5️⃣ Hegseth Grilled — “Obliterated” Doesn’t Add Up

Pete 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 Contempt

House 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 Friday

Brent 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 Back

At 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 Shot

The 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