Since last sending postcards from the newsroom edge, I have channeled my writing energy into a book about the shocking school year I survived, feeling numb to much of the administration news and unmoved to talk about it. But talk, write, and read we must, because doing so is a lot better than going quietly crazy while crossing off days on the calendar of this administration.

As one confronted with presenting too much negativity, prone to raising an eyebrow to anyone telling me how optimistic they are about the political future, I would love to put my outrage on the back burner and salute some positive changes. After all, the president’s personal lawyer is not quite sailing through confirmation as the next U.S. Attorney General and the frat boy running the Pentagon is getting his comeuppance on Capitol Hill.  And yet, I’m having a hard time with that salute.

It should have been an unequivocally positive change that ICE officers will now wear body cameras during vehicle stops. This follows the death of twenty-five-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, killed by an ICE agent David Brouillette. The New York Times reported that Brouillette’s ex-wife says he called her to justify his shooting of Durán Guerrero and asked her not to speak of his violent past. Well, now….

We finally have a) the name of the perpetrator of the shooting of an immigrant, which is a rarity, and b) confirmation that at least some of these ICE agents may be prone to caring nothing at all about exercising care when searching for illegal immigrants who are minding their own business, living their lives and supporting their families. But these positive events were immediately met with a government announcement that literally made my jaw drop – and I did not think that was possible anymore.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will reportedly no longer investigate ICE confrontations with targeted immigrants. That would have to lift the scrutiny off shootings, too, one would imagine.

Additionally, though the Secretary of Homeland Security wanted to pause these traffic stops for a while, Donald Trump overruled him. The president is likely thumping his chest on the all-time high booking of more than 43,000 alleged illegal immigrants into detention centers in the month of June. Why? What possible good does he believe will come of this? Salvation at the ballot box for his party, since his miserable speech on foreign interference in U.S. elections did not produce the seven Senators he would need to pass the voter suppression SAVE Act? The answer is evident in the state of his war of choice: he does not seem to think much at all. But that’s for another quip in the not-so-distant future.

With the New Jersey governor reporting that a software glitch registered thousands of non-citizens to vote – and that 400 actually cast a ballot, immigration policy and claims of stolen elections may belong in the same sentence for far too many voting citizens who don’t read beyond the headlines, if at all. That was the news we didn’t need. It’s very hard to be numb about that.