No Peace, No Deals, No Grownups

As the world edges closer to chaos, Trump picks fights with Canada, renames the Persian Gulf, and plans a birthday parade.

Good morning! While Trump parades around the globe renaming things like a colonial mapmaker on meth, the world is catching fire. Welcome to Wednesday.

The biggest news comes out of South Asia, where India and Pakistan are officially at war. Yes, actual war. India launched airstrikes inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir in what it’s calling Operation Sindoor, the first such strike in decades. The result? Pakistan declared the attacks an act of war. Ceasefire: over. Shelling along the Line of Control has resumed, and the Trump administration’s official position is... “We hope it ends quickly.” That’s it. That’s the policy. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio could barely rouse themselves to issue a platitude before pivoting back to Trump’s real priority: branding the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” ahead of his Saudi visit, a symbolic slap in the face to Iran that carries all the diplomatic subtlety of a toddler with a Sharpie.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has lost another F-18 Super Hornet in the Red Sea, its second in just over a week. Drone losses over Yemen are piling up, and yet the administration refuses to acknowledge the scope of U.S. involvement. It’s not a war, just some light military adventurism. Casualty numbers? Classified. Congressional authorization? Who needs it? And the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is too busy purging the Pentagon of four-star generals to answer questions, part of a sweeping campaign to reshape military leadership along ideological lines. At least 20% of senior command roles are being cut, not based on merit or efficiency, but to make room for hand-picked loyalists who will salute the political mission, not the Constitution. The goal is control, not competence. Military forums now mock Hegseth as “Whiskey Leaks” and “Kegsith,” and the nicknames are sticking. But here’s the thing about purges: they often backfire. Somewhere among the fired and sidelined may be the next leader of a democracy-loving resistance, someone who knows the system from the inside and has nothing left to lose. History has a long memory for patriots in exile.

Not to be outdone, the Trump family is back in their natural habitat: crypto grift. Data shows that while 58 wallets, linked to insiders, raked in over $1.1 billion from Trump’s meme coin, more than 760,000 small investors lost money. It’s the perfect encapsulation of Trump’s America: a handful of cronies walk away with bags of cash while everyone else gets played. Trump’s allies in the Senate are now working to quietly exempt his scheme from regulation.

Still, nothing says “stable genius” quite like scheduling a press conference on the 2026 FIFA World Cup while India and Pakistan exchange missiles. At that same press conference, Trump praised his new pick to lead the World Cup Task Force, none other than Andrew Giuliani. As the world burns, America’s bench looks increasingly like a reality show cast reunion.

The performance art continues. Trump has formally directed federal agencies to reopen Alcatraz, citing a desire to house “America’s most dangerous offenders” in a location he believes is haunted by toughness and legend. But the real kicker? Sources now confirm that Trump’s inspiration wasn’t just vague nostalgia, it was a recent Palm Beach airing of Escape from Alcatraz, during which Trump reportedly became fixated on the (fictional) idea that a prisoner’s clothes were found shredded by sharks. That never happened in real life, but why let reality interfere when you’re governing from the AMC late-night lineup?

In Europe, Germany’s Bundestag finally elected Friedrich Merz as chancellor on the second ballot, after a humiliating initial failure that exposed deep fractures in his governing coalition. The timing couldn’t be worse. Europe is on edge from trade chaos to far-right surges to actual war on its doorstep and Merz now assumes leadership with a shaky mandate and even shakier alliances.

That reality was never clearer than during Russia’s latest attack near Avdiivka, which featured motorcycles, dune buggies, and helmet-mounted GoPros. The assault looked less like modern warfare and more like Mad Max: Eastern Front. Ukrainian forces responded with drone strikes and snipers, repelling the bizarre onslaught, but the absurdity underscored a sobering truth: this war isn’t just deadly, it’s dehumanizing. The longer it drags on, the more surreal the tactics and the more distant the global conscience. Western leaders who once flooded Kyiv with photo ops and promises now hesitate over aid packages, afraid of backlash or simply exhausted by the headlines. Ukraine, by contrast, has no such luxury. They don’t get to tune out.

And if the battlefield spectacle is grotesque, the human cost is worse. The Kyiv Independent’s latest reporting on the release of 205 Ukrainian POWs pulls back the curtain on the quiet suffering behind the front lines. Families who had waited in silence for months, some for years, greeted their returned soldiers with tears and disbelief. One mother said simply, “This moment doesn’t feel real.” The freed defenders include Mariupol veterans, captured medics, and teenage conscripts who vanished into Russian custody with no word home. Many returned broken, some unrecognizable. The trauma is generational, the damage incalculable, and the resilience extraordinary. Ukraine may have won a battle this week, but they’re still fighting a war most of the world has decided to scroll past.

Back in the States, Trump’s ICE loyalists took a hit in Coos County, Oregon, where January 6 insurrectionist Commissioner Rod Taylor’s anti-immigrant proclamation collapsed for lack of a second. Public testimony brilliantly exposed the impracticality of his efforts, leaving him gritting his teeth behind a coffee mug as the meeting moved on without him. Meanwhile, in Newark, air traffic controllers are reportedly on stress leave following mass firings, system failures, and mounting flight delays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy responded to the crisis with a shrug, saying, “Scary, yeah. Safe? Today? Maybe.”

Then there’s the CDC. This week, we learned that the Trump administration quietly shut down the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, the body that wrote national guidelines for hospitals on how to stop the spread of deadly infections. The CDC told members last Friday the committee had already been terminated a month ago, in line with Trump’s executive order to “reduce the federal workforce.” What’s a few drug-resistant superbugs compared to cutting red tape, right? Experts warn the shuttering could freeze essential safety guidelines in place just as antibiotic resistance surges, leaving hospitals and health workers to “fly by the seat of their pants.”

Mark Carney’s visit to the White House was cordial on the surface, but beneath the diplomatic polish was a steely rebuke. Standing beside Donald Trump, who once dismissed Canada as irrelevant to U.S. trade, Carney, the former head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, made it unambiguously clear: Canada will never be part of the United States. “Canada is a sovereign nation. It will remain so,” he stated, slicing through Trump’s delusional posturing with characteristic calm. The contrast was stark: one man with decades of global economic credibility, the other rambling about maple syrup tariffs and “the failing loonie.” For once, it wasn’t just the Canadians sounding polite, Trump looked unmistakably out of place.

Meanwhile, in a revelation that would sound fictional anywhere but here, the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to ramp up surveillance on Greenland as part of a renewed push to seize the island from Denmark. Classified directives ask agents to identify Greenlanders “sympathetic” to U.S. annexation goals. That’s not just reckless, it’s a threat to NATO unity. For the first time in history, there’s a non-zero chance the alliance could be forced to consider defending one of its members from the United States.

Trump’s got a birthday parade coming. With any luck, even DOGE might cancel it for being too inefficient, unless they rebrand it as a loyalty drill.