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 Brewing

Senate 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 Probe

French 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 Oil

At 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 War

The 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 Dead

Everything 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

NTSB ON AIR CANADA CRASH: CASCADING FAILURES: STAFFING, SYSTEMS, AND STEPPED ON "STOP" ALERT