Cagle.com

Trump Targets Mail Ballots

Bart van Leeuwen — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 23:25:54 +0000

TRUMP TARGETS MAIL BALLOTS

by Bart van Leeuwen, Cagle.com

The cartoon shows Donald Trump angrily kicking a USPS mailbox, causing mail ballots to scatter, while clutching a sign labeled MAIL BALLOT RULE. The mailbox is labeled SUPREME MAILBOX at the base. Published on September 16, 2026, the image responds to debates over mail voting procedures and potential Supreme Court involvement in election rules. The visual metaphor illustrates opposition to expanded mail ballot access by depicting physical disruption of the postal system. Trump is caricatured with windblown hair and an open-mouthed expression of rage. Scattered ballots on the ground reinforce the theme of discarded votes. The piece uses the familiar USPS eagle logo and blue mailbox design for immediate recognition.

Beware Of Kash Patel

Rick McKee — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 22:30:50 +0000

BEWARE OF KASH PATEL

by Rick McKee, CagleCartoons.com

President-elect Trump has selected Kash Patel to lead the FBI, a move that has drawn scrutiny over the nominee's past statements on the bureau and plans for personnel changes. The cartoon portrays the appointment as a threat to the agency's independence, using the J. Edgar Hoover Building as the setting for a direct warning about Patel's influence.

Trump's voter fraud hoax

Paul Duginski — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:14:06 +0000

TRUMP'S VOTER FRAUD HOAX

by Paul Duginski, CagleCartoons.com

Donald Trump has renewed assertions of widespread voter fraud ahead of upcoming contests. The rhetoric revives familiar challenges to election administration and access rules. Such claims have repeatedly failed to produce evidence in court yet continue to shape public debate and legislative pushes. The cartoon frames the narrative as a deliberate distraction from actual barriers to voting. It positions the fraud talk as cover for renewed restrictions reminiscent of earlier suppression tactics.

El Niño Fuels Extreme Weather Events

Luojie — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 19:15:49 +0000

EL NIñO FUELS EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS

by Luojie, China Daily, China

A political cartoon from September 2026 depicts a hand labeled El Niño holding a canister that chains together symbols of fire, a hurricane and lightning. The image responds to ongoing concerns about how the recurring weather pattern amplifies natural disasters. El Niño events have historically raised global temperatures and altered storm patterns. The cartoon illustrates the direct link between the phenomenon and simultaneous extreme events. It uses visual chains to show how one driver can trigger several hazards at once.

He finally gets his name on the Kennedy Center

John Darkow — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:52:02 +0000

HE FINALLY GETS HIS NAME ON THE KENNEDY CENTER

by John Darkow, Cagle.com

The Kennedy Center facade receives new lettering citing Donald J. Trump's 38,000 mentions in Epstein files. The addition follows a painter's declaration that the name now appears on the building. The piece frames the reference as the mechanism granting Trump association with the institution.

Laura Loomer and the MAGA's silence on racism

Elwood Watson — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer has never worked in the White House or held any government position, yet wields considerable power and influence due to her close relationship with President Donald Trump.

Most recently, the acerbic social media influencer directed her acidic and racist vitriol toward several prominent Black female politicians, primarily to distract from and denigrate political distinctions.

The list is long. Most recently, Loomer labeled Reps. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive Black b–.” She's also denigrated Rep. Jasmine Crockett, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney Fani Willis, and even fellow right-winger Candace Owens along similar racists lines.

Loomer's putrid vermin is so rancid that even former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing activist who isn't a stranger to negative rhetoric, called it out on social media.

"When will the President and the Republican Party reject her and her hateful racist behavior?" Greene wrote. "They refuse to, which tells you everything you need to know.”

Mind you, Greene is the same person who was the keynote speaker at a white nationalist conference. Go figure!

We cannot dismiss Loomer as some obscure person shouting tirades on the internet. Trump has publicly lauded her work, and reliable reporting has verified her political proximity to him and her considerable influence inside his political circle. In April 2025, she met with Trump at the White House and persuaded him to terminate personnel she believed were insufficiently loyal to him and his larger agenda.

This is the same person who promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11, yet Trump invited her to a 9/11 memorial event during his 2024 campaign. Thus, when Republicans demand accountability for inflammatory rhetoric from people associated with Democrats and the left, they must demand similar denouncements from their fellow conservatives. Holding individuals accountable for irresponsible rhetoric cannot solely be a partisan endeavor.

One of the few accurate things Loomer has said is that stereotypes have a basis in fact. This was evident in her wrongheaded and inaccurate attacks on highly successful Black women. By doing so, Loomer was propagating century-old stereotypes about Black women as loud, angry, and domineering, which came from propaganda during slavery to dehumanize, manipulate, and control. Such reductive stereotypes were further amplified through racially offensive performances and, decades later, mainstreamed in popular culture.

Loomer’s tirades integrate huge spoonfuls of misogynoir, the term coined by Northwestern University Professor Moya Bailey to describe the combination of misogyny and anti-Black racism.

By the late 1960s and ’70s, in response to increasing levels of desegregation, the term ghetto was frequently invoked to describe Black and Latino people as behaving in a “low-class manner.” Often offensive, the term implied stereotypes that characterized them as low-income, unkempt, and lewd. The definition of the term as an adjective and these characteristics were associated with experiences growing up in low-income neighborhoods.

It is sad we have arrived at a juncture where denouncing racism is based on political circumstances. Black women do not have to be short of immortal to be treated like human beings. And no politician should have to consult certain political gatekeepers before declaring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism are wrong and totally unacceptable.

If Republicans cannot say that racism is wrong, and that President Trump should disavow individuals who traffic in this kind of hateful, vile, and bigoted garbage, then they need to surrender any pretense of moral authority. Silence means complicity.

The Republican Party must find the backbone to condemn hate when it comes from deplorable people such as Laura Loomer and others who define themselves as members of their party if they are genuinely serious about being an open, political tent. Case closed.

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Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

The Hula Hoop

Becs — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:45:31 +0000

THE HULA HOOP

by Becs, Cagle.com

Mark Carney, a prominent Canadian figure with central banking experience, has positioned himself at the center of efforts to strengthen economic and diplomatic links between Canada and the European Union. Recent developments in trade negotiations and regulatory alignment have placed renewed focus on these ties, which matter for supply chains, investment flows, and geopolitical stability. The cartoon frames Carney's role as one of active management in this relationship, suggesting both opportunity and the need for careful coordination.

ULINE Founders Funding A Radical Right-Wing Agenda

Peter Kuper — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:40:23 +0000

ULINE FOUNDERS FUNDING A RADICAL RIGHT-WING AGENDA

by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Richard and Liz Uihlein, heirs to the Schlitz fortune and owners of Uline, have donated millions to right-wing candidates and causes. Their support helped organize the January 6 rally and advanced anti-union, anti-tax, and anti-LGBTQ policies. The cartoon portrays their growing influence as corrosive to democratic norms.

Are you too easily impressed? 

Danny Tyree — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“This will be the best feast ever!”

When my son Gideon was seven years old, I won a “value meal for two” at the local Taco Bell via a radio trivia contest. All I had to do was add cinnamon twists to the order, and Gideon trumpeted the “best feast ever” review.

(I can’t quite recall, but he possibly also shouted, “This is the best bathroom ever!” 15 minutes later.)

Facebook Memories informs me this incident was almost exactly one month after the occasion Gideon visited me at work and I pushed him around the warehouse on a two-wheeled dolly as he beamed, “This is the life!”

And Gideon and I share an “inside joke” about an even earlier incident. My workplace conducted a “customer appreciation” event and a little boy meekly asked if he could have a drink from the water fountain. Mischievously, I replied, “Sure – it’s free,” to which the youngster exclaimed, “Free?? Wheeeee!”

So, I have a certain bemused appreciation for people who get excited over life’s simple pleasures.

But occasionally, I go into Shania Twain “That don’t impress me much” mode.

For instance, I don’t get the big deal about open-face sandwiches. My late mother reminisced for 50 years about the open-face roast beef sandwiches at a local restaurant and my wife still has a fascination for “topless” servings of barbecue or luncheon meat, but I tend to channel my inner Clara Peller and grumble, “Wheeeere’s the CARBS?”

Are chefs trying to do a little shaming? (“Get a load of Diamond Jim here. He expects Kraft macaroni AND Kraft cheese in the same meal!”)

What’s the big deal about open-face sandwiches? Are they for people with limited imagination? Are they for semi-suspicious people? (“Good! No used Band-Aid – unless it’s UNDER the meat.”)

Or maybe they’re meant to appeal to people who enjoy eyeballing their meat just a little too intently. Watch out when those folks go downright stalker-ish during a ride in the country. (“Just you wait, Mr. Angus. We’ll meet again. Oh, yes, we will…”)

On a related note, I’m not sure what’s so cool about “thin-sliced” luncheon meat. It tends to crumble all to pieces when I’m trying to count my allotment of slices. But some connoisseurs think it’s the bee’s knees, and it probably contains some bee’s knees in there, too.

Don’t get me started on the people whose whole lives were changed because a parent, teacher, mentor, clergyman, meme, fortune cookie or misheard drive-through conversation convinced them to “live in the moment.”

I’ll admit I let my mind drift while in the motel pool on my summer vacation, but I remain leery. Is living in “the moment” anything like following “the science”? (“We know it seems like an eternity, but it’s really just a moment. Here come your next six jabs.”)

“Living in the moment” is self-contradictory, if you really think about it. (“What was it my therapist told me last week? Oh, yeah: live in the moment. Why? Because I will feel better about it tomorrow. Wait – I’m currently dredging up the past to live in the future! Forget about living in the moment; I need to be living in the booby hatch!”)

*Sigh* Enough of my trivial ramblings. Let’s return to the world of international shooting matches.

Throw in some cinnamon twists, and they’ll be the best international shooting matches ever!

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Copyright 2026 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Pheromone-maxxing fad

Steve Sack — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:19:32 +0000

PHEROMONE-MAXXING FAD

by Steve Sack, Cagle.com

The pheromone-maxxing trend encourages men to skip showers for weeks in hopes that natural body odor will attract partners. Social media has amplified the idea as a supposed evolutionary hack. The cartoon uses a Peanuts-style setup to poke fun at the notion, with Charlie Brown reacting in classic fashion and Pig-Pen suddenly surrounded by admirers. The piece underscores how easily questionable hygiene advice circulates and gains traction among those seeking shortcuts in dating. It suggests the fad is less science than wishful thinking dressed up as biology.

Electric Vehicle Injury Severity

Joe Heller — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:16:33 +0000

ELECTRIC VEHICLE INJURY SEVERITY

by Joe Heller, Cagle.com

Electric personal mobility devices such as e-skateboards, scooters and bikes have grown rapidly in use, bringing convenience but also a documented rise in crash-related injuries. Data from emergency departments show that higher speeds correlate with more serious trauma, longer recovery times and greater hospital resource demands. The cartoon highlights this speed-to-injury gradient without assigning blame to any single policy or manufacturer. It underscores the public-health trade-off between faster urban transport options and the resulting strain on trauma care systems. Hospitals report treating more fractures, concussions and internal injuries as these devices proliferate. The piece argues that the convenience of speed comes with measurable human costs that warrant attention from safety regulators and city planners.

SCOTUS Mail-In Vote Ruling Strikes Podium

Monte Wolverton — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:26:35 +0000

SCOTUS MAIL-IN VOTE RULING STRIKES PODIUM

by Monte Wolverton, Cagle.com

A new Supreme Court ruling on mail-in votes has drawn a sharp reaction from President Donald Trump. The decision appears to restrict certain ballot practices ahead of future elections. In the cartoon, the gavel smashes into the presidential podium where Trump stands, sending papers flying. Trump is depicted with an angry expression, leaning forward as the impact occurs. The image uses the visual of the striking gavel to illustrate the direct effect of the ruling on the administration. The cartoon was published on September 16, 2026, by artist Monte Wolverton.

Zealots, Crooks and Bad Editors are Burning Cartoonists!

Daryl Cagle — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

🔥 Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle. Editorial cartoons are dying even faster than newspapers — and it isn’t only shrinking circulation. In this episode I walk through the cartoons that got cartoonists fired, sued, death-threatened, and replaced by AI, plus the plagiarism and “run it through ChatGPT” scams that keep landing on our doorstep.

👀 The cartoons that started the fights:

01) 🇵🇹 The Portuguese cartoon that helped the New York Times drop editorial cartoons.

02) 🗞️ Patrick Chappatte losing his Times job over a cartoon he didn’t draw.

03) ✡️ Monte Wolverton and the Philadelphia Inquirer Star of David fight.

04) ⛳ Michael de Adder fired over a Trump golf cartoon.

05) 🏫 Dave Fitzsimmons, a Texas classroom, and Governor Greg Abbott.

06) 🇲🇽 My Mexico-flag cartoon — and a formal complaint from Mexico.

07) ⚖️ Shooty (Martin Sutovec) sued by Prime Minister Robert Fico, all the way to Slovakia’s Supreme Court.

08) 💀 Death threats against Adam Zyglis after a Texas floods/FEMA cartoon.

09) 📰 Mike Thompson’s short stay at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

10) 📧 Sandy Huffaker, 10,000+ CAIR emails, and hundreds of death threats aimed at me.

11) ⚔️ Sean Delonas and the Pens Into Swords email blasts.

12) 🏆 Ann Telnaes quitting the Washington Post after they killed her Bezos/Trump cartoon.

13) ⚓ Honolulu killing my Navy / Ehime Maru cartoons.

14) 🇲🇲 Backlash from Myanmar over Aung San Suu Kyi.

15) 🕵️ Plagiarists copying us from Saudi Arabia to South Africa to the Philippines.

16) 🤖 The Baltimore Sun replacing Kal with committee-made AI cartoons.

17) 🎬 The LA Progressive and Turkish YouTube mills running our cartoons through AI to dodge takedowns.

💀 I’m the guy who kills cartoons for the syndicate. These are the best examples I’ve got of why our profession is going down the tubes.

📬 Premium Newsletter (all the cartoons newspapers won’t print):
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🆓 Free daily newsletter:
Sign up at Cagle.com

🏛️ Cagle Cartoons syndicate:
Visit Cagle Cartoons

✏️ Cartoonists in this video: Antonio Antunes, Patrick Chappatte, Monte Wolverton, Michael de Adder, David Fitzsimmons, Martin “Shooty” Sutovec, Adam Zyglis, Mike Thompson, Steve Sack, Sandy Huffaker, Sean Delonas, Ann Telnaes, Dave Granlund, Rick McKee, Kal / Kevin Kallaugher, Mike Lane, Bill Day, Bob Englehart, and John Darkow.

#PoliticalCartoons #EditorialCartoons #DarylCagle #CagleCartoons #Caglecast #FreePress #AIArt #Plagiarism #NewYorkTimes #WashingtonPost #TrumpCartoons

🎵 Music

Theme music by Michael "Buster" Cagle (bustercagle.com)

"Thinking Music" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
CC BY 4.0 license

Chapters:

0:00 Why editorial cartoons are dying
0:15 New York Times drops cartoons
2:40 Monte Wolverton / Philadelphia Inquirer
4:37 Michael de Adder fired
5:23 Dave Fitzsimmons / Texas classroom
6:48 Mexico flag complaint
8:16 Shooty sued in Slovakia
10:21 Adam Zyglis death threats
11:39 Minneapolis Star Tribune
14:09 Premium newsletter
14:51 Killing false-fact cartoons
17:14 CAIR emails and death threats
18:51 Sean Delonas / Pens Into Swords
22:02 Ann Telnaes quits the Post
24:14 Honolulu / Navy cartoons
25:35 Aung San Suu Kyi backlash
27:16 Plagiarism
29:13 Baltimore Sun AI cartoons
32:13 AI theft and YouTube mills
38:21 Why newspapers print only soft cartoons

Watch on YouTube:
Watch this episode on YouTube

Not enough rich people to tax

Tom Purcell — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There aren’t enough rich people to tax to fund what Democratic Socialists of America candidates are promising.

The millionaire next door

When the DSA says "tax the rich," they want us to think of guys like Thurston Howell III, the "Gilligan's Island" millionaire with the condescending upper-class accent.

They want us to think the rich have the finest clothes, homes and cars — and gobs of money that can be confiscated to fund their new government-program dreams.

But that just isn’t so.

According to "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, 80% of America's millionaires were not born millionaires.

Most are first-generation affluent. They earned their money by providing some product or service that other people need or value enough to pay for.

We might classify some of their businesses as "dull," say the authors: "welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers and paving contractors."

Most millionaires get by on an annual income that is only 7% of their total wealth.
They typically saved or invested 15% to 20% of their income.

They aren't speculators, either. They invest for the long term.

They wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority drive the current-model-year automobile. Only a minority lease motor vehicles.

"You probably don't see them around much,” write the authors. “Nearly two-thirds work between 45 and 55 hours per week.”

DSA: Get the billionaires

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna’s Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on net worth above $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has long backed the same idea.

There are about 1,000 billionaires in the country. Even if you could get the mega-rich to cough up 5% of their net worth — good luck with that — you’d generate about $370 billion a year.

That is roughly one-third of the $1 trillion Washington already pays in interest on a $40 trillion debt — a drop in the bucket.

That is why taxing the billionaires usually turns into taxing the millionaires, which then turns into taxing us all.

New York case study

Socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani understands that concept better than most.

He wants a 2-point city surcharge on incomes of $1 million or more — roughly 34,000 households — to fund his socialist dreams.

Two percent sounds nominal until you realize it is a 51% increase on the city tax they already pay.

They already pay 37% of all city income taxes -- the increase will make them pay about 47% of all city income taxes.

He claims the increase would generate an additional $3 billion a year — a drop in the bucket when you consider the city budget is already a massive $126 billion.

Interestingly, New York City’s bloated $126 billion budget is about $8 billion more than the budget for the entire state of Florida — even though the city has 8.6 million people and Florida has 24 million.

Mamdani’s unrealistic projections fail to point out that the New Yorkers he is targeting had already been moving to low-tax states like Florida.

According to the Citizens Budget Commission, New York City’s share of the nation’s millionaires fell from 6.5% to 4.2% between 2010 and 2022. Had the city kept its old share, it would have collected about $2.5 billion more in income tax in 2022 alone — while Florida’s millionaire count quadrupled during the same period.

Mamdani’s plans will surely accelerate the trend.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman warns that Mamdani’s “tax the rich” plans will expedite the “flight of businesses.”

Citadel billionaire Ken Griffin says that shifting jobs to Miami was a “direct consequence” of Mamdani’s tax video, which targeted him personally.

Becoming the millionaire next door

The transformation from broke to financially secure is much easier to accomplish in a state such as Florida, which keeps taxes and regulations reasonably low and lives within its means.

Despite this obvious economic truth, DSA candidates want to turn America into Western Europe — high taxes and lots of government programs — even though that model has lagged on growth.

Consider: Twenty years ago the U.S. and the European Union were in the same economic weight class.

Today, thanks to our pro-growth strategies, the U.S. economy has grown a staggering 50% larger than the EU’s.

Personally, I want to live in a country and state that gives every American the opportunity to become the millionaire next door.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.

Social media bans won't help children

Charles Sauer — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Candice Odgers gave both of her daughters smartphones for their eleventh birthdays and even let her youngest daughter use Snapchat.

You might be shaking your head and wondering why she would be so reckless. Hasn’t she read the work of experts regarding how social media damages children’s mental health? Well, not only has she read those studies, she analyzed them and found the case for restricting minors’ access to social media does not hold up under scrutiny.

In addition to being a mother, Odgers is a professor of developmental psychology who has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. Not only does she not think social media is the main cause of children’s mental health problems, she believes laws forbidding children below a certain age from accessing social media “are likely to make things worse, not better.”

One reason Odgers opposes forbidding minors from using social media is that they can easily get around the bans. A study published by the British Medical Journal found that over 85% of Australians under 16 are still using social media even though the government banned them from opening accounts. As Odgers notes, “the more we make it a forbidden place to spend time, the less likely they [children who use social media] are going to tell us what’s happening in those spaces, the less likely they will be to report harms, the less likely we will be to help them.”

Odgers has been working with children between the ages of 10 and 14 since 2008. A large portion of her work involves examining their social media use to see how they spend their time online and how it affects things like their sleep and exercise. Her research and the research of others has convinced her social media plays a small role in the recent increase in the number of children experiencing mental health issues. Odgers identifies several factors more likely to cause childhood mental health issues then social media, such as “the recession, rising adult mental health issues, the Covid pandemic and, in the U.S., opioid addiction.”

Social media may have actually helped children avoid depression and other problems during the Covid lockdowns by providing them with a way to keep in touch with their peers. Odgers also points out that, instead of causing young girls to become depressed, many girls turn to social media to help them deal with existing depression. Odgers also points out many victims of cyberbullying are also bullied offline. These facts back up her contention that social media “is one of the least influential factors” in teen depression.

Those who advocate banning children from social media claim children do not spend enough face-to-face time with their peers. This claim has been debunked by a University of Florida study which found that children with smartphones are more likely to use FaceTime, allowing them to interact more with their friends than children without smartphones. The study did find teenagers who regularly post on social media suffer from depression and sleep deprivation. However, the solution to problems caused by excessive social media use is not legislation. A child’s access to social media should be controlled by those who know child best, their parents.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools available to help parents control their children’s online access. Every major social media platform, gaming site, and search engine offers parental controls. There are also products that allow parents to monitor and control their child’s online activities, as well as cellphones that only allow users to talk and text.

Odgers is not motivated by a libertarian commitment to limited government and free markets. She favors increased government spending funded “with a big old tax on tech" to, among other things, construct improved “communities and physical spaces for children to play and learn.”

When it comes to social media effects on children, the research shows the negative effects are grossly exaggerated while the benefits are often overlooked. She may not be a libertarian, but her fact-based conclusions regarding what politicians should do regarding children’s usage of social media will warm the hearts of all libertarians (and Seinfeld fans) – the politicians should do nothing.

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Copyright 2026 Charles Sauer, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Charles Sauer is the president of the Market Institute and the author of “Profit Motive” Sauer can be reached at charles@marketinstitute.org.

Well, well, weddings

Alexandra Paskhaver — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A wedding is when two people celebrate their love by financially ambushing everyone they know.

I have not attended many weddings. In part, this is because I never know what to give the bride and groom apart from a toaster worth more than my college education, so I generally refuse invitations.

Besides, the bride’s rich friends can probably buy her better toasters, toasters that not only heat bread to the perfect shade of caramelized brown, but also recite poetry, file taxes, and write humor columns.

The groom’s friends will buy him something practical, like a used convertible with leather seats, then immediately drive it cross-country to the wedding with the roof up while it’s raining.

This is actually useful. It psychologically prepares the car for the torments it will later endure as a vehicle for small children.

So I don’t like giving wedding gifts. Frankly, I don’t think I’ll enjoy receiving them either, whenever I get hitched. There are only so many convincing ways to express delight over a meat thermometer.

“Oh wow,” you have to say. “Now I can finally determine whether my chicken has achieved a safe internal temperature.”

Nobody has ever said this sincerely.

Most wedding gifts seem designed for a fictional couple from the 1750s. People hand you gravy boats, decorative bowls, and devices whose sole purpose appears to be turning one food into a slightly smaller food.

I once saw a machine that slices bananas lengthwise.

Not once in human history has somebody cried out, “If only this banana were flatter.”

Despite the fact that I have attended a grand total of three weddings, I have never once tried wedding cake. This I consider a personal failure.

I don’t stay through the whole wedding. I tend to get tired around 10 p.m. and crash. Not the wedding. Usually into a pile of coats.

This is well before the cake is served, of course.

No, it is an established fact that wedding cake can only be brought out once the guests are too exhausted to defend themselves.

By morning, it has already been used to inflict head injuries, prop up wobbly chairs, patch drywall, and possibly settle minor legal disputes.

So I’ve never tried it. I imagine it tastes quite good. Maybe like fruitcake, another dessert famous for being used as a projectile.

The only people who seem to enjoy weddings are the fathers-in-law.

Not the mothers-in-law. They’re busy thinking up new and creative ways to hate their new child-in-law for ever daring to get married to their darling baby.

But the fathers-in-law are chilling. Perhaps they’ve discovered they share a fondness for the same brand of pale ale. They can commiserate over 401ks and lawn-mowing duties.

They can even admit to each other that deep down, they’ve always liked the family dog just a touch more than their kids.

Deep down, I, too, have loved family dogs more than anyone I’ve seen get married.

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Copyright 2026 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out. Feel free to contact her at alexandra.paskhaver@gmail.com

How 9/11 changed all Americans alive at the time

Christine Flowers — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When a good friend asked me to speak at the 9/11 ceremony in the Philadelphia suburbs, I told him I was a little surprised he would think of me.

I was not a victim of the terror attacks in any immediate way. I didn’t lose any close friends or family. I am not, nor am I related to a first responder. I wasn’t even in Manhattan, or at the Pentagon, or near that bucolic piece of land in western Pennsylvania 25 years ago.

But then I realized something, something quite simple: We are all victims of 9/11, and we are all in our own separate and excruciatingly personal way, survivors.

Every single person that was alive when the planes rained fire and fury down upon this country has felt its impact. I was three months away from turning 40, so I’d already lived more than half of my life when the first tower fell.

My mother, a couple of years younger than I am now, had been born into World War II, and came of age during the Cold War boom. I had young relatives who were in school, much like the children being read to by President George W. Bush when the planes shattered our sense of self, our sense of security, and forever broke history into before and after.

Every single one of us who can remember that day is marked by it, even if we don’t think that we were. I can go for long stretchesof time without remembering the sense of horror that overwhelmed me that heartbreakingly beautiful Tuesday morning.

I had suffered tragedies before then, and I’ve suffered tragedies since, as we all have, and the rhythm of the days switches back into their normal courses, because the pull of daily living is powerful.

Life goes on.

And yet, without warning, I will be catapulted back into the memory maelstrom, and the faces and the names and the voices come flooding back. It happened the other day, a morning so exquisite with pre-autumnal promise.

I was walking to work and looked up at the sky, and the random thought hit: It was exactly like this on 9/11.

Other times I will be looking through old emails on my AOL account — yes, I have an AOL account —and there will be a message from someone who wrote to thank me about some long-ago column I’d written honoring Father Mychal Judge, or praising our warriors, or asking for attention for the first responders, or defending the Patriot Act, or other things that form a part of that history.

And I know that you, like me, have experienced the same thing, as if parts of our lives back then were packed away into the timecapsules we used to fill as children, and then excavate decades later to see what we were like “back then.”

We were very different, back then. Very different.

First, we understood the concept of war, but from a distance. Our sons had been killed in combat in Japan, in Italy, in Korea and inVietnam, and we knew that deep sorrow.

But we ourselves had never been attacked this way, unless you count Pearl Harbor and the first World Trade Center bombing. The theater of war was always “over there,” as George M. Cohan wrote.

But now, it had come looking for us in our homes. And that changed our DNA.

The thing I really remember is how we treated one another in the days after 9/11. Most of us remember a sense of community that we hadn’t experienced before, and, more importantly, since.

It did not last very long, and even at the very beginning, it wasn’t universal. As an immigration lawyer, I remember some of my clients feeling very uncomfortable, even those who were so Americanized that you only knew from their names that they were Muslim. There was some bigotry and suspicion, which is completely normal.

But overall, we clung to one another like survivors cling to the common raft of our experience, our grief and our resolve. We pulled out our flags, not in some jingoistic way but as a security blanket, a reminder of who we were.

We were more tolerant of political differences, even for a short while, and more humble.

Our allies were our allies, and all across the world there were outpourings of grief and solidarity, even from places we would have least expected it, including the streets of Iran. The terrorists had tried to destroy us, and instead they strengthened us, at leastfor a while.

Of course, the aftermath was complicated, littered with losses and battles, both on foreign fields and in the halls of Congress. Theconnections made in those early days frayed and dissolved.

Children born after 9/11 have neither the sense of grief nor the sense of community that we share.

But it is our job to help them understand what this means, how it changed us, who we now are, and why it is so important that wenever forget. We owe it to them, to ourselves, and most importantly, to those who are no longer here.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

Are voters stupid enough to fall for Trump's latest con?

Dick Polman — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sinclair Lewis deserves a prize for prescience. Ninety years ago, the author of "It Can’t Happen Here" created a presidential candidate named Buzz Windrip who rose to power with an openly demagogic agenda.

Buzz believed nonstop lying was the best way to connect with voters (“it is not fair to ordinary folks - it just confuses them - to try to make them swallow all the true facts”). He played them for suckers, and won. He told them “lowdown crooks, liars, and schemers” were trying to rig the election against him, that dishonest reporters were plotting his downfall, and that members of the “Nordic” race were more American than “people of inferior races.”

And he promised that, once elected, he would give each person $5,000.

I kid you not. It’s in the book.

Surely you heard what Trump said the other day: “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders.”

P. T. Barnum never actually said a sucker is born every minute, but the carnival barker who lives at the White House construction site apparently believes, even at this late stage of his deteriorating regime, that he can somehow sow mass gullibility. Granted, his latest con is probably catnip for the willfully ignorant and woefully naive (roughly one-third of the citizenry), but by now most Americans know he’s running on empty.

Plagued by high prices (from his un-winnable Iran war and his self-destructive tariff war), Trump's merely offering a distraction, a shiny object for everyone to chase. Sending $5,000 to 270 million adult Americans would cost roughly $1.3 trillion, explode the already $40-trillion national debt, and require congressional approval.

It’s all just a mirage anyway. Remember last year when he teased the idea of sending us money from Elon Musk’s federal government cuts? Remember last year when he teased the idea of sending us money from the tariffs he’d slapped on our trading partners? What follows is a primer for MAGA amnesiacs, proof that all he’s doing now is recycling old grifts.

Feb. 2025: “There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens.”

July 2025: “We’re thinking about a rebate because we have so much money coming in from tariffs, a little rebate for people of a certain income level might be very nice.”

Aug 2025: “There could be a distribution or a dividend to the people of our country, I wield say for middle income people and lower-income people.”

Nov 2025: “We’re going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people of about $2000.”

Nov. 2025: “”I’ll be giving back $2000 or so to middle-income people, low-income people, everybody but the rich. It’ll be next year some time.”

Dec. 2025: “And we’re going to be giving back refunds out of the tariffs because we’ve taken in literally trillions of dollars. And we’re going to be giving a nice dividend to the people.”

Jan 2026: “We will be able to make a very substantial dividend to the people of our country. I believe we can do that without Congress.”

Feb 2026: “I’m looking at it (dividend) very seriously. I’m the only one who can do it because I’m taking in literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I can do that. I haven’t made the commitment yet, but I may make the commitment.”

Big surprise, he never did. And you have to wonder why not. After all, he’s been governing this whole time with a Republican House and Senate, so how come he and his congressional supplicants haven’t shared the purported bounty with us citizens (while stuffing his own pockets with $2.2 billion)?

Even Fox News host Laura Ingraham, normally a doormat, asked Trump on the air why he doesn’t simply dispense those $5000 checks right now, given the GOP’s power dominance in DC. This was his answer, verbatim: “Because the Democrats can’t do it. Because for them, it’s negative growth. With us, it’s so positive.”

Say what? He’s more coherent when he naps on camera.

In Ireland he actually uttered this sentence: “I always keep my pledge.” But don’t bet on any windfall for your gas and grocery tabs. Whether his MAGA candidates win or lose in November, it ain’t happening. Natalie Harp gets a dividend, not you. Stormy Daniels gets a dividend, not you.

But you already know these truths to be self-evident. As Tony Soprano warned us years ago, “One thing about us wise guys - the hustle never ends.”

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Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

Hurry sickness: Top ten cartoons of the week

Daryl Cagle — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Why is everything in such a rush?

The pace of news moves at a frenetic pace, and folks with young kids are so over-scheduled they don't have the luxury of an empty day on the calendar. Our phone is pinging with alerts all the time, and our brains are being turned into mush. Doctors have a term for it – "hurry sickness."

Ed Wexler tapped into that frustration in our most-reprinted cartoon of the week, a quiet toon featuring a couple lamenting how quickly the days on the calendar are flying by. Our days are so busy work is invading our dreams, a trend Peter Kuper mocked in a popular cartoon.

Artificial intelligence is the latest threat to our collective sanity, and we had plenty of cartoons this week on data centers. I laughed at Gary McCoy's funny riff, featuring two kids talking about grandpa's data center – a table full of books, which none of us have time to read.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Ed Wexler

#2. Gary McCoy

#3. Harley Schwadron

#4. John Darkow

#5. Peter Kuper

#6. John Cole

#7. Bill Day

#8. Dave Whamond

#9. John Darkow

#10. John Darkow

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com