Alexander Willis

In the wake of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting Saturday, several guests expressed shock Sunday at what they characterized as an unprecedented lack of security at the event, a dinner attended by President Donald Trump and many of his top officials.

“I was never asked for a key, but could’ve produced one from a different city. Also never asked for ID, and waltzed through the lobby and lower ballroom areas like I owned the place,” wrote Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, a prominent libertarian commentator and radio personality.

“Only saw one [law enforcement] dog by the red carpet, which also had surprisingly lax security. Having been to this event several times as early as 1995, this was probably the least security I’ve encountered.”

Questions quickly mounted around the event. Remarks made moments before the shooting fueled an online frenzy, while additional scrutiny followed reports that journalists were able to move freely, unrestricted, through the scene within hours. The apparent lack of security only prompted further concern.

“I flashed my ticket and was waved through in one second. My name was not checked against any list, I showed no ID, I was not patted down and did not go through a metal detector. I probably could have shown a ticket from a prior year or a fake one as they barely looked at it,” wrote Fox News’ Bill Melugin in a social media post on X.

“From that point, I walked into the hotel with no further security check, and I walked down to the Fox pre-party where there were multiple ballrooms that were absolutely PACKED with attendees. Still did not go through any security at that point. Hypothetically, if I had hidden an explosive in my shoe or my jacket, I would have had no problem getting into one of those ballrooms.”

Within a matter of hours, two MS NOW journalists were able to walk through and document the scene of the Saturday shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), sparking confusion among critics who questioned why the area had not been restricted by law enforcement.

The annual WHCD – attended for the first time by President Donald Trump while in office – was disrupted Saturday at the Washington Hilton hotel by a suspected shooter, later identified as 31-year-old California resident Cole Allen. And yet, despite the suspect reportedly penning a manifesto naming Trump and his top officials as targets, two MS NOW journalists apparently had no issue walking onto the site of the shooting.

“I was covering the red carpet last night when shots rang out,” wrote MS NOW reporter Julia Jester Sunday in a social media post on X. “This morning after law enforcement left the Hilton, my MS NOW News producer [Lillie Boudreaux and] I (to our surprise) were able to walk into the scene.”

That journalists were able to enter the scene of the shooting so soon after the incident left some critics dumbfounded.

“Able to walk into the scene less than 24 hours after a shooter attempted to breach the WHCD. I've been to gas station murder scenes where crime tape was up longer,” wrote journalist and podcast host Grant Hermes in a social media post on X.

Jester also shared exclusive photos and video of the scene, which showed discarded first aid materials strewn across the carpet floor at the hotel. The video and photos also showed large, square holes cut out from the hotel’s wall, which Jester claimed were bullet hole sites. Law enforcement often removes sections of wall at the site of bullet holes to better preserve evidence.

The New York Post claimed Sunday to have obtained a copy of a manifesto written by the suspected shooter who disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) Saturday night, in which the gunman names every Trump administration official as a target – except for one, and without explanation as to the lone exclusion.

The suspected gunman was soon identified as 31-year-old California resident Cole Allen, who police said had rushed through a Secret Service checkpoint at the event bearing a shotgun, a handgun and several knives. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche later said Allen was believed to be targeting Trump administration officials.

On Sunday, the Post published what they claimed to be Allen’s manifesto in full, which Allen had sent to family members 10 minutes before the shooting, according to the Post.

“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” the suspected shooter wrote in his manifesto, an apparent reference to President Donald Trump, according to the Post.

Allen then went on to name his list of targets, which excluded just one Trump administration official: FBI Director Kash Patel.

“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” the manifesto reads.

According to the manifesto – which was confirmed as authentic by multiple journalists – Allen did not intend to target any other event attendees, including Secret Service officials, unless they posed a direct threat to either his life or achieving his goal.

“In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls),” the alleged manifesto reads.

“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Despite President Donald Trump’s claim that the United States has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian military boarded and apprehended two container ships that had attempted to traverse the shipping waterway, with Tehran claiming victory on Sunday over what they called “maritime piracy by U.S. terrorist forces,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

The two vessels – the MSC Francesca and Epaminondas – were boarded and apprehended last Wednesday by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) according to reports, with the IRGC confirming the incident on Sunday.

Both vessels are managed by the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s single-largest container shipping company. While MSC is headquartered in Switzerland, Tehran claimed, without evidence, that the vessels were “Israeli-owned,” and said the operation was carried out “in response to what it called ‘maritime piracy by U.S. terrorist forces,’” the Journal reported.

Both vessels were redirected to the Port of Bandar Abbas, Iran’s largest container port located along the Strait of Hormuz, Fox News reported.

“The IRGC also warned the U.S. and its allies against further military action, pledging a strong response and reiterating Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz,” the Journal’s report reads.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed on Sunday what the potential motive was for the man suspected of opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday night, CNN reported.

“The suspected gunman who charged through a security checkpoint at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner appeared to be targeting Trump administration officials, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN,” the outlet reported.

The suspected gunman was soon identified as 31-year-old California resident Cole Allen, who, according to police, was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. Allen reportedly shot a Secret Service officer who was later hospitalized but “expected to survive,” NBC News reported, before being taken into custody without serious injury.

In the wake of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) shooting Saturday night, President Donald Trump doubled down on his calls to fast-track his White House ballroom project Sunday morning, demanding that the lawsuit currently holding the project up be “dropped immediately.”

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“The ridiculous Ballroom lawsuit, brought by a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit, must be dropped, immediately. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with its construction, which is on budget and substantially ahead of schedule!!!”

Within hours of the shooting, Trump said the shooting proved why his ballroom project was needed, sparking scorn from critics over the president’s use of the potentially deadly incident to “hype his ballroom.” Trump appeared unfazed by the scrutiny, however, alleging Sunday morning that Saturday’s shooting incident “would have never happened” had his ballroom been operational.

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump wrote.

“It cannot be built fast enough! While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World, The White House.”

Speculation swirled Sunday morning after a viral clip captured Fox News reporter Aishah Hasnie recounting chilling remarks from Nicholas Riccio – the husband of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – made just moments before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) shooting, with the call also appearing to drop mid-sentence.

The annual WHCD was disrupted Saturday night by a shooting after a suspected armed gunman “charged at a Secret Service checkpoint” at the event. President Donald Trump and other administration officials were evacuated without incident, while one Secret Service agent was hospitalized after being shot by the suspected gunman.

Amid the chaos, Hasnie, who was attending the WHCD, phoned into Fox News to recount remarks Riccio made to her moments before the shooting.

“He was seated right next to me, and right as the dinner was starting, he leaned over and said ‘I’ve watched you on TV, you do a great job – you need to be very safe,’” Hasnie said. “And he was very serious when he said that to me, and he kind of looked around the room and he said, ‘there are some…’

The phone call appeared to have dropped mid-sentence, with the clip of Hasnie’s remarks sparking an online firestorm.

“I definitely wanted to hear what she had to say,” wrote Trisha Hope, a conservative Texas-based political activist and Jan. 6 advocate, in a social media post on X.

“I want to hear the rest of what she had to say,” wrote journalist Cassandra MacDonald Sunday on X.

Speculation around the clip had grown so strong that Hasnie apparently felt compelled to provide an explanation early Sunday morning, telling her more than 103,000 followers on X that the call likely dropped due to poor cellular service in the event space. She also shared the remainder of what she intended to say before the call apparently dropped.

“To finish the story, he was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy,” Hasnie wrote. “Which is what my own father and other people have also said to me recently. He was expressing his concern for my safety. I was going to say – before I lost my signal – that it was unfortunate that only a short time later, this all happened.”

However, comments made before the shooting by Leavitt – where she hyped up Trump’s impending speech at the event by saying “there will be some shots fired tonight” – continued to fuel mass speculation from critics.

“A Fox News correspondent saying Karoline Leavitt’s husband told her to be safe *BEFORE* the shooting,” wrote journalist and professor Adam Cochran in a social media post on X.

“This was after Leavitt’s earlier comments that everyone should watch tonight because there will be ‘shots fired.’ This doesn’t help the conspiracy theories.”

Chris Traux, a conservative appellate lawyer and former GOP campaign official, warned on Friday that Trump’s “deteriorating” health was serious enough to be considered an “emergency,” and pitched what he called a "politically achievable” path forward to addressing it.

“President Trump appears to be deteriorating by the day. He is confabulating. He is demonstrating poor judgment,” Traux wrote in an op-ed published Friday in The Hill.

“Even before he began threatening to commit genocide against Iran and posted a picture of himself as Jesus, he had been exhibiting poor impulse control. He has also begun speaking like a six-year-old. He talks about ‘nuclear dust’ and says things like, ‘They’ve dropped a couple of water mines. … We’ve defeated all of their water boats, too.’”

Commentary on Trump’s allegedly declining health is not new, and many critics have suggested invoking the 25th Amendment to have the president forcibly removed from office on the grounds that he no longer had the mental capacity to serve as commander-in-chief.

Traux dismissed invoking the 25th Amendment as a realistic path forward, and instead offered an alternative plan.

“We need to put aside fantasies about impeachment and the 25th Amendment and focus on fixes we can actually implement,” Traux wrote.

“So let’s have Congress pass a bill that gives the Gang of Eight immediate and unredacted access to all of Trump’s medical records. Unlike calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, this reform is politically achievable. It doesn’t require Republicans to choose sides, either. You can both support Trump and believe presidents and their closest loyal aides should not be able to cover up presidential infirmity.”

Traux likened this approach to the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), and argued that such a proposal would be easier for Republicans to support, much as they had with the EFTA. More than anything, however, Traux urged lawmakers to act swiftly before it’s too late.

“No one knows what the future may bring,” Traux wrote. “But even if you genuinely believe that Trump is fine now, at almost 80 years of age, his mental fitness is not going to improve over the next two years, eight months and 27 days. Something must be done.”

The Trump administration suffered another blow to its mass deportation policy on Friday after a federal court rejected its attempt to unilaterally deny migrants seeking asylum entrance to the United States.

Citing the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), judges presiding over the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Trump administration’s efforts to reject asylum seekers were at odds with the longstanding law.

“We conclude that the INA’s text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the judges wrote, as flagged by Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney.

“The Proclamation and Guidance are thus unlawful to the extent that they circumvent the INA’s removal procedures and cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum or withholding of removal protections.”

Cheney noted that the lone dissenting judge in the case was Justin Walker, the only judge to have been appointed by Trump.

Leaked internal communications from the Pentagon revealed Thursday that the Trump administration has considered methods to punish NATO allies that refused to support the United States in its war against Iran, and the Pentagon’s response left one security expert dumbfounded.

First reported on by Reuters, an internal Pentagon email outlined options for the United States to punish members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which included suspending Spain from NATO entirely. While several NATO nations have refused to assist the United States in its war against Iran, Spain issued a particularly scathing rebuke of the Trump administration in response to its calls for assistance.

When asked about the internal email, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson issued the following statement to Reuters: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our NATO allies, they were not there for us.”

The statement left Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security senior official under both the Trump and Bush administrations, bewildered.

“This is a remarkably ignorant statement. NATO’s founding logic is collective defense – the bedrock guarantee that an attack on one is an attack on all,” Taylor wrote on his Substack, Defiance.

“What the Trump administration is now proposing, in effect, is a conditional inversion of that principle: we will support you… but only if you supported us first… in a war of our choosing… on the terms we set… and on which you had no say. In my view, that’s a bit closer to the logic of a protection racket than an actual alliance.”

Furthermore, Taylor warned that the Trump administration’s new approach to the nearly 80-year alliance was being staged at a particularly “dangerous” moment in time.

“Donald Trump is making the implosion of NATO a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Taylor wrote. “He’s already shown that Washington is worse than a fickle anchor of the alliance. It’s a vindictive one, doing deep damage to the compact from the inside.”

Last year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick boasted that he had sold at least 1,000 “Trump Gold Card” visas at $1 million to $5 million each, but on Thursday, while under oath, was forced to admit that only one had been sold, sparking widespread ridicule from critics.

“Every word out of Howard [Lutnick’s] mouth is a lie,” wrote political scientist and contributor to The Atlantic Norman Ornstein in a social media post on X. “What a despicable excuse for a human being.”

Lutnick was testifying Thursday before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, where he was pressed on other lies he’s told since joining the second Trump administration, including his claim that he had cut off all ties with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005, only to be revealed to have maintained contact with the disgraced financier through at least 2018.

Lutnick was also asked about the Trump Gold Card, a visa introduced by President Donald Trump that costs between $1 million and $5 million and grants its holders permanent resident status, as well as a pathway to full U.S. citizenship. In March, Lutnick claimed that 1,000 Trump Gold Cards were sold, and in June, claimed that around 70,000 people had signed up for the visa, per reporting from the Indian Express.

When pressed on the matter under oath, however, Lutnick provided a different number.

“So, they have approved recently one person, and there are hundreds in the queue that they are going through the process,” Lutnick said, per Mediaite’s reporting.

While Lutnick did not reveal who the purchaser was, the only public figure reported to be in possession of a Trump Gold Card is musician Nicki Minaj, who said that she received the card for free.

“So they are off by just 999,” wrote Fox Business contributor Gary Kaltbaum in a social media post on X.

When pressed on the likelihood of Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell receiving a presidential pardon, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) made a remarkable admission Thursday about what she suspected may have happened to potential “blackmail” material theorized to have been collected by Epstein over the years on powerful figures.

Appearing on News Nation with Chris Cuomo in a video published early Thursday morning, Luna dismissed the idea of Maxwell ever receiving a pardon, responding to reports that several members of the House Oversight Committee were considering pushing for Maxwell to receive a pardon in exchange for testifying before Congress.

“She's not getting a pardon, the votes aren't there for that,” Luna told Cuomo.

Luna then went on to explain her reasoning, arguing that potentially incriminating evidence theorized to be collected by Epstein and Maxwell may not even exist anymore.

“Do you really want to know my opinion on all this? I don't think that we even actually have the full files,” Luna said. “From what I've heard, there was destruction of evidence. I think it was in New York where they were housing files during the initial trial – there was a cyber attack. I think a lot of the blackmail was destroyed then.”

Luna was likely referencing the 2023 “cyber intrusion” on the FBI’s office in New York, revealed recently after the publication of millions of files related to Epstein by the Justice Department.

According to a 2024 sworn statement, FBI Special Agent Aaron Spivack documented a “potential hack” into the FBI’s office in New York that compromised 500 terabytes of FBI data, including data that pertained to the agency’s investigation into Epstein. Spivack wrote that 100 terabytes of data were ultimately lost due to the intrusion.

The apparent hacking incident would have occurred under the Biden administration. Under the previous administration – the first Trump administration – the FBI appeared to have issued a “stand down” order to New York Police Department investigators regarding their criminal probe into Epstein just five days after he was arrested in 2019.

Following the abrupt firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan this week, Trump administration officials have been left on edge as to “who gets axed next,” Axios reported Thursday, with one official ripping the White House for engaging in what they described as “petty” drama.

"It feels so much like petty, high-school or middle-school drama,” the official told Axios, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “You have this pervasive, 'Oh my gosh, what is the next perceived slight that is going to upset the Mean Girls.'"

Phelan’s firing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was so abrupt that the Navy secretary initially did not believe it, and traveled to the White House for confirmation with President Donald Trump, according to CNN’s Kristin Holmes. His ousting has become the 15th abrupt departure of a Defense official during Trump’s second term.

According to Axios, Phelan “irked” Hegseth for having a “direct line” to Trump, with Phelan having fundraised for the president ahead of the 2024 election. Phelan was also tasked by Trump with delivering on a new class of battleships by 2028, a timeline Phelan admitted was “nearly impossible,” according to The New York Times, another potential source of his abrupt ousting.

A group of House Democrats is preparing to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump beginning Jan. 1 if they regain a House majority in the midterm elections, Axios reported Thursday.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), one of the House Democrats actively working to lay the groundwork for a “day 1” impeachment, told Axios that if Democrats manage to reclaim control of the House in November – which recent polls suggest is more likely than not – the “push for impeachment is going to be overwhelming” among her colleagues.

“We have a case – a very strong case – so we should really work on it now,” another House Democrat, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), told Axios.

Reporting suggests that the White House has grown increasingly fearful about impeachment proceedings being launched against the president should Democrats reclaim a House majority. A number of Trump administration officials last year purchased “new legal insurance and professional-liability plans,” Zeteo reported last week, “in anticipation of future investigations or subpoenas from prosecutors and Democrats.”

According to a Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll released this week, 55% of adults indicated that they were in favor of House lawmakers impeaching Trump, compared with the 37% who were opposed. Trump’s favorability among Americans has recently sunk to the lowest levels of his political career, rivaling only former President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal.

While Jan. 1 is more than seven months away as of April 24, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) told Axios that in order to be ready to move forward with impeachment proceedings the moment Democrats take control of the House, the work needs to begin “now.” Ramirez also advocated for launching impeachment proceedings against former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi "because these people should never be in public office again," she told Axios.