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.

Norah O’Donnell sat across from the president of the United States days after a gunman tried to kill him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and chose to read aloud, on camera, the assassin’s manifesto. The passage called Trump a pedophile and a rapist. She then asked for his reaction.

Trump called her a disgrace. The clip went everywhere.

The media’s defense — that O’Donnell was simply asking about a document in the public record — holds up for about thirty seconds before collapsing. There is a difference between reporting that a manifesto exists and its general character, and reading its most inflammatory accusations directly into the face of the person targeted by an attempted murder. One is journalism. The other is theater designed to force a specific response.

Oil Shock Incoming as Iran Tensions Explode

The world woke up this morning to one of the most consequential moves in recent Middle East history: President Donald Trump has ordered a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, effective immediately.

What Just Happened

After marathon negotiations in Islamabad between the U.S. and Iran collapsed without a deal on Sunday, Trump moved decisively. The U.S. Central Command issued a notice to mariners declaring that unauthorized vessels in the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea east of the Strait will be subject to interdiction.

Trump threatened this week to pull the United States out of NATO following a meeting with the alliance’s Secretary General. The threat came in the context of ongoing disputes over burden-sharing, European support for the Iran conflict, and what the administration views as insufficient deference from alliance partners.

This is not the first time Trump has raised the possibility of leaving NATO. It has become a recurring negotiating posture — maximalist pressure designed to extract concessions on defense spending or policy alignment. European capitals have largely stopped treating these statements as bluffs, which may be the most consequential shift of his second term.

Within a 24-hour window, Trump said he was “optimistic” about a deal with Iran — and then threatened Tehran over fees being charged in the Strait of Hormuz.

He also accused Iran of doing a “poor job” of letting energy supplies flow. Karoline Leavitt called reports of Iran closing the strait “completely unacceptable,” though she also said ship traffic had actually been increasing and the Iranian state media reports were “false.”

Pope Leo XIV weighed in on the Iran conflict this week, specifically targeting Trump’s statement that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran didn’t accept a deal. The Pope called the remark “truly unacceptable” and implored world leaders to find a peaceful path out of the conflict.

It is unusual for a sitting Pope to directly name and rebuke an American president over wartime rhetoric. Leo XIV has moved faster and more directly on geopolitical matters than his predecessor, and this week’s statement was notably unhedged — no diplomatic both-sidesing, no call for “all parties” to show restraint. The criticism went in one direction.

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 stated goals going into the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran were substantial: end the nuclear program, destroy Iran’s military capabilities, and produce regime change. After six weeks of strikes and a ceasefire announced April 8, none of those goals have been achieved.

Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was damaged but not eliminated. Its military took significant losses but retains functional capacity. The government has not fallen — Khamenei’s health condition has created instability, but instability is not regime change. The regime is still there.