Random News: April 15, 2025

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s April 15, 2025, and it’s a Tuesday. I woke up quite happy today. mostly because it wasn’t yesterday, when I knew I had a bunch of stressful shit to handle. Today, I have easily as much shit to handle, but have gained more confidence that I am capable of getting it done. See how that works?

• Let’s jump right in.
• Yesterday — April 14, 2025 — may be the day that history looks back and marks the official end to democracy in the USA… though it’s been awhile coming and we all saw the writing on the wall.
• El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele says he won't return Kilmar Abrego García to the United States, after Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters it's "up to El Salvador" whether the man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison returns to the U.S. 
• Bukele — another wannabe dictator — got cute about it. "How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United Sates? I don't have the power to return him to the United States." 
• Abrego García is not a terrorist, nor has he been accused or convicted of any crime in this country or any other. He’s a Maryland father of three who is a legal resident of the USA.
• The Dump administration acknowledged that his deportation to the high-security prison in El Salvador was an "administrative error." 
• The Supreme Court ordered Dump to bring this innocent man home in a unanimous 9-0 ruling.
• And the SCOTUS offered no qualifier of whether El Salvador wants to return Abrego García or not. The court ruled that a lower court order properly required the U.S. government to facilitate his release from El Salvador's custody.
• Dump is now openly defying the highest court in the land. But this gets worse.
• Dump once again mused aloud about sending American citizens to foreign prisons. He said to Bukele, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.”
• He was referring to the notorious maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador.
• In case you think he’s kidding, Dump also said yesterday that he had directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legal process for deporting US citizens.
• Still glad you voted for him, or didn’t vote for the lady because of some reason you thought was important at the time?
• No one will be able to help when it’s you getting deported to a place where they can torture and kill you with no repercussions.
• Some of us won’t stand for this miscarriage of justice and lawlessness that Dump is leading in this horrible situation.
• Today, Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) say they are willing to go to El Salvador to seek the release of Abrego García.
• Van Hollen sent a letter to El Salvador's ambassador in the U.S. requesting a meeting with the country's president. He said if Abrego García was not in the U.S. by "midweek," he would "travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release."
• Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) stated,"Senator, I am willing to join you and help Organize other members of the House to do the same."
• Good. It’s time to go on the offensive against Dump and everything he stands for.
• In related news…
• Yesterday, Mohsen Mahdawi — a Palestinian green card holder and student at Columbia University — was apprehended by US immigration authorities in Vermont.
• Where did they arrest him? While he was at a naturalization interview, one of the final steps toward his goal of becoming a U.S. citizen.
• Why did they arrest him? What horrible crime did he commit?
• He participated in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last spring, an action that is not only legal but part of the freedoms guaranteed to us in the Constitution.
• Mahdawi’s lawyers can’t even find out where they took him. “We have not received confirmation as to his whereabouts despite numerous attempts to locate him,” his attorney, Luna Droubi, said.
• In court documents, his attorneys make it clear that he is a lawful permanent resident of the US, currently on the path to naturalization, and has held a green card for the past 10 years. He is expected to graduate from Columbia next month.
• Vermont senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, along with Vermont representative Becca Balint, issued a statement on the arrest.
• “Earlier today, Mohsen Mahdawi of White River Junction, Vermont, walked into an immigration office for what was supposed to be the final step in his citizenship process,” they said. “Instead, he was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plain-clothed, armed, individuals with their faces covered.
• “These individuals refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him. This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. Mr Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”
• All I can say is to get used to people being “disappeared” as long as Dumpy is alive and remains president. And not only to brown-skinned people. If he can do it to them, he will do it to you and your family and loved ones.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, Harvard University told Donnie Dump to fuck all the way off.
• The Ivy League school rejected demands by the Dump administration to eliminate its DEI programs and screen international students for ideological concerns, putting nearly $9 billion in federal funding for the university at risk.
• “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” wrote Harvard President Alan Garber.
• Harvard’s rejection comes after Dump sent the university a list of demands as part of its review of nearly $9 billion in government funding for the school.
• We should point out that research at Harvard has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields, all of which benefits the USA — and its government.
• Graber warned that without federal funding, it “risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”
• I agree.
• Barack Obama issued a statement in support of Harvard after Drump cut its federal grants.
• “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions — rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”
• Indeed.
• And that’s a good point. If we all — every one of us, individually and as groups — tell Dump to go fuck himself, he has no power. He will just fade away.
• In other news…
• A name I haven’t had to mention for awhile — thankfully — is back once again.
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) bought between tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock right before Dumples the Clown announced he would temporarily pause sweeping tariffs targeting dozens of specific countries, which led to the stock market jumping in value.
• The purchases, made public in a federal disclosure on Friday, come as Democrats call for an investigation into whether Dump participated in insider trading.
• The day that Dump paused his tariffs, Greene — one of Dump's closest allies in Congress — bought between $10,000 and $150,000 worth of stock in companies such as Adobe, Apple, NVIDIA, Palantir, and Cummins.
• The day before, on April 8, Greene had purchased another $11,000 to $165,000 of stock in Amazon, FedEx, JP Morgan Chase, Lululemon, Nike, Qualcomm, Tesla, and other companies. 
• And she also sold between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of U.S. Treasury bills.
• It’s way past time that we ban all members of Congress from trading individual stock while they serve in office. You’d be amazed how quickly shit would change.
• Moving on.
• You might not be aware how important tourism is to the American economy.
• But due to Dumpy’s escalating fascism antics, tourism to the United States has dramatically plummeted — down 12% from last year.
• The number of tourists visiting the United States from Western Europe dropped by 7% in March. The largest group, tourists from the United Kingdom, dropped by 14%. Ireland was down by 27%. German tourism decreased by 28%, Spain and Norway both dropped by 25%. Switzerland decreased by 25%.
• Denmark dropped a jaw-dropping 34% — a likely result of Dump's deranged efforts to seize Greenland.
• Those numbers will undoubtedly continue to drop.
• Why would anyone visit this country, with stories of innocent tourists being detained, questioned, and terrorized by ICE officers, and often sent back to their countries without ever setting foot here?
• Also, why should you give a shit, assuming you’re a terrible human who doesn’t want to welcome visitors and doesn’t care about these people otherwise?
• The US tourism industry is a massive economic engine, contributing $2.36 trillion to the nation's economy. This represents 2.97% of the U.S. GDP and supports 9.5 million jobs.
• Kiss that goodbye.
• In other news…
• Six women went to space yesterday. This isn’t the setup for some joke. Six actual women got into a rocket ship and flew to the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space.
• Then they came back down. The whole trip lasted 10 minutes and 21 seconds.
• Which is cool. The last time a female-only crew went into space was in 1963, when Soviet-era cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman in space — orbited the Earth during a nearly three-day solo flight.
• Who went? Well… the Blue Origin rocket is owned by super wealthy Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
• So his fiancé, Lauren Sánchez, picked the crew which included herself as well as singer Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyễn, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
• How much does a 10-minute trip to space cost? Let’s just say that Blue Origin’s reservation page requires a $150,000 deposit to begin the process.
• And the company auctioned off a seat on its first crewed flight for $28 million in 2021. However, this particular crew of the Valkyries, apparently, were guests of the company.
• Just for comparison’s sake… yesterday’s up-and-back mission peaked at an elevation 62 miles from Earth. The Apollo missions that took humanity to the moon and back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s traveled 239,000 miles each way.
• Moving on.
• We had a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in Southern California yesterday. By “we” I mostly mean the folks in the San Diego area where the quake was centered.
• Despite getting a warning alert on our phones, most of us up here in the LA area barely felt it… or like in my case, didn’t feel it at all.
• But about forty miles away, elephants at a San Diego Zoo felt the quake and immediately formed an “alert circle,” where they stand in formation facing outward, positioned to protect their young form a perceived threat. 
• It’s my genuine opinion that all living creatures have the ability to tell good from bad, right from wrong, and are willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.
• You can call it whatever you want, from instinctual behavior to adaptations based on evolutionary development. But if you think humans are unique in our inherent ethics and soulfulness, you’re just fucking wrong.
• And now, The Weather: “AUX” by Jadu Heart
• From the Sports Adjacent Desk…
• The championship Ohio State University football team visited the White House yesterday, meeting with Dumpy and his little couch-fucking pal to have one of those awkward ceremonies you’ve seen there many times.
• Making it way, way, way more awkward, JD Vance — who went to Ohio State — attempted to pick up the large trophy, which immediately separated into two pieces and fell to the ground.
• Nice fumble, JD. You suck at everything.
• From the actual Sports Desk… we’re down to the last couple of games in the NHL regular season. Playoffs start on Saturday. If they were starting today, here’s who’d be in…
• Eastern Conference: Maple Leafs vs. Senators. Lightning vs. Panthers. Capitals vs. Canadiens. Hurricanes vs. Devils.
• Western Conference: Jets vs. Blues. Stars vs. Avalanche. Golden Knights vs. Wild. Kings vs. Oilers.
• Today in history… Samuel Johnson's ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ is published in London (1755). Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, CT (1817). President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War (1961). Upon Lincoln’s death, vice president Andrew Johnson is sworn in as president (1865). The General Electric Company is formed (1892). The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic (1912). U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal (1922). Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes (1923). Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line (1947). McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, IL (1955). The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in China (1989). The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France is seriously damaged by a large fire (2019).
• April 15 is the birthday of painter/sculptor/architect Leonardo da Vinci (1452), mathematician/physicist Leonhard Euler (1707), businessman/politician Joseph E. Seagram (1841), novelist Henry James (1843), general/politician Nikita Khrushchev (1894), singer Bessie Smith (1894), general/politician Kim Il Sung (1912), actor Michael Ansara (1922), educator/politician Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (1930), musician/TV host Roy Clark (1933), actress Elizabeth Montgomery (1933), businessman/criminal Kenneth Lay (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist Dave Edmunds (1944), composer/conductor Michael Kamen (1948), actress Emma Thompson (1959), singer-songwriter/producer Linda Perry (1965), guitarist Ed O’Brien (1968), NFL player Jason Sehorn (1971), singer-songwriter/guitarist Chris Stapleton (1978), actor/screenwriter Seth Rogen (1982), NHL player Ilya Kovalchuk (1983), actress Emma Watson (1990), and actress Maisie Williams (1997).

Well, that seems like enough for now. Hey listen… it truly seems like we are on the verge of a true constitutional crisis, where the president is refusing to follow the legal orders of the highest courts. pretty soon here, you might be tasked with making choices you never had to make before, and I want you to start thinking about that as opposed to waiting until it’s too late. Would you act to protect good people and to obey our Constitution rather than meekly follow the illegal orders of a dictator? That choice may be coming at your more quickly than you realize. Give it some thought. Maybe you’re more brave than you’d previously realized. Enjoy your day.