Trump Vows to End Unfair Trade Deficit With Shadow
By Gristle McHaggis (Vibrating Press Box) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 04:05:53 GMT
The President has given the 50-year-old creeping darkness 24 hours to retreat, or face devastating tariffs on all incoming cosmic rays and an outright ban on casting shadows longer than six inches.
"The first we heard of this was when the President’s legal team spent forty minutes trying to serve a subpoena to a live satellite feed." — KEY SLUDGE FINDING
President Trump, declaring a temporary ceasefire that he announced is ‘highly unlikely’ to be extended, has given the mysterious shadow creeping across Mars 24 hours to “get its dark act together” or face crippling interplanetary sanctions. Speaking Tuesday from a podium constructed from gleaming stacks of iPhone 14 Pro boxes fused with a high-gloss resin, the President declared the 50-year-old phenomenon a “calculated insult” to American prestige and a brazen violation of a 1974 handshake agreement he claims to have brokered in a dream.
NASA scientists, who have patiently analyzed the slow-moving darkness for decades, were reportedly aghast at the ultimatum. “We are attempting to ascertain if the ‘shadow’ is a dust formation, a geological feature, or, as one White House memo suggested, ‘a loser cloud squatting on prime American real estate,’” said Dr. Aris Thistle-Waithe, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deputy Associate Director of Interstellar Inconveniences. “The first we heard of this was when the President’s legal team spent forty minutes trying to serve a subpoena to a live satellite feed.”
The White House has already drafted an Executive Order titled “The Sun is Ours Act,” which would make it illegal for any celestial body to cast a shadow exceeding six inches in length without a permit from the Department of Commerce. An administration official argued the Martian shadow is “illegally hoarding ambient darkness” that could be “repatriated and converted into high-quality American asphalt or low-cost eyeliner.”
Should the shadow fail to dissipate by the Wednesday evening deadline, Trump threatened to authorize the Space Force to “fire the big laser at nothing in particular” to demonstrate galactic resolve. “The shadow is scared. It knows I have the codes for the Sun, which we own,” Trump stated, before demonstrating his authority by staring directly at a fluorescent ceiling light for two full minutes to “show it who’s boss.”
“The shadow is a disgrace. Very low-energy,” the President continued. “It’s been sitting there for fifty years, not moving, not creating jobs. It’s probably sent by Globalist Mars to drive up the cost of Earthly flashlights. Sad.”
While foreign policy experts called the plan “a logistical and constitutional nightmare predicated on arguing with a planet,” initial polling suggests 48% of the electorate believes the shadow is a secret base for “voter fraud ghosts.” The President concluded the press conference by vowing his upcoming iPhone 18 Pro would have a flashlight so powerful it could “bleach the smug off the face of the cosmos.”