7 Stories From This Week’s Political Fever Dream
From free speech to deportation, voting access, executions, tariffs, and more AI.
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Since Trumps second administration, the news continues to move so fast that stories worth stopping for get buried under the next breaking news before most people even see them.
Some are absurd, alarming and some are procedural and easy-to-miss stories that could change things permanently while everyone is too caught up reading about something else.
1. Trump and Melania called for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired over a joke.
On Thursday, April 23, Jimmy Kimmel filmed a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast for his ABC late-night show.
In the segment, he joked that First Lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.” It was, by Kimmel’s account, an age-gap joke.
Two days later, on Saturday, April 25, a gunman named Cole Tomas Allen attempted to enter the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton while the Trumps and much of the nation’s political leadership were inside. He has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president.
On Monday, April 27, both Trumps publicly called for Kimmel to be fired.
Melania Trump posted that his “hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.” The president wrote on Truth Social that Kimmel should be “immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” calling the joke a “despicable call to violence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr also publicly pressured ABC to take action.
On Monday night, Kimmel said the joke was about the couple’s age difference. “It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that.”
These government officials believe that political satire should be answered with institutional punishment.
Sources: PBS NewsHour, NPR, Time, CNN, CBS News
2. A quiet ruling could make it easier to deport DACA recipients. More than 500,000 people could be affected.
Catalina Santiago came to the United States as a child and grew up here.
She went to school here and had DACA status, which gave her deferred action and work authorization, but not permanent legal status or a path to citizenship.
Last year, she was detained at the El Paso airport while boarding a domestic flight to a conference. She spent roughly two months in ICE detention before a federal judge ordered her release.
On Friday, April 24, her case became the drive for something more. The Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative court inside the Justice Department, published a precedent-setting decision in her case. The ruling says that DACA status is not enough to justify terminating removal proceedings, which could make it easier for DHS to move deportation cases forward against recipients.
Published BIA decisions set binding precedent for immigration judges nationwide unless modified by the attorney general or federal courts. The board sided with government lawyers in 97 percent of publicly posted cases last year. That’s at least 30 percentage points higher than the average over the past 16 years.
DACA was created in 2012 to protect people who came to the United States before age 16 and have continuously resided here since June 15, 2007. It covers roughly 505,000 people. It provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization. Recipients must renew every two years.
Since Trump returned to office, DHS has urged DACA recipients to self-deport. Reporting on enforcement numbers has varied that earlier figures from then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem cited 261 arrests and 86 removals between January and November 2025, while later reporting cited 270 arrests and 174 deportations from January through September 2025, with 73 additional arrests by mid-November.
The discrepancies have not been publicly reconciled.
Not a lot of viral attention on this story, just a procedural ruling inside an administrative court that could reshape the legal ground under more than half a million people, many of whom have spent most of their lives in this country.
Sources: NPR, Democracy Now!, Latin Times
3. Trump backed the idea of renaming ICE as “NICE”
On Monday, April 27, Trump endorsed a proposal to rename Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “NICE,” short for “National Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
The idea came from a conservative influencer’s March post suggesting the rebrand would force the media to say “NICE agents.” Trump reshared it on Truth Social and wrote, “GREAT IDEA!!! DO IT.”
Yup, Trump saw a social media post about making a federal law enforcement agency sound friendlier and responded with all caps enthusiasm. 🤡
Meanwhile, inside ICE detention, people are dying at a rate not seen in over two decades.
KFF reported that as of March 18, 2026, 46 people had died in ICE custody or detention facilities since Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Deaths in 2025 exceeded the highest level in more than 20 years.
Deaths in 2026 are on pace to meet or exceed that number.
As of mid-April, ICE custody deaths had already hit an all-time fiscal year high, with 29 deaths since October, surpassing the previous record of 28 set in 2004.
House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee have said 53 people have died in ICE or CBP custody since Trump took office, a figure that includes deaths the agency’s own reporting may not capture.
A softer acronym doesn’t answer to the detention deaths, medical care, overcrowding, and oversight we desperately need.
Sources: Newsweek, The Hill, KFF, NPR
4. The Justice Department moved to expand federal execution methods
On Friday, April 24, Reuters reported that the Justice Department plans to expand federal execution methods to include firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation.
Firing squads. Electrocution. Nitrogen gas.
The DOJ cited difficulties obtaining drugs for lethal injections and framed the expansion as part of Trump’s promise to resume capital punishment. The department’s report said it authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had already authorized nine of those. Blanche also directed the Bureau of Prisons to examine relocating or expanding federal death row, or constructing an additional execution facility.
Before Trump’s first term resumed federal executions in 2020 after a roughly 17-year gap, the federal government had largely stepped away from capital punishment.
In his first term’s final months, 13 federal prisoners were put to death, more than under any president in modern history.
Before leaving office, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Three remain: the Boston Marathon bomber, the Charleston church shooter, and the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter.
The death penalty already raises serious concerns about error, racial bias, due process, and cruel punishment.
The Supreme Court’s liberal justices have sharply criticized nitrogen gas executions, with Justice Sotomayor warning that the person can convulse, gasp for air, and experience “intense psychological torment.”
Sources: DOJ Press Release, NPR, NBC News
5. Trump’s mail-voting order could pull USPS into election administration
On March 31, Trump signed an executive order directing the administration to compile lists of verified U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and requiring the Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to voters on each state’s approved absentee list.
So the Postal Service is being asked to deliver ballots only to voters on a federally shaped approved list.
On April 21, 37 Democratic senators sent a letter to the Postal Service warning that the order illegally seeks to transform USPS into an election administration agency. The senators, led by Chuck Schumer, Gary Peters, Alex Padilla, and Dick Durbin, wrote that the Constitution “provides no role for the President in regulating federal elections.”
State attorneys general have also filed suit, arguing that the order unlawfully interferes with mail-in voting by directing USPS to block ballot delivery based on criteria outside the states’ control. On April 22, senators introduced the Absentee and Mail Voter Protection Act to nullify the executive order and prohibit USPS or any other agency from spending funds to implement it.
Election law experts have called the order unconstitutional. A previous Trump executive order on elections was already blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the authority.
Mail voting is used by older voters, disabled voters, rural voters, military voters, caregivers, and workers with difficult schedules. The federal government is trying to change who receives a ballot or what systems states must use before an election.
With the 2026 midterms ahead, that is worth watching.
Sources: NPR, The Hill, Reuters via U.S. News, Sen. Gallego
6. Companies may get tariff refunds while consumers wait
In February, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump’s broad tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were illegal.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection collected roughly $166 billion under those tariffs. On April 20, CBP opened a portal for importers to request refunds.
The refund system is limited to importers of record and authorized customs brokers.
If you paid more for groceries, clothes, appliances, or school supplies because of those tariffs, you are not eligible to file.
On April 21, Trump told CNBC he would “remember” companies that do not seek refunds. Asked whether he would find it offensive for companies to request their money back, he said, “Brilliant if they don’t do that.”
The Yale Budget Lab estimated the average household paid more than $1,700 in higher costs last year because of the tariffs.
On April 23, a group of 15 House Democrats led by Rep. Steven Horsford sent letters to the CEOs of Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, FedEx, Amazon, Lowe’s, Costco, UPS, and DHL asking what steps they would take to pass refunds back to consumers. They also asked whether the companies would commit to not using refund money for stock buybacks or executive compensation.
FedEx, UPS, and DHL have all pledged to return tariff refunds to their customers once they receive them from CBP. The major retailers have not yet made similar commitments.
So: consumers paid higher prices. Companies may get the refunds. And Trump is openly signaling favor toward companies that choose not to ask for money back.
Sources: CNBC, Axios, CBS News, U.S. News, Rep. Larson
7. A town of 7,000 is being asked to make room for 51 data warehouses
Archbald, Pennsylvania, is a former coal town of about 7,000 people tucked in a valley near the Pocono Mountains. It spent decades recovering from its industrial past.
The forests grew back and wildlife returned. It’s been described as a “quiet community where you could look out your back window and see black bears, deer, and owls.”
Now, the data center developers have arrived.
Developers have proposed six separate data center campuses in Archbald that could eventually cover roughly 14 percent of the town’s land.
The campuses would include 51 data warehouses, each about the size of a Walmart Supercenter. One project has already begun clearing about 180 acres of trees.
Tim Bachak, a 43-year-old public school teacher, told the Post he woke up to the sound of chainsaws last month. The forest behind his home, being cut down.
The reason Archbald is attractive to developers is because the town sits near the nuclear-powered, 500-kilovolt Susquehanna-Roseland power line, with access to significant power, freshwater, and available land.
One site plan would place hundreds of diesel backup generators near homes, and Grist reported that Project Gravity is expected to pump 360,000 gallons of water a day from Lake Scranton.
The community is pushing back.
Four of Archbald’s seven borough council members resigned after backlash, and three of those seats have since been filled by data center opponents.
The town’s mayor, Shirley Barrett, told the Post that the situation has fractured the community.
Most of the projects are not fully approved. WVIA reported that none of the six campuses had received full local approval as of April 22, and the Post reported that it could be months or years before any data centers are built.
These Data centers are being proposed in small, rural communities that have available power, land, and limited resources to evaluate or resist the proposals. Residents are also raising questions about who pays for the infrastructure, power, water, and environmental costs when projects of this size show up in small communities.
Archbald used to be a coal town and it spent a long time healing from that. Now residents are watching it happen again with a different industry and the same question: who benefits, and who takes the cost?
Sources: Washington Post, WVIA, Grist
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The most hateful, vile, evil rhetoric comes directly from Trump and the Republican Party. Kimmel told a joke - get over yourselves.
How much longer will the two of them be allowed into the world’s homes?!?! 🤬