Politics

In Washington, confidence often looks like a man walking off a cliff with a plan in his hand, convinced that history will blink first when gravity shows up.

Russia battered Kyiv with a winter missile-and-drone strike as Canada announced new Ukraine aid ahead of Florida talks, Thailand and Cambodia moved to lock in a ceasefire, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sparked a regional flare-up, and Yemen’s south shifted as the STC expanded while the Houthis held the north.

Most “loophole” gun gadgets blur lines and invite backlash. The Kali Key is different: it mechanically converts an AR into a manually operated straight-pull rifle, shifting it out of the semi-auto category without permanent changes.

From an ambush that wounded three Rochester police officers, to the killing of UN peacekeepers overseas, to US forces seizing sanctioned oil tankers off Venezuela, a series of escalating incidents highlights growing risks for security forces operating in unstable and increasingly contested environments.

After a deadly ambush near Palmyra, US forces hit more than 70 ISIS targets across central Syria in a heavy retaliation strike meant to keep ISIS cells from regrouping. Russia is pounding Odesa while massing forces near Pokrovsk, and back home a Bellevue officer-involved shooting is under review by King County’s independent investigators as both the officer and suspect recover.

Breaking down how neoconservatism and America First both demand a dominant U.S. military, but one aims to shape the world while the other uses power to secure direct benefits for Americans.

Trump’s National Security Strategy isn’t isolationism, it’s a hard pivot toward a narrower, transactional worldview where borders and identity politics drive the threat picture, “Western civilization” becomes a tribal banner, and allies are left wondering if they’re partners or just the next line item to be renegotiated.

America is not collapsing from outside pressure but hollowing itself out from within, trading shared civic responsibility for grievance, celebrity worship, and the comforting lies of a cult that mistakes cruelty for strength and ignorance for conviction.

Switzerland was right to reject drafting women because any society that has seen real war knows you don’t coerce women into the zero line unless you’re out of men, and pretending biology, psychology, and the brutal math of ground combat don’t exist is how you trade restraint for barbarism.

Marines hit retention goal, UK tests laser weapon, Ukraine peace talks gain traction. Here’s what’s making headlines this Wednesday evening.

Mr. Trump has treated his solemn oath as a disposable campaign slogan, shredding constitutional norms and moral standards while his enablers in Congress cower in silence before his vengeful whims.

Trump demands arrests over “seditious” video, Coast Guard shifts hate-symbol policy, and Israel expands strikes in Gaza and Lebanon. Here’s what’s making headlines this Thursday evening.