Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: April 2026: Atrocities 867-930

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Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

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ATROCITY KEY

– Authoritarianism
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

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April 2026

– April 1, 2026 – Tuan Van Bui, 55, died in ICE custody at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana. ICE claimed Bui, who entered the country legally in 1990 under the Amerasian Homecoming Act and was challenging his detention through a habeas corpus case, was found unresponsive in his cell. The cause of death was linked to heart disease and high blood pressure.
– April 1, 2026 – Donald Trump, who has frequently threatened and criticized Supreme Court justices, became the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court. He listened to the government make its case against birthright citizenship, but left when the ACLU presented opposing arguments, defying a longstanding tradition that spectators remain seated and silent. Steven Lubet, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University’s School of Law, characterized Trump’s presence during oral arguments as “an attempt to intimidate the justices” and “a challenge to the Supreme Court’s independence.”
– April 2, 2026 – Luanne James, 57, a library director in Tennessee, was fired from her office after she refused to move LGBTQ+ books from the children’s shelves. Last year, Trump signed an executive order targeting “gender ideology,” and Tennessee has also passed anti-DEI laws. “As a librarian, I knew [the library board’s order to move the books] was wrong, and I had to say something,” James said.

“I Had No Choice”: Ousted TN Library Director Addresses Firing over LGBTQ Books Removal (WSMV Nashville).
– April 2, 2026 – The Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, was a homicide. Alam, a refugee from Myanmar with severe visual impairment, was found dead on a Buffalo street in February, five days after Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a closed Tim Hortons. “This tragedy was entirely preventable, and it reflects a serious failure in the systems meant to protect vulnerable people,” said Imran Fazal, a friend of the Alam family.
– April 2, 2026 – Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, frustrated over her handling of the Epstein files and her unwillingness to investigate or prosecute enough of his opponents, even though she had overseen multiple politically motivated investigations against his foes. During Bondi’s tumultuous tenure, the Justice Department surrendered some of its independence, and many of its career officials resigned. Bondi became the second cabinet member, after Kristi Noem, to be fired.
– April 2, 2026 – After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the Iran war was being fought “in the name of Jesus Christ,” Pope Leo XIV offered a different take. “We tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared. God has given us an example—not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but how to give it,” Pope Leo said in a homily during Mass.
– April 3, 2026 – New figures showed that ICE, despite claims to the contrary, was still arresting many immigrants with no criminal history. After Alex Pretti and Renee Good were killed in Minneapolis, White House border czar Tom Homan said that “all operations will be targeted” and that the agency would prioritize “criminal aliens, public safety threats, and national security threats.” Trump also claimed he wanted a “softer touch.” However, a Washington Post analysis of ICE data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit found that people with no criminal record still made up 42 percent of those detained.
– April 5, 2026 – On Easter morning, Trump posted a profanity-laden threat to Iran on Truth Social, demanding that the country reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” he wrote, adding, “Praise be to Allah.” Just days earlier, Trump had declared Iran effectively defeated, claiming its navy and air force were “gone,” its missiles were “just about used up,” and its radar systems were “100 percent annihilated.” He had also dismissed concerns about the Strait of Hormuz closing, saying, “When this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.” Two days after those remarks, Iran shot down two American military planes. Hours before Trump’s Easter post, Pope Leo XIV had delivered his first Easter address, warning against “the many conflicts raging in different parts of the world” and lamenting “what a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day.”
– April 5, 2026 – After Iran shot down an American aircraft and US forces carried out a rescue mission for a stranded airman, Trump threatened to attack Iranian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Experts warned that intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime and trigger wider attacks across the region. Iran later threatened retaliation against infrastructure in Gulf states.
– April 6, 2026 – The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with efforts to erase Stephen Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction stemming from his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, served only four months in prison after a jury convicted him in 2022. The Trump administration asked the court to help remove the conviction from Bannon’s record, arguing that dismissing the case was “in the interests of justice.” During Trump’s first term, Bannon was also pardoned after being indicted on charges that he defrauded donors to a group raising money for Trump’s border wall.
– April 6, 2026 – The Trump administration terminated multiple civil rights settlements aimed at protecting transgender students from discrimination in schools, including agreements involving school districts in California, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Some of the settlements had required schools to respect students’ preferred names and pronouns or allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government revoking civil rights agreements of this kind that had been previously negotiated. The Education Department told one Pennsylvania school district it could face an investigation and potential federal funding cuts if it did not reverse protections for transgender students.
– April 7, 2026 – Annie Ramos, the undocumented wife of an Army staff sergeant, was released from ICE detention. She spent five days in custody following her arrest at Fort Polk, Louisiana, where she and her husband had gone to complete paperwork so they could move in together. Ramos, 22, who was brought to the United States as a toddler and had no criminal record, was detained after authorities cited a deportation order issued when she was twenty-two months old. Her case drew widespread media attention and intervention from Senator Mark Kelly, who said he contacted Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the case. Legal experts said military spouses in similar situations were typically allowed to pursue legal status while remaining with their families. While in detention, Ramos was prohibited from wearing her wedding ring.
– April 7, 2026 – President Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban just days before a national election that polls had predicted his party could lose. Speaking by phone to a rally in Budapest, Trump declared, “I love Hungary, and I love Viktor,” and praised Orban for preventing migrants from “storm[ing] your country and invad[ing] your country.” At the same event, Vance called Orban “one of the only true statesmen in Europe” and said Hungary under Orban could serve as “a model to the continent.” Five days later, Orban lost in a landslide to opposition leader Péter Magyar, who had criticized Vance’s visit by warning that “no foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections.”
– April 8, 2026 – EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin headlined a climate-change denial conference in Washington hosted by the Heartland Institute, a group that has spent decades attacking mainstream climate science. Attendees gave Zeldin a standing ovation before he spoke. Speakers at the event falsely claimed that climate change was a hoax, that rising carbon dioxide levels posed little danger, and that fossil fuels were environmentally beneficial. Zeldin told attendees that the Trump administration would not follow “doom-and-gloom prediction[s]” about global warming and boasted that the EPA was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” One pamphlet distributed at the conference read: “Fossil Fuels Are the Greenest Energy Sources.”
– April 8, 2026 – Trump lashed out at NATO after members of the alliance refused to participate in the US-Israeli war against Iran or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Following a tense White House meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, whom some allies have nicknamed the “Trump whisperer” for his attempts to flatter and manage the president, Trump posted: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.” He added: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Rutte later acknowledged that Trump was “clearly disappointed” with many NATO allies and described the meeting as “very frank” and “very open.”
– April 9, 2026 – Trump turned on several prominent conservative media figures who criticized his handling of the war with Iran, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones. In a 482-word Truth Social post, Trump called the commentators “stupid people” with “low IQs” and said they were “LOSERS.” The attacks came after Carlson called Trump’s threats toward Iran “evil” and Jones said the president sounded “like an unhinged super villain from a Marvel comic movie.” Trump also targeted Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of his closest allies in Congress, calling her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown.” Greene responded that Trump had “gone mad as he wages war against Iran.”
– April 9, 2026 – Trump met privately at the White House with leaders of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement as administration officials tried to calm frustrations among MAHA supporters ahead of the midterm elections. Some movement leaders, many of whom had abandoned the Democratic Party to support Trump after Kennedy endorsed him, had recently criticized the president for siding with Bayer in litigation over the weedkiller Roundup. The same day, the administration published a new charter for a federal vaccine advisory committee that could allow Kennedy to revive vaccine policy changes that had recently been blocked by a federal judge. The revised charter expanded eligibility for committee membership to include people with experience in “recovery from serious vaccine injuries.”
– April 9, 2026 – Melania Trump delivered a surprise statement from the White House denying any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell and declaring that “the lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.” She did not specify which reports she was referring to. The remarks stunned even some White House officials and reignited scrutiny of Donald Trump’s longtime association with Epstein, which the administration had spent months trying to contain. Afterward, Trump contradicted earlier White House accounts by saying he had known his wife planned to speak about Epstein and that “she had a right to talk about it.” The speech also renewed public interest in Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who introduced Melania to Trump and later appeared in documents related to Epstein. Zampolli recently sought ICE intervention against the mother of his child during a custody dispute.

Melania Trump Makes White House Statement Denying Ties to Jeffrey Epstein (Bloomberg News).
– April 9, 2026 – After Trump administration officials pushed for greater American access to the country’s gold and mineral reserves, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a new law opening the country’s mining sector to foreign investors. The move came after the Trump administration used criminal charges and extradition threats to pressure Venezuela’s new leadership following the US capture of Nicolás Maduro. Trump had previously declared that the United States was “in charge” of Venezuela and said American oil companies would “take our oil back.” Despite years of US sanctions targeting Venezuela’s mining industry and warnings linking mining operations to human rights abuses and deforestation, the law is expected to expand mining in regions already controlled by armed groups and corrupt military officials.
– April 9, 2026 – Trump shared graphic security footage of a fatal hammer attack in Florida involving a Haitian immigrant and used the killing to attack protections for Haitian migrants. “I don’t recommend you watch this tape, because it is so terrible, but felt I had an obligation to put it up so that people can see what Democrats are protecting,” he wrote on Truth Social. Trump and his aides have increasingly used individual crimes committed by immigrants to argue that immigration drives violent crime, despite studies consistently finding that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.
– April 10, 2026 – The Trump administration released plans for a 250-foot triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial as part of the president’s effort to reshape Washington and celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Trump said the proposed monument, which resembles the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and is topped with giant eagles and a golden angel, would be privately funded. Asked last year whom the arch would honor, Trump replied: “Me.” The proposal advanced through a federal arts panel that Trump had recently stacked with allies, including a former White House receptionist.

More Details on Trump’s Proposed “Triumphal Arch” (ABC 7 Chicago).
– April 11, 2026 – Alejandro Cabrera Clemente, 49, died in ICE custody at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana. ICE claimed Clemente, who had lived in the US for more than twenty-five years, was found unresponsive in his cell.
– April 11, 2026 – The US military struck two alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Pacific, killing five and leaving one survivor. Similar strikes killed two people on April 13, four people on April 14, and three people on April 15.
– April 12, 2026 – Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27, died in ICE custody at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, Florida. ICE claimed that Carbonell-Betancourt, who immigrated to the US from Cuba in 2024, died of a presumed suicide, but the cause of death was still under investigation. Carbonell-Betancourt was arrested in November 2025 after a police officer observed him wandering around an “abandoned farmer’s market,” warned him against trespassing, and patted him down. When the officer asked Carbonell-Betancourt for ID, he ran. The officer then ran after him, tased him, and took him to a hospital. Carbonell-Betancourt was charged with resisting an officer with violence and transferred into ICE custody in February 2026. The charge was eventually dropped.
– April 12, 2026 – In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump called Pope Leo XIV “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Later, while answering a question from a reporter, Trump also criticized the pope for being “very liberal” and accused him, without evidence, of supporting nuclear weapons. Pope Leo has criticized the Iran war and the American abduction of Venezuela’s president. A day after Trump’s social media post, Leo responded that he had “no fear of the Trump administration.”

Pope Leo XIV Responds to Trump’s Comments Against Him in Feud over Iran War (AP).
– April 13, 2026 – Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus to Truth Social. The image depicted Trump in a white and red robe, touching the forehead of a sick man on his deathbed as light radiates from Trump’s hands. Following criticism, Trump deleted the image. “I thought it was me as a doctor,” he said. “I make people better.” Later, Trump added, “I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing—you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me. And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better.”
– April 13, 2026 – A day after Trump lashed out against the pope on social media, JD Vance, a Catholic, said the pope should stay out of American affairs. “In some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality,” said Vance. “Stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church. And let the president of the United States stick to dictating American policy.” A day later, Vance also criticized Leo’s statement. “Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? I certainly think the answer was yes,” said Vance. “In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
– April 14, 2026 – Trump received a DoorDash McDonald’s delivery at the White House from “DoorDash Grandma” Sharon Simmons and tipped her one hundred dollars. The White House’s rapid-response X account then quoted Simmons as saying she had saved more than $11,000 in tips by not having to claim them on her taxes, though this would not be possible under the current policy, which labor advocates have heavily criticized. Simmons had previously lobbied for Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy, testifying before Congress in July 2025. DoorDash later admitted the delivery was a stunt.

President Trump Receives DoorDash McDonald’s Delivery at the Oval Office (C-SPAN)
– April 14, 2026 – At the direction of DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the Department of Justice moved to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of twelve Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who helped plan and lead the January 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol: Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola, Roberto Minuta, Eduardo Vallejo, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Kenneth Harrelson, and Jessica Watkins. “The United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” Pirro said in the court filings without providing more details. Trump had already commuted their prison sentences the previous year.
– April 15, 2026 – Trump threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell again. “He’s doing a bad job. He should be lowering interest rates,” Trump said during a Fox Business interview. It was not clear whether Trump had the legal authority to fire Powell, whose term was set to expire in mid-May. Trump also vowed to continue investigating the central bank, which could complicate the process for installing a successor. Powell pledged to stay on until a successor was confirmed.
– April 15, 2026 – During a Pentagon worship service, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth paraphrased a fake Bible verse from the movie Pulp Fiction. Hegseth said that the lead planner of the Combat Search and Rescue operation, which rescued two Air Force members who were shot down in Iran, had shared the prayer with him. “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee, and amen.” Only part of Hegseth’s final line appears in Ezekiel 25:17. The rest closely mirrored a line spoken by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction right before he kills someone on behalf of the fictional Los Angeles crime lord Marsellus Wallace.

Pete Hegseth Quotes Fictional Bible Verse from Pulp Fiction During Sermon (The Independent).

Ezekiel 25:17 - Pulp Fiction (Movieclips).
– April 16, 2026 – An ICE agent was charged with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon for allegedly pointing a gun at two motorists during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. “pointed his duty weapon directly at both victims while continuing to drive illegally on the shoulder” of the highway on February 5. “Our opinion is that illegally driving on a shoulder, pulling up to a car, and pointing a gun at the heads of two community members who are not doing anything at the time is well beyond the scope of their authority,” Moriarty added.
– April 16, 2026 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened once more to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure, a possible war crime. “Our forces are maximally postured to restart combat operations should this new Iranian regime choose poorly and not agree to a deal.” Hegseth said. “We are locked and loaded on your critical dual-use infrastructure, on your remaining power generation, and on your energy industry. We’d rather not have to do it, but we’re ready to go at the command of our president and at the push of a button.”
– April 16, 2026 – At a Las Vegas event promoting tax deductions on tips, Trump downplayed the economic impact of the Iran war. “We’re having some fake inflation because of the fuel, the energy prices,” said Trump. Gas was over five dollars a gallon in Las Vegas at the time of the president’s comments.
– April 17, 2026 – PEPFAR data showed that compared to previous years, fewer people received testing, diagnoses, or treatment for HIV in 2025, when the Trump administration abruptly stopped and then restarted the program. Only 17.2 million people received PEPFAR testing in the last quarter of 2025, down from 21.9 million people in 2024. Diagnoses also dropped from 385,000 to 307,000. Nevertheless, Jeremy Lewin, an acting under secretary of state, characterized the numbers as “very, very good.” “What these data show us is the deliberate unraveling of the elements of HIV prevention and treatment service delivery that are essential to actually finish the job and defeat this pandemic,” said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP.
– April 17, 2026 – Maria Medetis Long, a career federal prosecutor, was removed from her role overseeing the criminal investigation into Trump enemy and former CIA Director John Brennan. “As a matter of routine practice, attorneys are moved around on cases so offices can most effectively allocate resources. It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams,” said a DOJ spokesperson. Sources told CBS that Long was dismissed after informing the US attorney that there wasn’t enough evidence to make a case. On April 21, prosecutors rescinded subpoenas related to the Brennan case that they had issued just days before.
– April 17, 2026 – After months of US restrictions on oil shipments pushed Cuba deeper into a humanitarian crisis, Trump suggested that the island could be his next geopolitical target after Iran and Venezuela. “It’s called a new dawn for Cuba,” he said. “We’re going to help them out with Cuba.” Trump, who had previously said he would have the “honor of taking Cuba,” then added: “Watch what happens.”
– April 18, 2026 – The Justice Department installed Joseph diGenova—a former Trump campaign lawyer who once said a cybersecurity official who contradicted Trump’s election lies should be “shot”—to lead a sprawling inquiry into former federal officials involved in investigating Trump and Russia. Part of the investigation appeared to be running through a grand jury overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump previously praised as “strong” and “brilliant” after she threw out the classified documents case against him. Trump allies have increasingly pushed the idea that the various investigations into Trump were part of a single coordinated effort against him, referring to it as a “grand conspiracy” case.
– April 19, 2026 – Trump announced that a US Navy destroyer had attacked and seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman after it allegedly violated the American blockade of Iranian ports. Hours earlier, the White House had announced that Vice President JD Vance and other senior officials would travel to Pakistan for another round of peace talks with Iran, though Iranian officials said Tehran had not agreed to the meeting. Trump later renewed threats to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, warning that the United States would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran” if Tehran rejected what he called “a very fair and reasonable DEAL,” adding: “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Vance’s trip was subsequently postponed as negotiations stalled. Two days later, Trump announced that he was unilaterally extending the ceasefire, a move Iranian officials dismissed as meaningless.
– April 20, 2026 – New York’s education commissioner struck down policies in two Long Island school districts that required transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with their sex assigned at birth. The districts had defended the restrictions by arguing that they were necessary to comply with Trump administration policies and avoid losing federal funding. Earlier in the school year, the Trump administration cut more than $35 million in federal grants to New York City schools over policies protecting transgender and nonbinary students.
– April 20, 2026 – Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amid an investigation into allegations that she had an affair with a member of her security team and used department resources for personal trips and luxury hotels. Investigators also reviewed text messages in which Chavez-DeRemer and her aides asked young staff members to bring wine to hotel rooms during work trips and to “pay attention” to her husband and father, both of whom exchanged personal messages with female staff members. Department officials said Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling had effectively been running the agency during much of Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure.
– April 21, 2026 – The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was considering sending up to 1,100 Afghans who had aided US forces during the war in Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo. News of the talks came after the administration had halted programs that would have allowed many of them to settle in the United States. The group included interpreters, former Afghan Special Operations forces, relatives of American service members, and more than four hundred children. Many of the Afghans said they were being forced to choose between relocating to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in Congo or returning to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where many feared persecution or death. Even several Republicans condemned the plan, with Representative Don Bacon saying, “We made promises to those fighting by our side to bring them to the US. We should keep our promises.”
– April 21, 2026 – Crypto billionaire Justin Sun sued World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, accusing the company of freezing his $WLFI tokens and pressuring him to buy hundreds of millions of dollars in a new Trump-linked digital currency. Sun, who had previously invested $75 million in World Liberty after Trump’s reelection, accused the company of “egregious misconduct” and said its executives saw the project as “a golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud.” Earlier in the year, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a fraud case against Sun after the Trump administration sharply scaled back crypto enforcement efforts. Months earlier, World Liberty had announced that it was “honored” to welcome Sun as an adviser and said his “insights and experience” would help the company “innovate and grow.”
– April 21, 2026 – During a contentious House hearing, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declined to promise that he would back future vaccine recommendations issued by Dr. Erica Schwartz, Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has publicly endorsed routine childhood immunizations. Kennedy also defended his response to the country’s worst measles outbreak in decades and rejected Democrats’ accusations that he had helped undermine public trust in vaccines. Last year, Kennedy fired all seventeen members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape federal vaccine policy around vaccine skeptics.

“We Don’t Keep Track” of Trump’s Comments on Measles Outbreak, RFK Jr. Says (PBS).
– April 22, 2026 – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended Trump’s repeated mathematically impossible claims that his administration had lowered prescription drug prices by 400, 500, or even 1,500 percent, telling lawmakers during a Senate hearing that the president “has a different way of calculating.” In reality, a discount greater than 100 percent would reduce a price below zero. Trump had previously dismissed criticism of the claims by saying, “You could say whatever you want.”
– April 22, 2026 – Navy Secretary John Phelan was fired amid infighting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon officials during the US-Iran war. Phelan had pushed Trump’s proposed “Golden Fleet,” including a new “Trump-class” battleship that the president claimed would be “a hundred times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” Officials said Trump had grown frustrated that Phelan could not meet his accelerated timetable for the ships, which defense experts described as technologically unrealistic and unlikely ever to be completed. Trump had previously claimed that he personally helped design the vessels, saying, “I put a little more spirit in the hull.”
– April 22, 2026 – President Trump reposted a transcript and video clip from the right-wing podcast The Savage Nation in which host Michael Savage referred to China and India as “hellhole” places and claimed immigrants from those countries had failed to “integrate” into the United States as “European Americans” supposedly had. Savage also falsely claimed that Chinese immigrants came to the United States “just to drop a baby on our shores” to secure citizenship for their children. The repost came as the Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
– April 23, 2026 – Paramount executives hosted a private Washington dinner “honoring the Trump White House” while the company sought federal approval for its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Guests included President Trump; acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose Justice Department was reviewing the merger; and top CBS News executives and journalists. The event prompted alarm within CBS News over the appearance of coziness between the network and the administration during one of the largest media-merger reviews in US history.
– April 23, 2026 – Trump complained that “the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino” and said he disliked prediction markets “conceptually,” even as his family continued investing in the industry. Trump Media had already announced plans for its own prediction-market platform, while Donald Trump Jr. maintained ties to both Kalshi and Polymarket, including as an adviser and investor. The remarks came hours before federal prosecutors charged an Army Special Forces soldier with using classified information to place prediction-market bets related to Venezuela.
– April 24, 2026 – The Trump administration announced that it would once again allow firing squads in federal executions and reauthorized the use of pentobarbital for lethal injections. The Justice Department also proposed shortening death penalty appeals, limiting clemency requests, and expanding the categories of crimes eligible for capital punishment to include “murders of law enforcement officers” and “murders by aliens illegally in the United States.”
– April 24, 2026 – Two government watchdog groups sued the Trump administration after officials instructed staff that text messages could be deleted unless they were “the sole record of official decision-making.” The guidance followed a Justice Department memo declaring the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act unconstitutional.
– April 25, 2026 – Trump abruptly canceled a planned trip to Pakistan by Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and other US negotiators for Iran peace talks, later saying, “They can call me. We have all the cards.” Iranian officials denied that direct talks with the United States had been scheduled, and Iran’s president said Tehran would not reenter negotiations while the US blockade of Iranian ports remained in place. The failed talks left unresolved disputes over Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply normally passes.
– April 25, 2026 – The New York Times reported that internal Trump administration guidance instructed immigration officers to treat participation in pro-Palestinian protests, criticism of Israel, and other allegedly “anti-American” speech as grounds for denying green cards. The materials directed officials to treat such activity as an “overwhelmingly negative” factor in immigration decisions and specifically targeted campus protests after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
– April 26, 2026 – A gunman armed with a shotgun, handgun, knives, and ammunition charged through security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner while Trump, cabinet officials, and hundreds of journalists were inside the Washington Hilton. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, later charged with attempting to assassinate the president, was subdued before reaching the ballroom. Four days later, the administration announced plans to rescind federal regulations on gun sales and pistol braces.

How the Shooting Incident at White House Correspondents’ Dinner Unfolded (AP).
– April 26, 2026 – In the aftermath of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting, Trump pushed for approval of his ballroom project. “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough,” Trump wrote on social media. The White House Correspondents’ Association is an independent association of journalists who cover the White House, not a government entity, and they have never held their event on White House grounds.
– April 27, 2026 – Three more people were killed in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific.
– April 27, 2026 – The president and First Lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. Two days before the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting, Kimmel had pretended to address Melania Trump at the dinner, saying, “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” Kimmel had then joked about Donald Trump’s age and health. A day after the president and First Lady’s remarks, the FCC began investigating ABC’s licenses.

Jimmy Kimmel on Melania and Donald Trump Demanding His Firing and The White House Correspondents’ Dinner (Jimmy Kimmel Live).
– April 27, 2026 – A study published in JAMA Pediatrics showed that the CDC’s delay of the infant hepatitis B shot will likely raise infections, cases of liver cancer, and deaths. The study found that the delay would likely increase lifetime health-care costs by at least $16 million. In December, federal vaccine advisors voted to delay the first shot to two months of age despite strong criticism from pediatricians and medical groups.
– April 28, 2026 – Denny Adan Gonzalez, 33, died in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. ICE claimed Gonzalez died of a presumed suicide, but the cause of death was still under investigation. Stewart is operated by CoreCivic, whose facilities have faced scrutiny.
– April 28, 2026 – The State Department announced it will issue commemorative passports for America’s 250th birthday featuring a picture of Trump, whose administration has paused and revoked visas for many. Living presidents do not typically appear on US passports. Since taking office, Trump has had his name and image added to numerous buildings, and plans were also in the works to place his picture on paper currency and coins.

Trump’s Photo Will Appear on Commemorative Passports for 250th Anniversary (AP)
– April 28, 2026 – Former FBI director and frequent Trump foe James Comey was indicted yet again, this time over a since-deleted Instagram post from May featuring the numbers “86” and “47” spelled out with seashells. Comey was accused of making a threat against Trump and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. “I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid. And I still believe in the federal judiciary, so let’s go,” Comey responded in a video posted to Substack. “This is not going anywhere. This is clearly not a punishable threat,” said Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who specializes in First Amendment law.
– April 28, 2026 – Citing the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the Justice Department asked a judge to lift an order halting the construction of a White House ballroom. The legal filing, riddled with unsubstantiated claims and stylistically similar to Trump’s Truth Social posts, accused the plaintiff National Trust for Historic Preservation of “suffer[ing] from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly referred to as TDS” and said the nonprofit’s “name is FAKE.”
– April 29, 2026 – After German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the Iran war, Trump threatened to pull troops out of Germany and lashed out at Merz on Truth Social. “The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote, though Merz had not said that. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” On the same day, the Pentagon said the cost of the Iran war had hit $25 billion, though other officials speculated it was closer to $50 billion. A day later, global oil prices hit a four-year high, briefly exceeding $126 per Brent crude barrel.
– April 29, 2026 – All six conservative Supreme Court justices attended Trump’s state dinner with King Charles, just hours before releasing a decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act and the day before hearing arguments about the administration ending the temporary protected statuses of Syrian and Haitian immigrants. Although Supreme Court justices have attended state dinners before, they typically do not do so as a group. “The problem here is the symbolism, that these six justices—and only these six—were there,” said Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor who writes frequently about the Supreme Court. “It does nothing to disabuse the appearance that the court is playing partisan political favorites, an impression this court should be invested in avoiding.”

King Charles Stresses US Principle That Executive Power Is “Subject to Checks and Balances” (PBS)
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May 2026 (FORTHCOMING)

March 2026

Main Index

Trump’s first term

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