Shots Fired At White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Safe
A man armed with guns and knives stormed the lobby outside a high-profile journalists’ dinner attended by President Donald Trump and multiple senior U.S. leaders on Saturday night, rushing toward the ballroom before Secret Service agents swarmed him and took him into custody. The president was uninjured and was hustled away.
Guests went diving under tables as the scene unfolded and some reported hearing shots outside the vast subterranean ballroom in the Washington Hilton where the event was being held.
One law enforcement official said a gunman had opened fire. A law enforcement officer was shot in the bullet-resistant vest but is expected to be OK, several sources told The Associated Press.
The shooting suspect — described by Trump as a “sick person” — was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, two law enforcement officials told the AP.
SPLC Indicted for Funding Members of Hate Groups
The Southern Poverty Law Center—long touted as a watchdog against hate groups—was indicted this week on federal fraud charges alleging that it secretly paid leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist organizations. The Justice Department says the civil rights nonprofit defrauded donors by funneling more than $3 million to informants inside groups like the KKK, the United Klans of America, and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The charges include six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering. "The SPLC was not dismantling the groups," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” The SPLC says its informant program was used to monitor threats of violence and that information was routinely shared with law enforcement.
As one example, the SPLC paid $70,000 to the leader of the American Nazi Party, who was also a former KKK member and Aryan Nations director. He was listed as an extremist on their own website.
Another more poignant example was the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA in 2017. According to the indictment, an SPLC-paid informant referred to as “F-37” was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the event. This individual attended the rally at the direction of the SPLC, made racist social media posts under their supervision, and helped coordinate transportation for attendees. F-37 reportedly received more than $270,000 from the organization between 2015 and 2023.
The rally, which featured torch marches with anti-Semitic chants and ended in violence—including a car attack that killed Heather Heyer and injured dozens—became a major fundraising boon for the SPLC, helping drive in $81 million in donations from high-profile supporters in the aftermath. Critics argue this raises serious questions about whether the SPLC’s actions went beyond passive monitoring into active facilitation of events that amplified the very extremism they claimed to combat.
More importantly, the Charlottesville rally was also seized upon as a political weapon. President Trump condemned “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides” and explicitly denounced neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but his answer to a reporter’s question about the removal of Confederate monuments, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the argument, was relentlessly framed by media outlets and Democratic leaders as evidence of Trump’s alleged sympathy for white nationalism. Joe Biden repeatedly cited Charlottesville as the singular moment that shocked him into running for president, stating in his April 2019 campaign launch video that Trump’s comments on Charlottesville assigned “a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it,” revealing a threat to the nation “unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.” The rally and its aftermath thus became a foundational narrative in the effort to portray Trump as enabling racism, directly fueling Biden’s entry into the 2020 race.
Iran War
The U.S./Iran ceasefire has been extended. Vice President Vance's planned second round of Islamabad peace talks collapsed when Iran's delegation didn't show, and the Iranians instead fired on two cargo vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
The USS Spruance fired on and disabled the Iranian-flagged cargo ship Touska in the Gulf of Oman after it attempted to bypass the U.S. naval blockade, with U.S. Marines taking custody of the vessel. Iran called it "maritime piracy" and vowed to respond. The incident marked the first time the U.S. Navy fired upon and seized a ship since the blockade went into effect.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei—reportedly still recovering from serious injuries, including burns and the loss of a limb—has reportedly left a vacuum where IRGC generals are effectively running the country, and are at odds with civilian negotiators. President Trump ultimately chose diplomacy over strikes on critical Iranian infrastructure, extending the ceasefire “until such time as [Iran’s next peace] proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
Before the war, about one-fifth of the world's oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz, with roughly 130 ships transiting daily. On Tuesday, that number was one. Diesel prices have risen 45% (even more than gas prices have risen). Lufthansa is cutting 20,000 flights over six months to conserve jet fuel.
More News
⚖️ Navy Secretary fired: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Navy Secretary John Phelan, with sources saying Phelan clashed with Hegseth over the chain of command and was seen as too independent.
💸 Tariff refunds portal goes live: The Trump administration launched a new portal allowing businesses to apply for refunds on “Liberation Day” tariffs, following the Supreme Court's February ruling that those tariffs were unlawful. The government may owe up to $166 billion, but companies must proactively apply, and valid claims will be processed within 90 days.
🍄 Ibogaine executive order: President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the FDA to fast-track review of the psychedelic drug ibogaine for treating PTSD and traumatic brain injuries in veterans, with $50 million designated for research. Joe Rogan, who was present for the signing, said the whole thing started with a text message to Trump about the drug's effectiveness on opioid addiction—and that Trump replied, "Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it."
🌿 Medical marijuana reclassified: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Saturday reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a Schedule III drug instead of Schedule I. The administration also said it was starting the process for reclassifying marijuana more broadly, setting a hearing to begin in late June.
📰 Kash Patel sues The Atlantic: FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlanticand staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick over an article alleging he exhibited erratic behavior, excessive drinking, and unexplained absences on the job. The Atlantic is standing by its reporting; Patel says the allegations are false and called the piece a “malicious hit” designed to drive him from office.
👩💼 Labor Secretary out: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned from the Trump administration this week amid whistleblower allegations, including directing staff to fabricate official trip records, drinking on the job, an inappropriate relationship with a security detail member, and taking staff to a strip club. Both Chavez-DeRemer and her husband deny the allegations. Keith Sonderling will serve as acting secretary.
🏥 Congresswoman resigns ahead of sanctions: Florida Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress on Tuesday, departing minutes before the House Ethics Committee was set to announce sanctions against her related to an alleged scheme in which her family's health care firm received $5 million from a FEMA-funded COVID contract for work allegedly never performed, with funds allegedly laundered into her campaign and spent on personal luxuries.
🇮🇱 IDF soldiers jailed: Israel removed two soldiers from combat duty and sentenced them to 30 days in jail after one filmed the other striking a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon. Israel also charged two IDF Air Force technicians for spying for Iran. Over 50 Israeli service members and civilians have been arrested in the past 2 1/2 years for espionage.
🍎 Tim Cook steps down at Apple: Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Monday he will transition to an Executive Chairman role in September, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus taking over as CEO. During Cook's tenure, Apple became the first company to reach $1 trillion, $2 trillion, and $3 trillion valuations, with annual revenue growing from $108 billion to $416 billion, but fell short on the most ambitious promises of Apple Intelligence.
🔮 Prediction market insider trading crackdown: A U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who participated in the raid that captured Nicolás Maduro was charged with using classified information to place bets on Maduro's ouster, allegedly netting more than $400,000 on Polymarket. Separately, betting platform Kalshi fined and suspended three political candidates for betting on their own races, and state employees are now being targeted by insider trading bans as well.
Good News
President Trump announced that Lebanon and Israel have agreed to extend the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel for another three weeks.
