The space is expanding and its expansion rate is accelerating. Dark energy is not pushing objects apart, it is causing the acceleration of expansion of space.
What you said isn't even pop science, it is blatantly wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
And the money quote:
It is called "dark" because it is not interacting with normal matter, but only with the space time structure.