Dolly Parton left the world better for her having lived in it. RIP Dolly Parton.

Section: The Political Desk · Drawn 2026-08-25 · inkstains.com

A sitting U.S. President has a duty to protect the interests of the United States. And traditionally, as “Leader of the Free World”, that duty extends to nations that border bad characters who have and would still, harm their region and the world.

Kim Jong Un is one of those characters. North Korea’s ICBMs can already reach US soil, and the IC assesses that it is committed to expanding its nuclear arsenal,” said Tulsi Gabbard, delivering the 2026 threat assessment to the Senate in March. “The IC assesses that an increasingly confident North Korean regime remains a source of concern regionally and globally. Its weapons of mass destruction, its conventional military capabilities, illicit cyber activities, and demonstrated willingness to use asymmetric capabilities pose a threat to the US and its allies, particularly South Korea and Japan.”

When Trump buddys up to tyrants and depots like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, he sells out the principles our country was founded upon. At the least, he is a sellout. At most, he is a traitor.

Section: The Political Desk · Drawn 2026-08-18 · inkstains.com

Meta is in federal court this week to answer to accusations from a group of state AGs that it “designed its social media platforms to hook children, lied to the public about the risks those platforms posed and gathered data on kids in violation of the law.” *NPR

Section: The Political Desk · Drawn 2026-08-17 · inkstains.com

Sometimes I got to bed at night with a bit of panic that I don’t have a clue what I’ll be drawing on the next day. During these Trump years, my fears are silly. He’s like Cartoon Manna in the News Desert — Feeding us all with fodder like this! Abandoning the press and others (Karoline Leavitt, for instance) to fend for themselves against the threat of Iranian attack, as he snuck out of Air Force One in an airline catering cart. I wish we had actual photos of that moment! He’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Section: The Political Desk · Drawn 2026-08-13 · inkstains.com

Trump signed an executive order that reduced vaccination recommendations for children. As the Washington Post pointed out, he has no professional qualifications to make such an order. Scientific evidence and PROOF (of which there is plenty of) supporting vaccines and their efficacy, is something that I believe is needed now more than ever!

Section: The Political Desk · Drawn 2026-08-11 · inkstains.com

A new poll published by NPR by supporters of election reforms “shows significant support for upending winner-take-all U.S. House elections. According to the study, the idea of proportional representation (the election of multiple representatives in a single district based on a party’s vote share) has gained momentum. The study said that single-member districting is “failing to deliver fair and representative outcomes.”

We have most certainly see that in recent years as polarization has dramatically increased since Trump first took office in 2016. Republicans and Democrats alike, seem more interested in winning on an issue, than whether the outcome is good for the People.

During the 2024 presidential campaign year, I posted this in regards to the polarization that has become the ‘standard’ in Washington:

Whether or not proportional representation takes hold in coming years, the fact remains that the current system is broken -- And in my cartoon, has failed.

The National Debt will reach $40Billion by next month. That’s DOUBLE what it was in March of 2025 when Trump vowed to eliminate the national debt entirely. It stood at around $19 trillion when he made this promise. Meanwhile, the Trump family fortune has roughly tripled since the 2024 election. The growth was driven overwhelmingly by business ventures tied directly to his political power, including a $500 million investment from a UAE investment vehicle backed by the Emirates’ national security advisor, which sent approximately $187 million to entities controlled by the Trump family — A striking contrast between our national debt and Trump’s wealth gains since he began his second term.

When people are buying groceries on credit, carrying unpaid balances indefinitely* — that’s a big problem. The reasons go beyond tariffs and the war with Iran — though they are a large and unnecessary factor. Drought and low herd numbers (the lowest in decades) are causing beef prices to soar. Feed costs are blamed for high cheese and butter costs. High coffee prices are directly related to 40%-50% tariffs on Brazilian imports - 1/3 of the US coffee supply. And of course, the war in Iran has directly caused higher gasoline prices. This has created a rise in credit card purchases for basic needs.

How have you been affected by the war and the tariffs?

*source: Urban Institute Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey

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Pat Oliphant, self portrait

25 years ago Jay Evensen, my then-editor at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah, invited me to be a regular presenter on political cartooning for a journalism class he taught at Brigham Young University. Each year I would collect the previous year’s overhead projection material and make the journey from Salt Lake City to Provo — bearded and clearly out of place in open violation of that school’s Honor Code.

I would begin my presentation with Thomas Nast and move through rich political cartoon history, spending the last half of my time on the work of Pat Oliphant. At that time, he was still practicing his craft and so it was as easy as projecting his past and current work to demonstrate the skill and bite of his cartoon work.

I was about a decade behind other newspaper cartoonists by the time I landed a job drawing for the weekly Davis County Clipper in 1990. I was eager, but untrained and naive — my opinions were as young as my recently fully-developed frontal lobe! Life had not kicked me around enough yet to really have an opinion on anything outside of the bubble I grew up in. But there I was drawing an opinion each week, stirring up the local mayor’s office enough to prompt the mayor to spend the majority of a city council meeting showing my cartoons to prove I was picking on him.

At issue was a natural gas pipeline which was being ramrodded through the City Council by Mayor Bob Linnell without any environmental impact studies. I drew a few cartoons that attempted to show the malintent of his actions. Linnell was adamant that I was unfairly portraying him as corrupt. He stormed into Gail Stahle’s office—the Clipper’s publisher—demanding that my cartoons of him be stopped.

I liked that.

I felt a little bit like Oliphant that day who once said: “Satire is a way of holding power accountable when polite conversation fails.” Even though calling out a Bountiful, Utah mayor was a tiny win for democracy compared to what cartoonists like Oliphant and Paul Conrad were doing, I still felt like I had held a little bit of power accountable.

The Watergate-era journalism boom inspired a generation of politically minded artists to take up political cartooning — a career that spent more than a decade on life support before the Trump administration breathed new life into the form. Memes and AI-generated personal commentary cannot begin to compare with imagery created by those who skillfully skewer with pens dipped in India Ink.

I cannot think of a better way to honor the memory of Pat Oliphant than to keep the medium of Political Cartooning alive.