Cole Tomas Allen, 31, from California, ran through a metal detector at the Washington Hilton — the venue of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and fired one or two rounds before being shot and taken down. The Secret Service extracted the Vice President in seconds. Trump was flanked and removed in twenty. By any operational measure, the protection apparatus worked. By any other measure, someone with a gun got into the same building as the president at a nationally televised event.

Republican Clay Fuller won Georgia’s 14th Congressional District special election, replacing Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned after breaking with Trump over Gaza, healthcare costs, and the Epstein files. Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard and former White House fellow, beat Democrat Shawn Harris to preserve the Republican House majority.

The headline is a Republican hold. The story is the margin.

Fuller won by fewer than 12 percentage points in a district Trump carried by 37 points in 2024. That’s a 25-point swing in a safe Republican seat. In a midterm environment where enthusiasm gaps and presidential approval typically dominate, that number is a flashing warning for Republicans heading into November.

Republican Clay Fuller won the special election in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, replacing Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned after breaking with Trump over Gaza, healthcare costs, and the Epstein files.

Fuller is a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard and a former White House fellow during Trump’s first term. He beat Democrat Shawn Harris.

The margin: under 12 points. In a district Trump carried by 37 points in 2024.

Wisconsin voters elected a liberal justice to the state supreme court on Tuesday, expanding the court’s liberal majority in a race that continued a pattern Democrats have been quietly building since 2025: consistently outperforming their presidential race margins in every special and off-cycle election that comes up.

The pattern started in 2025 and has continued without interruption. Democrats are winning races in competitive states, flipping seats in districts that went for Trump in 2024, and doing it in low-turnout environments where motivated opposition voters typically dominate.

Hungary votes April 12, and for the first time in years Orbán’s Fidesz party is trailing in polls. The center-right opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, has pulled ahead in several surveys, making this the toughest electoral test Orbán has faced since consolidating power.

JD Vance is in Budapest today for meetings with Orbán — a visit timed conspicuously close to the election and widely read as a signal of continued U.S. support for Orbán’s government. The Trump administration has maintained warm relations with Orbán throughout his tenure, treating his nationalist model as philosophically compatible with their own direction.

Mamdani stepping out to declare that he would overrule his own police commissioner doesn’t read like strength—it reads like insecurity dressed up as authority. When a mayor feels the need to publicly remind everyone that he’s in charge, it usually means the structure underneath is already wobbling. Strong leadership tends to show itself; it doesn’t announce itself like this.

Let’s be blunt for a second. The whole posture starts to look like political theater from a socialist clown trying to reconcile ideology with reality. On one hand, Mamdani keeps Jessica Tisch in place to maintain credibility, signal continuity, and avoid spooking moderates. On the other, he immediately undercuts that decision by implying she can’t be trusted to operate without being overridden. That’s not balance—it’s contradiction.

The Trump administration has submitted a defense budget request of $1.5 trillion — the largest proposed increase in Pentagon spending since World War II. The request comes while the U.S. is actively engaged in military operations against Iran and faces ongoing commitments across multiple theaters.

The scale of the number is difficult to contextualize. The current defense budget is already the largest in the world by a significant margin. A $1.5 trillion request would push American military spending to a level without modern precedent in peacetime or wartime framing.

The loudest DOGE cuts get the most coverage. The quietest ones may matter more.

Everyone has heard about the high-profile reductions — agency headcounts, foreign aid freezes, federal contractor reviews. These generate headlines because they involve large numbers and familiar institutions. But buried in the actual budget documents are cuts that will reshape how the US government functions at a granular level, and most of them are not being discussed.

The TikTok situation in the US has become so legally and politically tangled that a clear summary is genuinely useful.

Congress passed a law requiring ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest its US operations or face a ban. The law survived a Supreme Court challenge. The deadline passed. TikTok went dark briefly in the US, then came back when the incoming Trump administration signaled it would not enforce the deadline immediately, seeking instead a negotiated outcome. The app has been operating in a legal grey zone since.

Most tariff coverage focuses on the geopolitics. Here is the part that affects you directly.

When the US imposes a 25% tariff on imported goods, the foreign country does not absorb the cost. The importer does. And the importer passes it to the retailer. And the retailer passes it to you. Tariffs are, in practical terms, a consumption tax paid by domestic buyers — not a penalty paid by foreign exporters.