Happy Monday! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has appointed a former tobacco industry executive as its deputy director for legislative affairs—a quiet but important step toward doctors once again recommending Camels to treat that nagging cough.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
Trump Assassination Attempt at Correspondents’ Dinner
A gunman—armed with a pistol, shotgun, and knives—stormed a security checkpoint in what authorities said was a “likely” attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, but was tackled to the ground and taken into custody. While the perpetrator shot one security officer, the officer was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said at a news conference later that night that the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, would be arraigned on Monday to face federal charges, including use of a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, with more to follow, pending an investigation. To learn more about the attack and the security measures that were in place at the venue, read the full article in today’s TMD.
- Immediately after he was tackled to the ground, Secret Service agents evacuated several administration figures, including Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance.
- Trump said the attack demonstrated why the White House needed an official ballroom, and the Department of Justice called on the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit seeking to prevent its construction.
DOJ Drops Powell Probe
U.S. Attorney Pirro—whose office launched a federal probe into cost overruns for the Federal Reserve’s renovation project and whether the central bank’s chairman, Jerome Powell, lied to Congress when describing the plans—announced plans to close the investigation on Friday, but emphasized that she would “not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.” Pirro tweeted that the Federal Reserve Inspector General, the central bank’s internal watchdog, “has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns,” and produce a “comprehensive report in short order.” However, later that afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “the case is not necessarily dropped, it’s just being moved over to the inspector general,” adding, “The investigation still continues.” Last month, a federal district judge blocked grand jury subpoenas issued to Powell, Fed governors, and others in connection with the investigation, ruling that there is “a mountain of evidence” showing that the Trump administration’s primary motive was to pressure Powell into cutting interest rates or resigning.
- Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina—who vowed to block the confirmation of all Federal Reserve nominees until the DOJ investigation was concluded—told NBC’s Meet the Press that he is ready to confirm Warsh as chairman, stating, “I think he’s going to be a great Fed chair.”
- Powell had previously said that should no successor be nominated by May 15, he would serve as chair temporarily until the Senate could confirm a pick, which he noted followed precedent.
Iran Presents New Peace Plan
Axios reported on Sunday that Iran presented a new peace deal to the U.S., detailing terms to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as a first step while delaying negotiations to restrict Iran’s nuclear development to an unspecified later date. The reported offer came one day after Trump canceled planned Pakistani-mediated talks in Islamabad, instructing White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner not to travel to the Pakistani capital. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with mediating Pakistani officials on Saturday, where he presented what he described as a “workable framework” for a peace deal, but also said Iran has “yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy.” Trump told reporters on Saturday that Iran had improved its offer, but that it was still “not enough.” In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he wrote, “Nobody knows who is in charge [of Iran], including them,” adding that the U.S. has “all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
- U.S. Central Command announced Saturday that a naval guided-missile destroyer and a naval helicopter intercepted a sanctioned “shadow fleet” vessel attempting to bypass the U.S. blockade to ship Iranian oil and gas.
- To date, the U.S. has “redirected” 37 ships through the blockade, according to the military.
- Trump told Axios that the administration hasn’t decided to resume fighting with Iran, stating, “We haven’t thought about it yet.”
Jihadis Attack Across Mali
The West African al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-dominated rebel group, carried out coordinated attacks across Mali on Saturday. JNIM claimed responsibility for the deadly car bombing of the country’s defense minister, Sadio Camara, at his residence on a military base in Kati, a town near the capital city of Bamako. JNIM also claimed responsibility for attacks on Bamako’s airport and several cities in central Mali. Meanwhile, the FLA separately claimed to have seized control of Kidal—which Gen. Oumar Diarra, head of Mali’s armed forces, confirmed last night on state TV—and parts of Gao in the North. Mali’s government has not yet released a death toll, but said at least 16 people, including both civilians and military service members, have been injured in the attacks. Mali’s Army said that its forces fought to repel the militants, killing “several hundred” of them, and is conducting a sweep operation in Bamako, in addition to other sites, including Kati.
- Local officials in Bamako have implemented a three-day curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
- A United Nations spokesperson tweeted on Saturday that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “is deeply concerned by reports of attacks in several locations across Mali” and “strongly condemns” the attacks.
Two Runners Crack Two-Hour Marathon Barrier in London
Three runners competing on Sunday in the London Marathon broke the world record time, including two who reached the finish line in under two hours, with Sabastian Sawe finishing first with a time 1:59:30. This beat the previous world record held by fellow Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum, who ran the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2:00:35. Ethiopian runner Yomif Kejelcha came second in London with a 1:59:41 time, and Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo finished third in 2:00:28. Ethiopian runner Tigst Assefa also broke her own women’s-only world record, finishing the race in 2:15:41. “I came into the race wanting to beat my record,” she said, adding, “I knew I was in good shape.”
- “I would like to thank the crowds for cheering us,” Sawe said after the race. “I think they help us a lot, I think you feel so happy and strong and pushing, and that’s why I can say … what comes today is not for me alone, but for all of us today in London.”
- Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge ran a 1:59:40 marathon in 2019 during a special “1:59 Challenge” race in Vienna, but the international governing sports body did not recognize the time because Kipchoge was provided certain advantages, including a closed-event format, a crew of rotating pacemakers running in formation to block air resistance, hydration delivered from a moving bicycle, and a pace car projecting a laser guide on the road.
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Another Assassination Attempt
A few weeks ago, Cole Tomas Allen—a self-employed Californian video game designer and part-time tutor—is believed to have booked a room at the Washington Hilton hotel before traveling by train to Washington, D.C. Armed, he then allegedly checked himself into the Hilton—the hotel where, the next evening, the president would attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and where, in 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and almost killed then-President Ronald Reagan. Allen’s sister reportedly told investigators that he kept the guns at their parents’ home without their knowledge, and described her brother as prone to making radical statements. On his (now deleted) Bluesky account, he wrote frequently about President Donald Trump and the administration, referring to the president as a pedophile, a traitor, a “sociopathic mob boss,” and a “Russian puppet.”
On Saturday night, at approximately 8:26 p.m., he reportedly sent a note to his family—that swung from apology to religious justification and flippancy—in which he described himself as a “Friendly Federal Assassin,” tried to explain his actions and motivations, and apologized to his family members, friends, and anyone who potentially got caught up in his attack. He wrote, “I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me,” and that “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” He said his targets were “Administration officials”—with the explicit exception of FBI Director Kash Patel—“prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
After signing off his letter, he wrote a “P.S.” mocking the “incompetence” of the security and his ease in getting through. He wrote that he walked “in with multiple weapons,” and security didn’t consider him a threat, because they were instead “focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
Roughly 10 minutes later, Allen allegedly entered the lobby of the hotel, armed with a shotgun, a pistol, and knives, and—just feet from the ballroom where Trump was preparing to make his first address at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner—stormed the security detail. Authorities said he fired at least one shot, which hit the ballistic vest of a Secret Service agent, and was tackled to the ground.
This appears to be the third known attempt on the president’s life in recent years, following the campaign-trail shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the would-be assassin armed with a rifle near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course. The Secret Service’s protective bubble worked as designed on Saturday, but what about the wider security plan? And what could be improved?
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Details about Saturday night and the security protocols in place at the time are still being investigated, and they were likely more stringent than what was visible to Allen. But, despite the presence of the most senior U.S. officials—Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and their wives, along with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and FBI Director Kash Patel—the event was not given top security status. For events with so many members of the line-of-succession—an inauguration, a State of the Union—the secretary of homeland security typically issues a National Special Security Event designation, which puts the Secret Service in charge of coordinating security across federal, state, and local agencies. That designation unlocks the full weight of federal resources—drawing the FBI in for intelligence and counterterrorism, FEMA for consequence management, and pre-positioning specialist response teams alongside enhanced credentialing, perimeter, and airspace measures—but the Washington Post reports that Saturday’s dinner was given a lower security status.
Without that designation, responsibility for security at the Hilton was split unevenly between agencies, and on Saturday, that split left visible gaps. The Wall Street Journal reported that guests entered by flashing a dinner ticket or invitation that was eyeballed but not scanned, and that no IDs were verified. Magnetometers were only at the ballroom entrance, so guests moved through the lobby and lower levels unscreened, and the hotel’s fitness center—which has a separate external entrance—was kept open. And even if these issues had not been present on the night, by checking into a room more than 24 hours in advance, Allen was already inside the hotel before the security plan went live.
At the Hilton, according to the Washington Post, the Secret Service considered itself responsible for the ballroom and its immediate perimeter, not the wider hotel. Meanwhile, police handled the protesters, road closures, and traffic outside the hotel. Between those two zones, no agency was clearly responsible for the rest of the hotel—the lobby, the corridors, the rooms—or for the thousands of unrelated guests checking in and out, one of whom was Allen. Authorities reportedly checked the names of all hotel guests against a government database, but he had not been previously known to law enforcement.
In part, that reflects how the agency operates: The Secret Service makes a security bubble for the people it protects, but can’t control the venues they visit. Robert McDonald—a criminology professor at the University of New Haven and a former Secret Service agent—told TMD, “The Secret Service doesn’t get to play a part in the physicality of a venue. The venue is the venue, and the Secret Service then has to build the security plan in and around the venue.”
Don Mihalek, the executive vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation and a former Secret Service agent, affirmed this point: “When Air Force One is going into an airport anywhere in the world, the Secret Service doesn’t shut the entire airport down for the whole time Air Force One is there.” Instead, “they create the security bubble for Air Force One coming in, taxiing and leaving where it minimizes the disruption to the broader operations of the airport.”
And despite the issues on the night, on the narrower question of whether the Secret Service’s protective model held, the former agents and security experts TMD interviewed were unanimous that it had. Lewis Merletti, the 19th director of the Secret Service, told TMD: “The guy never got into that ballroom. Never. To me, it was a perfect example of this is a success for the Secret Service. Honestly, I find it very upsetting that people are saying [it was a failure]. It was not a failure. This is the way we’re designed to work.”
That logic is baked into how the agency is trained. “The number one thing you learn, like the first day of agent training, is cover and evacuate. Maximum [protection] to the protectee, minimum to the problem,” William Gage, a security consultant with SafeHaven Security Group and a former Secret Service agent, told TMD. “At the hotel, I think the Secret Service protective model worked.”
Mihalek made the same point. If someone is particularly determined, they “can and will challenge security no matter what that security is,“ he said. “The issue then is, was the planning of the security methodologies robust enough to catch and mitigate the threat before it became a real problem? In the case of the Hilton, it did.”
That distinction—between a security plan that breaks down and one that absorbs an attempt as designed—is what separates Saturday’s incident from the July 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the shooter grazed Trump’s ear and killed Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former volunteer fire chief who was attending the rally with his wife and two daughters.
Saturday’s incident came amid the most sustained surge in U.S. political violence in half a century. Targeted violence grew by more than 30 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to data from the University of Maryland’s START consortium; the U.S. Capitol Police logged a 58 percent rise in threats against members of Congress; and START’s count of politically motivated attacks reached roughly 150 in the first half of 2025 alone—nearly double the same period a year earlier.
Earlier this month, a 20-year-old Texan was charged with attempted murder after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The suspect was carrying a document listing the names and addresses of other AI executives, board members, and investors. In December 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, and less than a year later, a gunman assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk before a college crowd. Allied Universal’s 2025 World Security Report found that 46 percent of U.S. chief security officers say the threat of violence to executives has risen in the past two years, and 66 percent in the technology sector.
For Merletti, that’s the part that worries him most—not the failure of any individual security plan, but the cultural pull toward imitation. “When I was in the [Secret] Service … there were many attempts that never made it into the media,” he said. “We had a working agreement with the prosecutor’s office that was called the contagion theory: that if we publicize all these, then people are going to try. People that are not necessarily stable are going to try to mimic it. They’re going to become copycats.” But in the modern era, with social media, keeping attempts like this quiet is simply not feasible.“In today’s world, you can’t do it.”
Trump told 60 Minutes that the administration plans to reschedule the dinner, with some security changes: “We should do it within 30 days, and they’ll have even more security, and they’ll have bigger perimeter security.” He also repeated his point that the incident underlined why the White House needed his new ballroom. Meanwhile, Allen will face charges of using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon in federal court in Washington, D.C., today, with further charges expected.
“The service is going to have to look at these copycats—these are such high-profile events,” Gage said. “This is the third or fourth attempt on Trump. And there’s going to be more. There are people out there that are going to study this.”
Today’s Must-Read
Concerns about online privacy have existed since the launch of the internet, but the advent of large language models has presented a concerning new reality. Almost every online action taken feeds and empowers the LLM—and Dispatch contributing writer Nathan Beacom warns that smarter laws and policies won’t be enough to prevent this growing technology from being used as a tool to surveil and manipulate the population.
In Other News
- U.S. Southern Command announced on Friday that it struck another alleged drug-trafficking boat traveling in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two aboard.
- Backers of a California ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires say they have amassed more than 1.5 million signatures, above the 875,000 needed to qualify the initiative for the November ballot.
- In a 2-1 ruling, a federal appeals court ruled that the president’s executive authority does not allow the Trump administration to deny asylum claims from migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, upholding a lower court decision.
- Trump fired the sitting members of the independent board overseeing the National Science Foundation, the agency that distributes federal scientific research funding.
- Attorney General Todd Blanche instructed the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons to approve “additional manners of execution” for the Bureau of Prisons, including firing squad, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation.
- One police officer died, and another was critically wounded, after they were shot at a Chicago hospital by a robbery suspect who law enforcement had transported there for a medical observation. The suspect was apprehended after trying to flee the scene and is once again in custody.
- Former Israeli Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid—who rotated the role in a governing coalition between 2021 and 2022—announced they would unite in a party in an attempt to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the next election. Bennett will officially lead the new united party.
- Peruvian police raided the home of the country’s elections agency chief, Piero Corvetto, who resigned last week, in connection with an investigation probing ballot shortages and other concerns surrounding the country’s April 12 presidential election.
- An explosive device detonated aboard a bus near the Colombian town of Cajibío, killing at least 20 people and injuring dozens of others, including children.
- Northern Irish police said that a police station in the town of Dunmurry was targeted in a car bomb attack, after an explosive device detonated in a delivery vehicle that had been hijacked and forced to drive to the location. No one was injured.
- Russian forces launched three separate waves of aerial attacks on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro and other parts of the country overnight and during the day on Saturday, killing at least 10 people across Ukraine and wounding dozens of others.
- Democratic Gov. Janet Mills of Maine vetoed state legislature-approved legislation to block approval for any new data center projects in the state until at least November 2027.
- The U.S.-based nuclear reactor and fuel company X-Energy raised more than $1 billion in its IPO, ending its first day of trading with its stock price 27 percent higher than its initial offering, marking the largest nuclear company IPO on record.
- Google reached a deal with Anthropic to invest $10 billion in cash in the AI company at a $380 billion valuation, and potentially invest another $30 billion depending on the completion of certain performance milestones.
- The Michael Jackson biopic Michael won the weekend box office, topping the movie list with $97 million, while The Super Mario Galaxy Movie finished second with $21.2 million.
- “How Kenyan Star Sabastian Sawe Is Trying to Save the Marathon’s Reputation” (LetsRun.com)
- Kenneth Rogoff explains why AI-driven capital growth is unlikely to erase mounting government debt. (Project Syndicate)
- Dispatch contributor Jeremiah Johnson explores the small share of internet users who dominate social media spaces, online forums, and other platforms. (Infinite Scroll)
- Marin Cogan talks to a dozen-plus young job-seekers—college seniors, recent grads, and grad students—about navigating one of the worst entry-level job markets in years. (Bloomberg)
New York Times: Most Guests Ducked for Cover. This Man Munched on His Burrata Salad.
Independent: Police Investigate After Claims ‘Hair Dryer Used To Manipulate Weather Sensor To Win $34K Bet’
Wall Street Journal: San Francisco Is Going Nuts Over a Giant Sea Lion Named Chonkers
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