Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The Senate just voted to hand ICE $70 billion with no strings attached. Four days after someone tried to shoot the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, his Justice Department’s response was to loosen gun laws. A Colombian torture victim has been shipped to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country currently experiencing armed conflict and a yellow fever outbreak. And American farmers, including lifelong Trump voters, are deciding it makes more financial sense to leave their fields empty than to plant a crop.
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Let’s get into it.
Senate Republicans Just Gave ICE a $70 Billion Slush Fund
Seventeen people have died in ICE custody since January. The Senate’s response was to ensure this is fully funded through 2029.
After a marathon vote-a-rama that dragged from Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday, the Senate adopted a GOP budget blueprint to provide roughly $70 billion to fund immigration enforcement agencies through the remainder of Trump’s term.
The process used was budget reconciliation, a procedural tool that lets the majority party bypass the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation. Democrats couldn’t have stopped it even if they’d tried harder.
Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all Democrats in voting against the measure. Paul raised issues with the breakdown of the numbers, suggesting cuts be made elsewhere. Trump described Paul on Truth Social as “a sick wacko, who refuses to vote for our great Republican Party.”
The bill now heads to the House, where some members are reportedly pushing to make it even larger. Go big or go home, unless home is a country you fled persecution from, in which case ICE will deport you somewhere random.
ICE Couldn’t Deport Her to Colombia, So They Sent Her to the Congo
Adriana Quiroz Zapata fled Colombia after she was repeatedly beaten and raped by associates of her ex-boyfriend, a police officer. A U.S. immigration court found she was likely to face torture if returned. The Convention Against Torture was supposed to protect her.
ICE packed her onto a bus and tried to abandon her in Mexico, a country where she has no ties. But Mexican immigration authorities declined to take her after hearing details of her harrowing journey. That was last year.
On April 16 of this year, Zapata was removed from the U.S. again. Along with fourteen others, she was shipped off to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another country where she has no ties.
The group didn’t know their final destination until they were on the plane. Two of the deportees said they hadn’t been vaccinated against yellow fever before being expelled. The mosquito-borne disease is endemic in Congo, alongside malaria.
Zapata’s lawyer says her prediabetes became diabetes due to her diet in detention, and she has been prescribed medication that officials in the DRC told the lawyer cannot be provided. She is currently being provided only bread and water, with escorted access to a convenience store.
Her lawyer describes her current condition as fragile. The administration describes it as resolved.
Four Days After an Assassination Attempt, the DOJ Loosened Gun Laws
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting has prompted a lot of responses. The Justice Department’s was to roll back gun regulations.
The Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have announced 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking meant to ease compliance for gun owners and firearms businesses while narrowing the government’s enforcement reach.
The package includes repealing Biden-era rules on pistol braces, rolling back the definition of who counts as a gun dealer, and loosening interstate transport requirements for certain weapons.
The newly confirmed ATF director signed the package at a ceremony surrounded by representatives from the firearms industry. Gun control groups were not invited to the ceremony, but their feedback hasn’t been positive. Everytown for Gun Safety noted that the DOJ had chosen the week of an assassination attempt to gut the only federal agency dedicated to keeping guns out of criminal hands.
It is worth noting that the gunman used legally owned firearms. The new rules make it easier to own firearms legally. These two facts have been placed in the same paragraph and will not be editorialized further.
American Farmers Are Doing the Math, and the Math Says Don’t Plant
It is planting season in America. For a growing number of farmers, the plan is to not plant anything.
Farm diesel prices have gone up 46% since the war with Iran started, adding another major cost at the worst possible time. For farmers already dealing with trade wars, tariffs, and unstable markets, the rising price of getting a crop in the ground has pushed some to a difficult decision: lease out the land, leave fields idle, or simply sit out the season.
The problem comes down to simple math. Some farmers may spend up to $900 to plant an acre of corn, only to get about $800 back. That would mean a loss before the season is even finished.
In the Mississippi Delta, 73-year-old Sledge Taylor has resorted to buying diesel fuel in small batches. The lifelong Republican, who voted for Trump in 2024, has storage capacity for more than 20,000 gallons. Right now, he’s sitting on about 1,000.
Taylor said it’s worse now than the farm crisis of the 1980s. He applied for the administration’s $12 billion bridge program to offset tariff losses, yet he still doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep farming.
The administration has said repeatedly that its economic policies will eventually help farmers. Eventually is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Oregon passes sweeping immigrant justice package expanding school, healthcare protections. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a package of eight immigrant protection laws this month covering everything from schools and hospitals to courts and law enforcement, essentially building a legal buffer between state institutions and federal immigration authorities. Republicans called it a public safety threat, which is a creative description of a law that stops federal agents from grabbing people out of hospitals.
Hilton Donates Unserved WHCD Lobsters and Steaks to Local Shelters. After a gunman disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Washington Hilton donated all 2,600 unserved steak and lobster dinners to shelters for abused women and children. The hotel noted it “regularly donates unused food from events to support local organizations,” which has nothing to do with the fact that Hilton also houses ICE detainees and would very much like you to think of them as one of the good guys right now.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma set to dissolve after judge approves its criminal sentence. Purdue Pharma was sentenced this week to $5.5 billion in fines for paying kickbacks to doctors and deceiving regulators to sell OxyContin, a drug linked to over 900,000 American deaths. It will now dissolve and be replaced by a new company aimed at fighting the opioid crisis. Individual victims can expect to receive between $8,000 and $16,000, while the Sackler family, who pulled $10.7 billion out of the company, will pay their share over 15 years because.
California announces biggest state park expansion in decades. Governor Newsom announced three new state parks in California’s Central Valley on Earth Day, including a riverside park along the Feather River, a recreation hub near Fresno, and a two-acre historic Dust Bowl labor camp in Bakersfield that inspired The Grapes of Wrath. The initiative, called State Parks Forward, would add 30,000 acres to the state park system by 2030, which Newsom framed as a direct contrast to the Trump administration selling off national parks.
