President Donald Trump infamously acknowledges he is choosing the world’s most “dangerous profession,” but surviving a third unprecedented assassination attempt — including one where he was shot in the ear — is only hardening his resolve.

“I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people, the people that do the most” are the targets, Trump said in a Saturday night White House press briefing after an alleged would-be assassin was stopped by the U.S. Secret Service at the Washington Hilton, the notorious site of former President Ronald Reagan’s shooting in 1981.

“You take a look at the people, Abraham Lincoln, I mean, you go through the people that have gone through this where they got them, but the people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after.

“They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way.”

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In Trump’s case, three thwarted assassinations are part of his presidential lore, facing a string of shootings, plots and major security breaches unlike anything in history.

Trump cautiously admitted, “I hate to say I’m honored by that,” but noted that “the big names” and the big movers are the targets.

Saturday night’s chaos at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington added a new entry to a list already defined by gunfire in Butler, Pa. (July 13, 2024), an armed suspect at his Florida golf club (Sept. 15, 2024) and the Secret Service’s discovery of a sniper’s nest in eyeshot of where Air Force One lands at Palm Beach International in Florida.

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Trump hailed the unity at the WHCA dinner in a room of some of his fiercest critics in the media, urging Americans to unify in divided political times.

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“In light of this evening’s events, I asked that all Americans recommit with their hearts and resolving our differences peacefully,” Trump said. “We have to resolve our differences.”

“I will say you had Republicans, Democrats, Independents, conservatives, liberals and progressives — those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not — but yet everybody in that room, big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a record-setting group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and coming together,” Trump continued.

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“I watched, and I was very, very impressed by that.“

Trump and first lady Melania Trump were rushed from the Washington Hilton after shots were fired outside the ballroom, where the president had been scheduled to speak.

Authorities said one officer was shot but protected by a ballistic vest, and the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen of California, was taken into custody before breaching the room.

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The three men at the center of the most serious known threats are now Thomas Matthew Crooks (Butler suspect, deceased), Ryan Wesley Routh (Palm Beach suspect, sentenced to life) and now Allen (arrested and charged Saturday night).

Crooks, 20, opened fire at the July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The FBI identified Crooks as the shooter after he hit Trump in the right ear and killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore before being shot dead by a Secret Service countersniper.

Routh, 59, received a life sentence for his attempt at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September 2024. Prosecutors said Secret Service agents spotted him with a rifle near the course while Trump was playing, prompting an agent to open fire before Routh could get a shot off.

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Allen, identified in Saturday night’s Washington incident, is the newest name on that list. Authorities have announced firearms and assault-related charges.

Law enforcement at a Saturday night news conference said Allen was armed with multiple weapons and allegedly fired during a rush at a security perimeter near the dinner, striking a Secret Service agent in his bulletproof vest before being “tackled” to the ground without taking a bullet from the Secret Service.

“One officer was shot, but saved by the fact that he was wearing an obviously a very good bulletproof vest,” Trump told reporters, many still in their tuxedos, having left the canceled WHCA dinner, too. “He was shot from very close distance with a very powerful gun, and the vest did the job. I just spoke to the officer and he’s doing great. He’s great shape. He’s very high spirits, and we told him we love him and respect him.”

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Taken together, the three cases underscore how Trump’s security profile has changed from unusually fraught to historically extraordinary. One attempt drew blood on a campaign stage, another ended in a life sentence after a rifle ambush at a golf course, and the latest forced a presidential evacuation from one of Washington’s highest-profile public events.

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Trump signaled Saturday night that he does not plan to retreat from public appearances despite the repeated threats.

“The response time was really incredible, and we’re going to reschedule,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it again.”

“We’re not going to let anybody take over our society,” he added. “We’re not going to cancel things out because we can’t do that. We wanted to stay tonight.”

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Other thwarted plots and security scares

Beyond the three highest-profile cases, Trump has faced a broader pattern of violent threats and close calls dating back to his first campaign.

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In June 2016, Michael Steven Sandford, a British national, allegedly tried to grab a police officer’s gun at a Trump rally in Las Vegas and later told investigators he intended to kill Trump, according to court records and contemporaneous reporting.

In March 2016, Thomas Dimassimo rushed onto the stage at a Dayton, Ohio, rally before Secret Service agents tackled him.

And in November 2016, Trump was briefly rushed offstage in Reno, Nevada, after someone in the crowd shouted “gun,” though authorities later said the man detained was unarmed.

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Public reporting has also documented later threats not carried out at Trump’s immediate location, including a 2020 ricin letter case; a 2024 murder-for-hire plot tied to Iran; a 2017 North Dakota incident in which a man stole a forklift and aimed it toward the presidential motorcade; and a February 2026 confrontation at Mar-a-Lago in which Secret Service fatally shot a 21-year-old who was armed with a shotgun and gas canister while Trump was in Washington.

WASHINGTON — When families flocked to Yosemite National Park during their recent spring breaks, some met two-hour waits at the entrance gates. At a lakeside spot in the North Cascades in Washington state, there hasn’t been enough staff to open the visitors center. And in Death Valley, water was shut off at two campgrounds.

National parks staff and advocates fear that such issues could only worsen this summer, as the park system faces the busy season with a dramatically reduced staff. At Yosemite, concerns are compounded by the National Park Service’s recent elimination of the park’s timed-entry reservation system, which led to the long spring-break lines.

“We’re definitely really nervous and anxious about the upcoming season, especially with the staff shortage we already have,” said a National Federation of Federal Employees union member at Yosemite who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its staff to buyouts, early retirements and other departures since the Trump administration took office last year, according to an estimate by the National Parks Conservation Assn. This month, the administration proposed cutting nearly 3,000 more positions in its 2027 budget. It also offered a recent new round of buyouts.

The push to cut the park system even further — ahead not only of peak season but of America’s 250th birthday, which the Trump administration has promoted in relation to national parks — has underscored ongoing questions about how smoothly parks can operate as warm weather and summer vacations draw tourists.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the budget proposal on Capitol Hill last week, telling senators that the visitor experience to parks can be improved even while spending and staff reductions are made.

He said the agency plans to hire 5,500 seasonal workers and asked Congress to approve funding for those employees to work for nine-month stints rather than six months.

“All of that’s going to help us get this thing in shape, even with an overall reduction,” Burgum said Wednesday.

He was met with skepticism by Democrats, who confronted him over the spending proposal.

“That is just a recipe for disaster,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Burgum.

Congress will have the final say on the proposed cuts, but in the meantime, the reductions that have already occurred presented challenges last season and appear likely to do so again, said Cheryl Schreier, a retired superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial and chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

Whether the parks will get enough qualified candidates to hire the number of seasonal workers needed is also “a really big concern,” she said. “It’s really important to have all of those individuals to be able to operate a park in a good fashion.”

The lower staffing has prompted worry about parks’ capacity for emergency response, protection of the natural landscape and custodial maintenance. Fewer rangers could mean, for instance, fewer people to reach dehydrated, stranded or lost hikers, said Chance Wilcox, California desert director for the National Parks Conservation Assn.

A park service spokesperson said Friday that staffing decisions are made based on local conditions at each park and that the agency is “focused on ensuring parks remain open, accessible, and safe for visitors.”

About 323 million people visit America’s national parks annually, according to the Interior Department. While the parks can expect heavy traffic, a drop in international tourism and the rise in gas prices has injected additional uncertainty into the tourism industry this year.

The number of Canadians visiting the United States has dropped since Trump took office, according to the Canadian government — with the number of Canadians making car trips to the United States this March declining by 35% compared with March 2024.

The Interior Department also instituted a new $100-per-person fee for non-Americans entering 11 of the most popular parks, a move to raise money for the parks but an extra squeeze for Canadians coming across the border and other international visitors.

At the Senate and House hearings on the Interior budget, Burgum presented a vision of the national parks system as one where most employees should be working at a park and interacting with visitors, and said he was more focused on filling those roles than jobs in regional offices.

“Our goal is to have more people actually working in the parks,” he told senators.

An Interior Department spokesperson said the agency was “advancing high-priority improvements” across the system.

“Secretary Burgum has been clear that resources should be prioritized toward visitor-facing services, public safety, maintenance, and projects that improve the experience for the American people,” an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement Friday.

Critics say that strategy displays a misunderstanding of how the 109-year-old agency functions. Employees who work on contracts, human resources, IT, communications and other organizational and administrative jobs are essential to keeping the parks running, Wilcox said.

“If everything were visitor- or front-facing, the entire agency would collapse from behind,” said Wilcox, of the National Parks Conservation Assn.

The decision to discontinue the reservation system at Yosemite — as well as at Arches and Glacier national parks — is another part of Interior’s mission to bring more people into the parks. The concept was “designed to expand public access” this summer, the park service said in announcing the policy in February. It kept the timed-entry reservation system in Rocky Mountain National Park for the peak season.

Visitors take pictures while walking through Muir Woods National Monument on July 24, 2025 in Muir Woods National Monument, California.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

In addition to causing long lines, cramming too many people into the parks at once could lead to environmental damage, particularly if people park cars in natural areas, said Don Neubacher, a retired Yosemite superintendent and member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

“It’s going to be mass chaos,” he said.

On a Saturday at the end of March, Jon Christenson of Coarsegold, Calif., drove to the park with his 38-year-old son. They were surprised to encounter a two-hour wait to get into the park, plus at least a half-hour hunt for parking after they made it through the gates, he said.

“It was almost like Disneyland. It was really uncomfortable from the standpoint of just so many people,” said Christenson, 82. “It’s kind of troubling to see that they’ve opened up the floodgates and now it’s kind of ruining the experience for everybody.”

Rangers there are doing multiple jobs, and last summer they helped clean bathrooms in the absence of custodial staff, the Yosemite union member said. Now they, too, are concerned about the potential for gridlock.

The worker asked summer visitors to bring patience: “The folks at the National Park Service … they will be grateful for any compassion and empathy.”