Autopens, Airspace, and Apocalypse Delayed

Trump swaps governance for grievance, Russia tests America’s skies, Sarkozy faces justice in Paris, and science delivers hope where politics refuses.

Good morning! Donald Trump returned from his “Deranged” UN speech, Daily Mirror’s headline, not mine, to a Potemkin reception committee on the National Mall: a spray-painted bronze statue titled Best Friends Forever, depicting him holding hands with Jeffrey Epstein, complete with Trump’s alleged birthday card message about “wonderful secrets.” The installation had a permit from the National Park Service to remain through Sunday evening.

But the art performance was cut short. Park Police removed the statue before dawn the next morning, claiming “noncompliance” with permit terms.

The artist’s representative says no 24-hour notice was given, and that the statue was taller than permitted.

Was it art imitating life, or a silent warning that political satire gets unceremoniously uninstalled? Either way, the spectacle foreshadows a week where Trump is rewriting the rules on expression, authority, and boundless grievance.

Back inside the White House, the Office of Management and Budget dropped a bombshell memo: in the event of a shutdown, agencies are not just to furlough workers, they’re to prepare mass firing plans. Permanent cuts. If your job is in Social Security, ICE, or the Pentagon, you’re safe. If it’s in healthcare, housing, climate, or education? Consider yourself expendable. Shutdowns, once a form of political brinkmanship, are now being reimagined as convenient bonfires for the civil service.

And lest anyone think this is about fiscal responsibility, Trump isn’t hunched over spreadsheets trying to cut waste, he’s hanging a framed photo of an autopen where Joe Biden’s presidential portrait should be. The government teeters on the edge of shutdown, but the president of the United States is indulging a middle-school grudge match in the West Wing. It’s not about money; it’s about spite.

The same lack of impulse control drives his Justice Department. Instead of hammering out a budget deal, Trump is fixated on a five-year-old vendetta against James Comey. Prosecutors are racing the statute of limitations on whether to indict the former FBI director for perjury, a case Trump has been baying for since 2017. He fired the U.S. attorney who hesitated, parachuted in his own personal lawyer, and now hopes to drag Comey in front of a grand jury. It’s grievance and revenge dressed up with a docket number.

At the UN, 120 countries plus the European Union unveiled new climate targets. China pledged a 7–10% cut in emissions by 2035. UN chief António Guterres begged nations to act “much further, much faster.” Trump’s contribution? Calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated upon the world.” His enablers in Washington are now floating the idea that this makes him worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize and even a “climate hero” award. Imagine getting a medal for setting the house on fire while everyone else is hauling water buckets.

France demonstrated what accountability can look like when the courts aren’t run as loyalty tests. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of criminal conspiracy in a Libyan financing scandal, his third conviction. He’s already been stripped of the Legion of Honour, and now prosecutors want seven years. France shows that even hyper-presidents can end up in the dock. In Washington, the hyper-president is the one holding the gavel.

While Trump was busy erasing Biden with a picture of a pen, U.S. fighter jets scrambled over Alaska to intercept four Russian aircraft, two Tu-95 bombers and two Su-35 fighters, cruising near the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. No sovereign airspace was breached, but the message is clear: Moscow is testing U.S. resolve at the northern flank. The American response? Send the jets up, but under a commander-in-chief who treats international crises as set dressing for his next rant about escalators.

Not everything is bleak. From London comes a rare shaft of light: scientists have successfully slowed Huntington’s disease by 75% in patients through groundbreaking gene therapy. Delivered in a marathon surgical procedure, the treatment blocks the mutant protein that causes the illness, sparing neurons and extending independence. For families long living with dread, where a child has a 50% chance of inheriting the disease, it is nothing short of a miracle. “We now have a treatment,” said Professor Sarah Tabrizi, who led the trial. Patients and carers shared tears of joy at the news.

The contrast could not be sharper. While Trump’s America treats science as something to be mocked, denied, or weaponized, from vaccines to climate models to even Tylenol, the rest of the world is proving what happens when science is trusted. Breakthroughs like this show what human ingenuity can achieve when it’s met with investment instead of contempt.

It’s a reminder, amidst Trump’s statues and shutdown schemes, that science and human ingenuity can still change lives for the better. That hope is worth holding onto, even if the man in the White House would rather trade it for a Nobel Peace Prize and a climate hoax medal.

Because life loves a punchline, Tuesday passed and the Rapture did not. RaptureTok went quiet, the sky stayed stubbornly earthly, and the internet sighed, made memes, and promptly went back to arguing about utility bills. Me and Marz, it turns out, were rejected by Tuesday’s celestial sweep and blessed with the far better fate: a day together that includes coffee, mischief, and real human company. If the apocalypse can be postponed, so can sober worries, at least for an afternoon.

If anything this week has taught us, it’s this: governments can indulge their grudges, courts can try to hold power to account, and despots can hang autopens in galleries. But science still heals, art still mocks, and people still plan romps. Hold onto the latter two.