Random News: April 27, 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 27, 2025, and it’s a Sunday. Feeling pretty good so far in the 15 minutes that I’ve been awake. I managed to make coffee (necessary) and now I’m trying to make my fingers work well enough to type (also necessary). So, here in my blue bathrobe on what looks to be a nice day outside, let’s see what’s going on in the world around us.

• The ratings on Donnie Dump’s first 100 days in his second term as president are in… and they are not good.
• How not good? Per multiple national polls, Dump has the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past 80 years.
• The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 4 in 10 Americans say Dump has been a “terrible” president in his second term, and about 1 in 10 say he has been “poor.”
• In contrast, about 3 in 10 say he has been “great or ”good,” while just under 2 in 10 say he has been “average.”
• Americans are nearly twice as likely to say Trump has been mostly focusing on the wrong priorities as to say he has been focusing on the right ones
• I’m actually glad to report that Americans are not shocked by Dump being so horrible in his first 100 days. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults say the first few months of Trump’s second term have been mostly what they expected.
• I’m one of them. Not only did I know all this shit was coming, but I’ve been very clear with you here on the many worse things that will happen should Dump continue his plan unchecked.
• Even Republicans are not overwhelmingly convinced that Dump’s attention has been in the right place.
• The share of Republicans who say he has been at least a “good” president has fallen about 10 percentage points since January.
• But don’t get it wrong; about 8 in 10 Republicans have a positive view of Dumpy, and about the same share approves of how he is handling the presidency.
• That’s how things are in a cult, when you are so deeply brainwashed that you ignore the evidence of your own senses.
• But some of the biggest hardship is still ahead of us. Despite that, many of the MAGA cult will still support Dumpy and find other points of blame for why their lives are falling apart.
• Let’s move on.
• Yesterday we mentioned how a U.S. citizen — a little two-year-old girl born in New Orleans — was deported to Honduras.
• Turns out she’s not the only one.
• Two more U.S. citizen children from a different family, aged 4 and 7 were also deported.
• In both cases, ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them.
• In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.
• One of the children — again, a native-born citizen of the USA — is suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer. They were deported without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians–despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s urgent medical needs.
• If you’re any kind of human being, you know that the cruelty and deliberate denial of legal and medical access are not only unlawful, but inhumane.
• And if you agree with any of this, you are never, ever allowed to call yourself a Christian again. You hereby no longer meet any standard to praise Jesus. You’re fucking out. Take off that cross. Leave the church. Never return.
• One more quick immigration note.
• The wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman was arrested this week by federal immigration authorities inside the family residential section of the U.S. Naval Air Station at Key West, FL.
• The woman’s work visa expired around 2017. She and the Coast Guardsman were married early this year. The couple was moving into U.S. government housing at the nearby Naval Air Station when she was arrested and put into custody of ICE.
• The wife of a member of our military.
• Now seems like a good place to remind you that this coming week and next weekend, there are national protest events to try and stop Dump’s fascist takeover. Visit maydaystrong.org to find an event near you, and plan to participate.
• I’ll be doing so on Saturday May 3.
• Moving on.
• As the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures… and Dumples the Dictator Clown will be growing more and more desperate each passing day.
• So now, he’s going after the Democratic Party’s top fundraising platform, ActBlue.
• You read it right. Dump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue using the tools of the government to go after his political opponents. He signed an executive order Thursday to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate alleged illegal campaign donations.
• In a statement, ActBlue said, “The Trump Administration’s and GOP’s targeting of ActBlue is part of their brazen attack on democracy in America. Today’s escalation by the White House is blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition.”
• Correct.
• If you’ve supported liberal candidates, you already know ActBlue. I’ve donated through them many times. Many Democratic fundraising emails and texts go through the platform.
• ActBlue has been around for two decades, and has helped power an outpouring of small-dollar donations to candidates and causes.
• That’s something that Republicans have largely failed to do, relying mostly on huge corporate donations and political action committees for their campaign funds.
• Which is why Dump is scared of ActBlue. Fucking pussy.
• Moving on with some news from the International Desk…
• Until a few months ago, Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre was seen as a shoo-in to become the next prime minister.
• Then Dump happened, bringing along all his talk of taking over Canada and making it the “51st state,” as he’s said many times.
• But now, Prime Minister Mark Carney — the Liberal leader who was sworn in on March 14 following Justin Trudeau’s resignation — is leading n the polls heading into tomorrow’s election. 
• Just how badly did Dump fuck over Canada’s Conservatives?
• In mid-January’s polls, Liberals trailed the Conservative Party by 47% to 20%. Holy shit.
• And as of last week? The Liberals led by 4 percentage points nationally and 6 points in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, which has 122 of the 343 seats in Parliament.
• Everything Dump touches dies.
• In other news…
• Back on topic of Dump’s increasing unpopularity and the MAGA folks who are still not understanding what’s happening around them.
• A woman — who has the unfortunate actual name of Karen — posted a rant yesterday on social media.
• “MIND BLOWN and Pissed OFF! My granddaughter found the perfect dress for her uncle's wedding on Temu. It was marked down to $19. I went ahead and ordered it and after I hit the purchase now button, I got a receipt for $54!! I couldn't figure out what I did wrong so I went to my receipt and look what happened. I was charged a $31.44 import fee!! The dress was only $19!! No more Temu for me.”
• Okay Karen. So… maybe you’ve heard me say that Dump’s tariffs are a tax on the American people. I know you want to blame Temu — and I’d truly advise that no one purchase from Temu for multiple reasons.
• But that fact that you paid almost three times the price of this item isn’t Temu’s fault.
• It’s Dump’s and only Dump’s. And you voted for him, and now you get to foot the bill, and many more bills are coming soon.
• Let’s move on.
• We’ve chatted quite a bit about defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the guy that Dumpy admires so much despite being a global punchline.
• You’re probably aware that even low-level government employees are forbidden from using personal communications devices — phone and tablets and they own computers — for work-related tasks.
• But it turns out that the same phone Hegseth used when he accidentally shared those covert military maneuvers over Signal is also his personal one.
• And embarrassingly, Hegseth’s personal number could easily be found online on a variety of public apps as recently as March, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Airbnb, and — we’re fucking serious here — a sports betting website.
• Mike Casey, who ran the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, says, "There's zero percent chance that someone hasn't tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone. He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage."
• You leave a digital trail with anything you do that connects to the Internet. I’m sure you know that.
• Last summer, Hegseth used his phone number — the same one he uses to tell friends and family about classified military secrets — to join Sleeper, a fantasy football and sports betting site.
• What was his user name there?"PeteHegseth."
• He also used the same personal phone to leave a bunch of Google Maps reviews, praising a dentist office for its "amazing" staff and a plumber for "fast, honest, and quality work."
• I mean, that’s nice. I leave good reviews too when merited. 
• But I’m not in charge of the fucking U.S. military. Many people have gone to prison for many years for much less severe offenses.
• But people are who they show you there are. Hegseth used to show up for work at Fox News falling-down drunk. He’s been credibly accused of sexual assault. And he had no experience running a big organization, much less the world’s largest.
• So sure, he’s just being the guy who we knew he was. An idiot.
• Let’s keep moving on.
• What happens when cops make mistakes? They are, after all, human, and prone to error.
• The Supreme Court is about to issue a decision that will affect this question moving forward.
• FBI agents broke down the front door of Trina Martin’s Atlanta home, stormed into her bedroom, and pointed guns at her and her then-boyfriend as her 7-year-old son screamed for his mom from another room.
• Then the agents realized they had the wrong house. The agent who led the raid said his personal GPS led him to the wrong place… an excuse acceptable for when a delivery driver puts your food next door, but not to have your family terrorized.
• Martin had tried to sue the U.S. government, accusing the agents of assault and battery, false arrest, and other violations. But her case was dismissed by both a federal judge and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
• Not so fast.
• The key issue before the justices is under what circumstances people can sue the federal government in an effort to hold law enforcement accountable.
• Congress clearly allowed for those lawsuits in 1974, after a pair of law enforcement raids on wrong houses made headlines, and blocking them would leave little recourse for families like her.
• Important note: the agent leading the raid returned later to apologize and leave a business card with a supervisor’s name. But the family received no compensation from the government, not even for the damage to the house after breaking down the front door and ransacking the home.
• Moving. On.
• I had to read this next news item twice, because it seemed so deeply cringe-worthy that I thought it had to be some kind of satire or parody.
• Nope. It’s real.
• Attorneys for Mike Lindell — the former crackhead, MyPillow CEO, Donnie Dump’s close pal, and ardent election-denier — are facing possible discipline for filing an AI-generated brief with fabricated legal citations in order to defend their client.
• After facing accusations from a federal judge, Lindell and his legal team confessed to turning in a brief with nearly 30 defective citations.
• Including multiple citations to fake legal cases that never happened. Holy fucking shit.
• U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang has given Lindell’s attorneys Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster until May 5 to prove why they should not face disciplinary proceedings and lose their legal licenses.
• If Kachouroff’s name sounds vaguely familiar, he’s the lawyer who, last year, was busted during a Zoom court hearing in which he was representing another election denier — because he’d pulled down (or taken off) his pants during the proceeding.
• Not sure what else was going on there. Anyway, these Dump associates are all pretty much similar weird freaks.
• Why is Lindell in court? Because due to his association with Dumpy, he owes $70 million in debt with an income that’s plummeted to $1,000 a week.
• Fuck around, find out.
• And now, The Weather: “Invasive Species” by Paco Cathcart
• From the Sports Desk… more playoff scores from a very exciting time of the year for sports fans.
• In the NBA: the Cavs annihilated the Heat 124-87, going up 3-0 in their series. The Thunder completed their first-round sweep of the Grizzlies, winning 117-115 and wrapping the series at 4-0. The Nuggets beat the Clippers with a buzzer-beating dunk, winning 101-99 and tying their series at 2-2. And the Dubs surprised the Rockets with a 104-93 win, taking a 2-1 lead in that series.
• In the NHL: the Lightning beat the Panthers 5-1, though Florida still leads the series 2-1. The Golden Knights beat the Wild 4-3 in overtime, tying that series at 2-2. The Senators also took the Maple Leafs to overtime, staying alive after winning 4-3 with Toronto leading 3-1 in the series. And the Avalanche blanked the Stars 4-0, tying their series at 2-2.
• Oh. I should note that Shedeur Sanders finally got drafted into the NFL last night… on day three of the draft in the fifth round with the 144th overall pick.
• He’ll be playing for the Cleveland Browns, a team with the nickname, “Where quarterbacks go to die.” I’m not kidding.
• Today in history… Explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines led by chief Lapulapu (1521). John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers' Register (1667). American President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus (1861). The United Auto Workers (UAW) gains autonomy from the American Federation of Labor (1936). Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier (1945). John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, is released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, AZ, after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes (1978). Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse (1981). The April 27 demonstrations, student-led protests responding to the April 26 Editorial, during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (1989). The first democratic general election in South Africa in which black citizens could vote (1994). Airbus A380 aircraft has its maiden test flight (2005).
• April 27 is the birthday of Mughal empress Mumtaz Mahal (1593), feminist philosopher/writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759), inventor Samuel Morse (1791), US president Ulysses S. Grant (1822), pianist/composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891), MLB player Rogers Hornsby (1896), poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904), track and field athlete John Kuck (1905), actor Jack Klugman (1922), activist Coretta Scott King (1927), radio host/voice actor Casey Kasem (1932), NFL coach Chuck Knox (1932), drummer Jim Keltner (1942), singer-songwriter/guitarist Pete Ham (1947), singer-songwriter Kate Pierson (1948), guitarist/songwriter Ace Frehley (1951), NBA player George Gervin (1952), singer-songwriter Sheena Easton (1959), politician Cory Booker (1969), singer Lizzo (1988), MLB player Corey Seager (1994), and NFL player Xavier Worthy (2003).

Feels like a good place to wrap up this edition of Random News. I’m going to shower and dress myself momentarily. Enjoy your day.