Good morning. Canada’s beloved Franklin the Turtle has zipped his way through countless dilemmas, but now he’s at the centre of a controversy involving America’s war on drugs – more on that below, along with weddings in Gaza and rescue efforts in Asia. But first:

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• AFN chiefs pass a resolution rejecting changes to the oil tanker ban

Franklin the Turtle can do a great deal. He can count forward and backward. He can zip zippers and button buttons. He can sell 65 million books in more than 30 languages, star in a TV show with a catchy Bruce Cockburn theme song, appear on postage stamps and a thoroughly ’90s Maclean’s magazine cover, and teach generations of preschoolers how to problem-solve their way out of a jam.

But Franklin now finds himself in an especially dicey situation: the crosshairs of America’s war on drug traffickers. On Sunday, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a doctored image of the anthropomorphic turtle aiming a bazooka at a cargo-laden boat. Instead of his customary red cap and neckerchief, Franklin sports a ballistic helmet and tactical vest; he hangs out of a military helicopter with a U.S. flag on his muscled arm. (Hegseth likes his soldiers swole.) It’s all done up to look like the classic book covers, except this one is called Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.

Over the past three months, Hegseth has insisted – with a serious boost from President Donald Trump – that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict against drug cartels. Civilian smugglers have been rebranded as “unlawful combatants” or, per Franklin, “narco terrorists.” The U.S. military has attacked more than 20 boats in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, killing at least 80 people – without releasing their names, providing evidence that drugs were on board, or explaining why those people posed an imminent risk to the States. The White House contends the strikes are legal, but United Nation experts say they amount to extrajudicial executions.

Then, last Friday, the Washington Post reported that Hegseth ordered an immediate second strike to kill the two survivors of a Sept. 2 boat attack, who were summarily “blown apart in the water.” (That would be a crime under both American and international law.) Hegseth released a statement dismissing the report as “fake news,” though he didn’t specify which part he disputed. He then spent the weekend posting bellicose tweets, including one that said, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” as well as the meme that conscripted Franklin the Turtle to his cause.

It can be tricky, however, to pinpoint the Trump administration’s exact position on illicit drug trafficking. Mexico produces the vast majority of fentanyl, but its cartels aren’t the target of U.S. military strikes. Instead, the attacks have mostly focused on boats off the coast of Venezuela, a transit hub for relatively minor quantities of Colombian cocaine.

Maybe that distinction doesn’t matter to Trump: “We’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, okay?” he said in October. “They’re going to be, like, dead.” But yesterday, former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández walked out of a West Virginia prison – 44 years short of his 45-year sentence for drug trafficking, and very much alive. Hernández had been convicted for his role in a scheme that flooded America with more than 400 tonnes of cocaine. Trump granted him a full presidential pardon on Monday.

A pretty serious contradiction? Well, those seem to be going around lately. While Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt maintain the follow-up boat strike was lawful, they’ve started to shift responsibility to Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley, repeatedly stating that it was his call to order the second hit. Hegseth called Bradley an American hero, then posted rather pointedly: “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made – on the September 2 mission and all others since.” Some American lawmakers accused the White House of “selling out” the admiral to shield Hegseth from accountability.

For his part, Franklin would very much like to be excluded from this narrative. Kids Can Press, the Toronto-based publisher of the book series, said they “strongly condemn any violent, denigrating, or unauthorized use” of the character’s name or image. “Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity,” they wrote.

The Pentagon fired back with its own statement Monday night: “We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels … or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists.” But I don’t remember that particular lesson from my childhood bookshelf. I don’t remember a story called Franklin Finds a Scapegoat, either.

In the midst of a very fragile ceasefire, weddings have started to resume in Gaza. Read more here about the celebration of new families.

At home: According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s calculations, Ottawa’s spending on housing