🦈“Shark-NATO” Edition
Vladimir Putin is at it again, now sending a sharknado of Russian drones buzzing into NATO airspace, this time Poland and Romania, likely to test boundaries and see if the alliance still has a spine. Think of it as Kremlin Mischief Night: launch 19 drones, watch NATO scramble jets, and measure how long it takes before somebody decides to actually do something.
Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister, called it exactly what it was: a deliberate test of NATO’s resolve. The drones were unarmed, but the message couldn’t be clearer; Putin is probing, inch by inch, to see how far he can push without getting smacked. It’s geopolitical brinkmanship by drone swarm.
Sikorski confirmed that while the drones were capable of carrying munitions, they were not loaded with explosives. “Interestingly, they were all duds,” Sikorski told the Guardian.
Fortunately, NATO is prepared to respond in kind by deploying its own duds, in the form of the Trump administration’s foreign policy team.
Trump, ever eager to audition for the role of Putin’s defense attorney. He suggested that maybe the drone swarm was just “a mistake,” because, yes, 19 drones flying for seven hours into NATO territory is apparently the Russian equivalent of butt-dialing your ex. Putin doesn’t even need to troll NATO anymore. He’s got Trump doing it for him.
While NATO responds with jets, alerts, and training with Ukrainian anti-drone experts, Putin sits back and watches his two favorite things unfold: the West scrambling to deter him, and Trump rushing to excuse him. One tests the alliance’s defenses, the other tests its patience. And both make it painfully obvious who’s playing who.
KAL - Andrews McMeel
Mike Luckovich - Creators
Lee Judge - King Features
Bill Bramhall - Tribune Content Agency
Chris Britt - Creators
Rob Rogers - Andrews McMeel
Jeff Danziger - Tribune Content Agency
Steve Breen - Creators
Matt Wuerker - Andrews McMeel
The Environmental Protection Agency—an agency once dedicated to, you know, protecting the environment—has decided it no longer wants the job. In a dazzling act of bureaucratic self-immolation, Trump’s EPA is trying to repeal its own authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, effectively telling the planet: “Good luck out there!”
This move would scrap the legal basis for all federal climate standards, a decision EPA officials proudly tout as “one of the largest deregulatory actions in American history.” Translation: we’re repealing the laws of physics by executive order. Hurricanes, floods, and wildfires are advised to take note and adjust accordingly.
The irony? Even Big Oil isn’t asking for this. Some industry groups, normally thrilled when regulations are gutted, are practically begging the EPA to keep its authority, because otherwise, they’ll face a tidal wave of lawsuits.
According to the EPA, this decision isn’t anti-science, it’s pro-freedom. ‘Climate change has been treated like a religion,’ Zeldin argued. And as everyone knows, the Trump administration vigorously protects religious freedom, so long as it’s Christian nationalism.
So here we are: an Environmental Protection Agency that doesn’t want to protect the environment, corporations begging to be regulated, and a government solving climate change by pretending it doesn’t exist. If chaos is the goal, mission accomplished.