstein book — then sent the entire email thread to Epstein. He killed a New York Magazine piece by forwarding the photo editor’s correspondence directly to Epstein. Emails show Epstein telling Wolff about sending something to Bill Barr with the subject line “Mueller” — and Wolff never reported any of it. Zev posed the key question: if Wolff had unlimited access to both Trump and Epstein, was he serving as a go-between for two men who couldn’t be seen talking to each other? Leonard confirmed she’s only through 100 of the 1,800 pages. There’s much more to come.1️⃣ DOJ’s Vanishing Epstein FilesThe DOJ reposted thousands of Epstein files after Congress subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi — but not all of them. Of 53 missing pages containing allegations against Trump by a woman interviewed by the FBI four times, only 16 have returned. The longest interview — 37 pages — is still missing. Leonard described the returned documents as containing details so specific they’d be nearly impossible to fabricate: particular concerts, the population of a small island, a cologne that triggered the victim years later, traceable to the exact period described. Leonard and Zev noted a mysterious “Mr. Atkins,” described as an Ohio university financial administrator connected to Leslie Wexner’s territory, whose name cannot be found in any faculty records.The Fivestack runs deep on Fridays. Two guests — former congressman Denver Riggleman and investigative journalist Ellie Leonard — helped connect the DEA’s Epstein drug probe to Trump’s cartel connections, Ukraine’s drone supremacy to American military incompetence, and Michael Wolff’s double life to the DOJ’s desperate scramble to hide what’s in those files.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Jim Bourg, Robin Payes, Cathy Orten, Grace Lovelace, Andy Collen, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ellie Leonard and Denver Riggleman! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. 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Lev Parnas announced he is running for Congress in Florida’s 27th District, and he joined me on the FiveStack to lay out his case. The former Trump insider who helped build MAGA told the FiveStack he’s the only candidate in any race who actually knows Trump’s inner circle from the inside — Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski, the whole operation. “I helped build MAGA, and I’m the only one that knows how to take MAGA apart piece by piece, truth by truth, fact by fact,” Parnas said. He’s running a grassroots campaign, no corporate money, no billionaires, in a district where Donald Trump himself would be one of his constituents. The primary is in August.4️⃣ Senate Kills War Powers Vote — AgainThe Senate voted 47-53 to reject a resolution blocking Trump from further strikes in Iran without congressional authorization. Only one Republican, Rand Paul, voted yes. Democrat John Fetterman voted no. It’s the eighth failed war powers vote since June 2025, and Congress still won’t call it a war. Meanwhile, U.S.-Israeli strikes continue across Iran, a fourth front has opened with Kurdish forces, the conflict is spreading to Azerbaijan, a thousand people have been killed since Saturday, and oil routes through the Strait of Hormuz have been disrupted. Oil prices climbing toward $80 will gut any Republican hopes of juicing the economy before November.3️⃣ Bondi Subpoenaed on EpsteinThe House Oversight Committee voted 24-19 to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi for a closed-door, taped deposition on the DOJ’s handling of Epstein records. Five Republicans crossed over to join Democrats — a stunning break in party discipline. Bondi will be the highest-ranking sitting official to appear before the panel. She either tells the truth, which devastates the president, or she dodges perjury while refusing to give the full story. Either way, terrible optics for Trump heading into November.2️⃣ DOJ Scrubs FBI Interviews With Epstein VictimThe DOJ removed and withheld FBI interviews with a woman who accused both Epstein and Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was approximately 13. The FBI interviewed her four times. Only the first interview was released — and that one doesn’t mention Trump. Three interviews totaling 50 pages are simply gone. There are also unconfirmed reports of another 50,000 Epstein files from the FBI set to drop.1️⃣ Noem Fired, Mullin Takes Over DHSTrump announced on Truth Social that Kristi Noem is out as Secretary of Homeland Security, replaced by Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma effective March 31. Noem threw Trump under the bus under oath on the $220 million ad campaign, couldn’t answer whether she had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski, called slain Americans domestic terrorists, and let her lover run the department. Mullin is a friend of Noem’s and an MMA fighter who will bring a harder edge to the immigration file — but the damage is done. This is the first real loyalist fired from Trump’s cabinet, and the cracks in the presidency are showing.The FiveStack returns tomorrow with Dean Blundell. Today’s show featured Lev Parnas as a special guest.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. 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

5️⃣ Iran War Day 4: Holy WarThe United States is four days into an unauthorized war against Iran and the numbers keep climbing — the actual American death toll may be far higher than the six the Pentagon has confirmed, with embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City shuttered and no U.S. diplomatic presence left in the Middle East. Iran has retaliated against at least eight Arab states. But the most alarming development came from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which has now received over 200 complaints from service members reporting that commanders are telling troops this war is part of God’s plan to bring about Armageddon. Dean Blundell, who grew up in the evangelical church, read one of the complaint letters on air — an NCO describing how a senior officer told troops that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to start and cause Armageddon.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has crusader tattoos and “Deus Vult” inked on his body, truly believes he is ushering in the age of Christ with the world’s most powerful military. As Dean put it: “It’s ISIS in the West. That is what this regime is.”4️⃣ AI Used to Bomb Iran Despite BanAnthropic, the AI company behind Claude, refused to let the Pentagon use their technology for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons — so the Trump administration labeled them a “supply chain risk” and banned all federal agencies from using their products. Hours later, the Pentagon used Anthropic’s Claude AI to help select bombing targets in Iran anyway. Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI agreed to provide the Department of Defense with surveillance access, prompting nearly 900 employees at Google and OpenAI to sign an open letter called “We Will Not Be Divided” demanding limits on military use of their technology. Dean canceled his ChatGPT subscription on air and called for a consumer boycott, arguing that everyone should be running to Anthropic — the company that actually drew a line.3️⃣ Clinton Epstein Depositions ReleasedThe House Oversight Committee released roughly nine hours of deposition footage from both Bill and Hillary Clinton testifying about their connections to Jeffrey Epstein — the first time a former president has been compelled to testify before Congress. Bill Clinton claimed he met Epstein in 2002, but Zev Shalev’s research into the Narativ archive of 83,000 documents shows the relationship goes back to the early 1990s, when Epstein made donations to the DNC and visited the White House at least 17 times. Hillary Clinton stormed out of her deposition after Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert secretly photographed her during testimony and leaked it online. Neither side, Zev argued, is asking the real questions — about the intelligence operation, the financial architecture, or the fact that Ken Starr prosecuted Clinton over Monica Lewinsky while simultaneously defending Epstein.2️⃣ School Shooter’s Dad Found GuiltyA Georgia jury convicted Colin Gray — father of accused Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray — of second-degree murder, the first time in American history a parent has been convicted of murder for a school shooting committed by their child. Gray gave his 14-year-old son an AR-style rifle as a Christmas gift and claimed he saw no warning signs. Dean offered a nuanced take, calling it a “sticky wicket” — acknowledging the precedent while asking the harder question: “Wouldn’t it just be easier to get common sense gun laws passed?” He called the focus on parental liability an NRA psyop designed to blame everything except the guns.1️⃣ Texas Primary — Election DayVoters went to the polls in what may be the most consequential Democratic primary of the 2026 cycle, with Rep. Jasmine Crockett facing state Rep. James Talarico for the Texas Senate nomination. Talarico outraised Crockett $20.7 million to $8.6 million and represents what Dean called “philosophical Jesus, not savior Jesus” — a Baptist who believes Christianity is about helping the vulnerable, not legislating biblical doctrine. Both hosts predicted Talarico would win, with Dean connecting the race back to the show’s opening theme: if Pete Hegseth is the model for what a Christian American looks like, maybe Talarico offers a different vision — one that could flip Texas.An unauthorized holy war, an AI rebellion, presidential depositions, a historic verdict, and an election that could reshape the Democratic Party — all in one day. That’s the Fivestack.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org. 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 FiveStack threw out the playbook today, dedicating the full hour to former Congressman and military intelligence expert Denver Riggleman for a war special on Day 3 of the Iran conflict. Four U.S. service members dead, three F-15Es downed by friendly fire from Kuwait, the U.S. Embassy hit, nine countries under Iranian attack — and an administration that, as Riggleman put it, is “confused and incompetent” with no day-after plan. Riggleman, who tracked Qasem Soleimani in 2006-2007 as an F-15E intelligence officer and ran the Counter-ID Operations Integration Center monitoring Iranian EFP supply chains, brought firsthand expertise that cut through the noise.5️⃣ The Quagmire Is RealRiggleman laid out why this war has no exit strategy. The CIA warned Trump directly that killing Khamenei wouldn’t lead to regime collapse, but sycophants told him it would be like Venezuela — quick and easy. “You can’t topple a movement,” Riggleman said, pointing to 93 million Iranians, Hezbollah networks across the region, and Iranian sleeper cells that have been preparing since 1979. Dean drove the point home after Riggleman departed: Trump is “bucket listing” as a dying president who doesn’t care about consequences, standing at a podium saying “I don’t get bored” while stumbling through sentences.4️⃣ Draft EO 14248: Nationalizing ElectionsThe bombshell of the show was Riggleman’s analysis of a 17-page draft executive order on election interference. He traced the conspiracy pipeline from 2016 Stop the Steal through Italian satellites, Chinese servers, German server farms, Hammer and Scorecard, EO 13848, the December 18 White House meeting with Patrick Byrne, Michael Flynn, and Sidney Powell — all the way to the current draft order. “This is absolutely nationalizing elections,” Riggleman warned, noting the order targets specific swing counties, not all 50 states. With Texas primaries tomorrow serving as a bellwether for 2026, the timing is not coincidental.3️⃣ Three Reasons for WarRiggleman offered the sharpest framework for understanding why this war happened: election manipulation and rationalization for seizing election infrastructure, personal enrichment for Trump, MBS, and Netanyahu — including the Qatar jet, Air Force One billing, real estate deals, and Kushner’s Saudi connections — and cratering poll numbers, since wars historically boost presidential approval. MBS wants geographic control and oil dominance, Netanyahu wants a regional rival eliminated, and Trump needs a distraction. Dean added that Trump has now launched 626 bombing sorties on seven countries, three of which the United States has never attacked, timed precisely to Epstein developments and bad polling.2️⃣ The Missing Epstein TranscriptsFive days after James Comer promised the Clinton Epstein deposition transcripts within 24 hours, they still haven’t been released. The videos haven’t been released. As Zev noted in the closing, the question remains: why aren’t we hearing from Bill and Hillary Clinton directly, in unedited testimony, about what they said about Donald Trump? The Iran war conveniently buried that story, and as Dean’s data shows, you can set your watch to Trump’s distraction wars.1️⃣ Sabotage — The Anthem for 2026Dean closed with a moment that stopped the show — reading the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” lyrics and connecting them to exactly what’s happening in America. “Scheming on a thing, that’s a mirage. I’m trying to tell you now, it’s sabotage.” Written in 1994 by three Jewish rappers from Brooklyn who understood the government wasn’t their friend, the song maps perfectly onto 2026: the mirage of manufactured crisis, the push of a button to shut you up, the Watergate-level political interference. Zev connected it to the Iran-Contra playbook — sponsoring both sides of a war to control the outcome while using crisis for domestic policy influence. Putin’s playbook. Same sabotage, new century.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Lev Parnas, Ellie Leonard, Brodee Myers-Cooke, Cat: Poli-Psych, Cathy R. Payne, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Today’s show opened with breaking news: former President Bill Clinton testifying under oath before the House Oversight Committee at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center. Clinton’s opening statement — “I saw nothing and I did nothing wrong” — set the stage for what Zev called “one of the most important days in the Epstein investigation,” noting that Epstein likely targeted Clinton as an intelligence asset and even claimed credit for setting up the Clinton Global Initiative.5️⃣ The Epstein Network Is CrumblingThe walls are closing in on the Epstein network globally. World Economic Forum CEO Borj Brande resigned after it emerged he attended three dinners with Epstein. The Telegraph ran a headline about Ariane de Rothschild pleading “don’t leave me over Epstein” — the same Rothschild family whose Edmond de Rothschild bank signed a $25 million contract with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company in 2015. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, was also in the spotlight after photos surfaced showing him on Epstein’s island with metadata confirming the location. “The network is unraveling,” Zev noted, “and it goes all the way to the Rothschilds, who have been connected to Epstein since 1987.”4️⃣ Trump Moves to Seize AIThe Pentagon gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a 5:01 PM deadline to drop safety guardrails from Claude, the company’s AI model, so the military could deploy it without restrictions. Amodei refused. “This is not about national security,” Dean argued, “this is about surveillance and control.” Trump reportedly wants an ownership stake in Anthropic, and the administration is floating nationalization — which Zev called “hardline communism, pure and simple.” The AI wars are no longer theoretical; they are a live fight over who controls the most powerful technology on earth.3️⃣ War on Two FrontsSix countries have begun evacuating citizens from Iran as the USS Gerald Ford and massive American firepower positions in the Mediterranean. Nuclear talks between the US and Iran produced no deal. Meanwhile, China quietly shipped anti-ship missiles to Iran. In a separate theater, Pakistan bombed Taliban positions in Kandahar, Afghanistan — the first strike of its kind. “You’ve got two active war fronts developing simultaneously,” Zev said, connecting the military buildup to Rothschild banking interests in the Gulf region.2️⃣ Media Mega-MonopolyNetflix dropped an $83 billion bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, while Paramount and Skydance offered $111 billion — a deal that would absorb CNN, TNT, TBS, the Cartoon Network, Discovery, and the entire Warner empire. Combined with Larry Ellison’s CBS takeover, where he installed Barry Weiss to turn the network into what Zev called “Trump regime state media,” the consolidation leaves virtually no independent major media voice standing. “We can tell you about the Rothschilds until we’re blue in the face,” Zev said, “but you won’t see that on CNN.”1️⃣ Trump Moves to Steal ElectionsA group of right-wing activists working with the White House is circulating a draft executive order that would give Trump unilateral power to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines before the 2026 midterms. The basis is a debunked conspiracy theory that China interfered in 2020. Dean warned that Maduro could become central to the scheme, with the administration pressuring the captured Venezuelan president to corroborate claims of foreign election interference. The SAVE Act died in the Senate, but an executive order could still strip voting access from an estimated 130 million Americans who lack passports. “Don’t boo — vote,” Dean said, channeling Obama. “It’s going to be so vitally important that we go full Obama in 2026.”From Clinton under oath on Epstein to Trump seizing elections, AI, media and war — Day 38 of the second Trump administration is a roadmap to authoritarianism, and it’s happening in real time.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you Dean Blundell, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Robin Payes, Iulia Huiu, Sue Ploeger’s script to novel, 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

BREAKING NEWS: Hillary Clinton testified behind closed doors today before the House Oversight Committee in Chappaqua, New York, with Bill Clinton set for tomorrow. Clinton demanded the hearing be public, telling Chairman Comer, “If you want this fight, let’s have it in public.” Comer refused. Then Rep. Lauren Boebert broke committee rules by passing a photo from the closed-door deposition to conservative influencer Benny Johnson, who posted it online, pausing the hearing. Clinton’s opening statement was direct: “I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall encountering Mr. Epstein.” She then delivered what Dean called “a stake in the heart of Comer,” noting that the committee held zero public hearings, refused media access, and that not a single Republican member showed up for Leslie Wexner’s deposition. The real question, as Zev put it, is why the committee is interrogating someone with no connection to Epstein while the man with 5,400 mentions in the files sits in the Oval Office untouched.5. Armed Cubans Shot Off CoastA Florida-registered speedboat carrying ten armed Cuban nationals opened fire on the Cuban Coast Guard about a mile off the coast, seriously injuring the commander. Cuban forces returned fire, killing four and wounding six. They seized assault rifles, body armor, and Molotov cocktails. Dean, who broke the story on his Substack, raised the Gulf of Tonkin comparison, pointing to a pattern of incursions including an incident where Americans planted a flag on a Mexican beach from Elon Musk’s Space City. “They are actively trying to start a war with Cuba,” Dean said, noting the Trump administration’s oil embargo has already crippled the island. Rubio said he didn’t have enough information, which Dean found hard to believe from the Cuban-American Secretary of State who has openly pushed Cuba as the next target.4. Trump Juicing the EconomyMortgage rates fell below 6% for the first time in three years, and Trump took credit at the State of the Union. What he didn’t mention: he ordered Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy $200 billion in mortgage-backed bonds to push rates down. “That’s not a free market move,” Zev explained. “He’s doing this only to win the next elections. It’s one of the first signs we’re seeing of him juicing the market to get the economy humming so he can win in November.” Dean compared it to Ontario’s premier handing out cheap booze and rebate checks before elections. “It’s just another cooked up bribe,” Dean said, while warning that it actually works and Democrats shouldn’t assume November is in the bag.3. Trump Plans Election EmergencyA Washington Post exclusive revealed that pro-Trump activists coordinating with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order declaring a national emergency over elections, claiming China interfered in 2020. The order would let Trump ban mail ballots and voting machines by executive fiat, bypassing Congress and the Constitution. The SAVE Act died in the Senate, so this is Plan B. Dean imagined a bingo wheel in the White House spinning through countries to blame: Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Italy, Iran, and now China. “The Chinese had no interest in helping Biden get elected in 2020,” Zev noted, pointing out that China rolls out the red carpet for Trump, not his opponents. Combined with the mortgage rate manipulation, these two stories reveal Trump’s full midterm strategy: juice the economy and rig the rules.2. Democrats Say DOJ Running a Cover-UpNPR identified more than 50 pages the DOJ withheld from the Epstein file release, including four FBI 302s from a woman who testified under oath in 2019 that Trump and Epstein sexually abused her when she was between 13 and 15. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and dozens of major outlets have now confirmed the story. Rep. Robert Garcia called it a “White House cover-up” and opened a parallel investigation. “Pam Bondi, on orders from the president, took it upon herself and the entire DOJ and the FBI to delete these files out of the public record,” Dean said. “These are 302s. These are victim statements under oath.” The DOJ said it would “review and republish.” They got caught.1. The Rothschild-Trump-Epstein NetworkNew Narativ analysis published today reveals the financial architecture connecting Trump and Epstein. Zev reported that Wilbur Ross, who ran Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice in the United States for two decades, bailed out Trump’s Atlantic City casinos by convincing bondholders to keep Trump in control. Three years earlier, Baron Elie de Rothschild personally endorsed Epstein to Leslie Wexner. Both men then moved through the same banks for decades. The Commerce Department seat went from Rothschild’s man Ross to Epstein’s man Howard Lutnick, whose photo with Epstein and his two sons on Little St. James Island surfaced during the show. Newly uncovered emails from the Epstein files show Epstein claiming descent from the Ritter von Epstein banking dynasty of 1870s Vienna, a claim accepted without question by the Rothschilds themselves. “No one’s asking those questions,” Zev said. “They’re not actually concerned about the organized criminal ring trafficking underage girls. They’re trying to score points against the Democrats.”The Clintons testify while Trump hides. Fifty pages vanish. The financial network stays invisible. And the committee asking questions is looking everywhere except where the evidence points.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you This Will Hold, Brodee Myers-Cooke, Cathy R. Payne, Iulia Huiu, Karen Gordon, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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

Hours before Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address, the Epstein case detonated on multiple fronts — and the FiveStack brought Denver Riggleman and Lev Parnas along for a special prime time broadcast to cover it all live. NPR confirmed what Roger Sollenberger first reported on Substack: the Trump Justice Department has withheld or removed 53 pages of FBI interviews with women who accused Trump of sexually assaulting them as minors. One woman was interviewed by the FBI four times — credible enough for four separate sit-downs — and only the first interview, the one that doesn’t mention Trump, made it into the public database. A second woman described being taken to Mar-a-Lago as a minor, where Epstein introduced her to Trump and said, according to the FBI document, “This is a good one, huh.” That interview was removed from the database after publication and restored only after Sollenberger flagged it. “They basically covered up for the president of the United States,” Zev said. “And they have no interest in giving us the truth.”Meanwhile, Ryan Goodman at Just Security documented a bombshell buried in the newly released files: five days after Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI directed NYPD’s Special Victims Unit to stand down on all Epstein investigations. The email in the files reads: “SVU has been directed to stand down and that all Epstein stuff needs to go to and through us.” By January 2020, an FBI agent wrote that after the order, “our assumption was obviously that they closed anything they had after his death.” New York was ground zero for Epstein’s crimes, and the FBI shut down the investigators best positioned to reach co-conspirators. “This is a pattern of shutting down parallel investigations,” Zev noted, pointing out that New Mexico’s investigation into Zorro Ranch was also closed in 2019 at the request of SDNY.Congressman Thomas Massie went to the House floor and named three men from the Epstein files that the DOJ should investigate: Leon Black, the billionaire former CEO of Apollo Global Management; Jes Staley, the former head of JP Morgan’s investment bank; and Leslie Wexner, the founder of L Brands whom the FBI internally labeled a co-conspirator in 2019. “Those aren’t the first people that come to mind in terms of rape, although they are associated with rape,” Zev observed. “But those are the first people that come to mind when you come to think of financial crimes related to Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Black, very connected to Russia. Les Wexner, very connected to Israel. Jes Staley was Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend while he was in charge of the private wealth bank at JP Morgan, who funded this huge organization. And guess who else they funded? They funded this man who’s giving the speech right now.”As Trump spoke, Epstein survivor Annie Farmer sat in the gallery as a guest of Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia. She had told CBS earlier in the day: “We’re not going away until the law is followed.” Her sister Maria Farmer, the first person to report Epstein and Maxwell to law enforcement in 1996, sent a statement read on air: “I’m so proud of my sister Annie for representing us both since I’m unable to fly. We are all deeply honored to be part of the awakening Virginia’s cause. Thanks to all whose minds are recognizing the significance of her sacrifices.” Dean drove the point home throughout the broadcast: “That man on our screen right now, the president of the United States, has been credibly accused of or settled 31 different rape and sexual assault suits. And as a man, I have a problem with that.”The show closed with the hosts refusing to watch another minute. “I’d much rather listen to Annie Farmer than to Donald Trump,” Zev said. “This is the night for the survivors,” Dean said. This is a night for the people who have fought so hard to bring this man to justice.” Zev’s final message was direct: “Reply to everybody, everywhere — Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein — because that is the only story here tonight.”The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you John Liccione, ESBC NFL And SportsBetting, Robin Payes, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, Elaine Cimino, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell and Lev Parnas! 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

Lord Peter Mandelson — one of the most powerful figures in British political history — was arrested today at his London home, led out in handcuffs by plainclothes police officers. The charge: misconduct in public office for allegedly leaking sensitive government documents to Jeffrey Epstein while serving as Gordon Brown’s business secretary. Police raided his mansion near Regent’s Park and a second property in Wiltshire. Files show Mandelson shared EU bailout plans, Brown’s resignation details, and government property sales with Epstein, who allegedly sent him £56,000 in return. This comes four days after Prince Andrew was arrested on the same charge for leaking confidential information while serving as Britain’s trade envoy. “It’s massive that we’ve had Prince Andrew and now Lord Mandelson,” Zev said. “This is happening with the permission of the crown. It should terrify everyone involved in this network, especially Donald Trump.” Dean pointed out that Mandelson is reportedly ready to start telling investigators who he was working with. “Two for the UK, zero for the United States,” Dean said. “The walls are closing in — in London. The question is when it reaches Washington.” Tomorrow night, at least 10 Epstein survivors will sit in the Capitol gallery as Trump delivers the State of the Union.5️⃣ Kash Patel Parties at the OlympicsWhile an armed man was breaching Mar-a-Lago and Americans were sheltering in place across Mexico, FBI Director Kash Patel was chugging beer in a locker room in Milan with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team after their gold medal win — the first in 46 years. Videos of Patel spraying beer went viral, drawing fierce criticism. “He spent $250,000 of taxpayer money flying to Milan so he could get shithoused with Team USA and record viral videos,” Dean said. Zev called it “a new low for the FBI director” and noted that Patel found time for political investigations and partying but not actual crises. Trump invited the team to his State of the Union — “because there is nothing this man can hang on his mantle as far as his own accomplishments that makes America great,” Dean said.4️⃣ Binance Funneled $1.7B to IranThe New York Times reported that internal investigators at Binance discovered $1.7 billion flowed from two accounts to Iranian entities linked to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, a designated terrorist organization. When investigators flagged the transactions, Binance fired or suspended at least four of them. Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, and his family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial has business ties with the exchange. “Nobody is doing anything about the profit-taking and theft through crypto, through Bitcoin, through digital assets,” Dean said. “Donald Trump knew that his only way to truly enrich himself and get away with it is to do it through crypto.” Zev connected the dots: “Meanwhile, Kash Patel’s partying in Milan. Nothing to investigate. No crime anywhere.”3️⃣ Cannon Seals Smith EvidenceJudge Aileen Cannon blocked public release of Jack Smith’s classified-documents report, burying detailed evidence of Trump illegally retaining defense secrets so sensitive that senior national security officials didn’t know they existed. Cannon called Smith’s investigation “a brazen stratagem.” Dean called it judicial protection of presidential crimes: “There’s only one reason a judge would say Americans aren’t allowed to see the criminality of Donald Trump — it’s too explosive. And it’s got nothing to do with the rule of law and everything to do with her fealty to the guy who put her in that position.” Zev noted that First Amendment groups are appealing to the 11th Circuit, but the damage is done — Trump addresses Congress tomorrow with the evidence of his crimes sealed by his own judge.2️⃣ El Mencho Killed, Mexico BurnsMexican special forces killed “El Mencho,” leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, after U.S. intelligence helped track him through a romantic partner to a small town called Tapalpa. At least 62 people were killed in the retaliation that swept across a dozen Mexican states — highways blocked, banks and supermarkets torched, Puerto Vallarta locked down with tourists sheltering in place. Dean, whose partner had family on the ground in Puerto Vallarta, offered context: “The cartel lit buses and cars on fire and blocked intersections. The Mexican government has it in hand. Puerto Vallarta is one of the safest tourist destinations in the world.” Both hosts noted Trump’s attempt to claim credit for the operation, which Mexican President Sheinbaum firmly rejected. “All these stories are somehow connected,” Dean said. “There’s an earthquake happening in the world right now. And the people who were in power for criminal purposes are losing it,” Zev said1️⃣ Mandelson Arrested for Epstein LeaksReturning to the top story, Zev laid out the deeper significance. Mandelson’s arrest connects to a web that includes the Rothschild banking family, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and the broader Epstein intelligence operation. Mandelson was found on Deripaska’s yacht in Corfu with Nate Rothschild years ago — and now those same connections run through the Epstein files. “Peter Mandelson was pulled out of the United States because he is so guilty of working with a pedophile network,” Dean said. Zev noted that 17 or 18 countries have now launched independent Epstein investigations. “The Epstein network is being dismantled in real time — in London,” Zev said. “The question Americans should be asking: when does it reach Washington?”Five stories, one thread. The criminals who operated in darkness are losing their grip — and tomorrow night, Epstein survivors will sit in the gallery and watch the president try to pretend none of it is connected.The FiveStack is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The FiveStack is a co-production of deanblundell.substack.com and narativ.org.Thank you This Will Hold, Cat: Poli-Psych, Cheech Previti, John Liccione, Beth Cruz, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! 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