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 Dodge

Trump 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 Walks

The 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 Billionaires

The 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 ICE

At 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 Lawn

Forty-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