Politics
Crisis in the Northwest: Fentanyl 'killing the mentally ill for a dollar a pill' in state with loose drug laws
This story is part of a series examining the drug and homeless crises plaguing Oregon. Read part one.
PORTLAND, Ore. – People sleeping — or passed out — in downtown Portland hardly get a second glance. Most pedestrians keep their eyes trained straight ahead as they walk past clouds of fentanyl smoke or slumped figures with lolling heads. Maybe they cross the street or look sidelong at someone who starts shouting or throwing things.
But Nikki is different.
A man sleeps in front of a business on Jan. 10, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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“Are you okay? Are you sleeping?” she called out, approaching a cocooned form next to the light rail tracks. Somewhere inside the sleeping bag, a man grunted in response.
Nikki, who has been homeless for two and a half years, repeats this process any time she sees someone lying on the ground, making sure they’re responsive.
Fentanyl “literally makes people so careless that they will stand over someone who is dead or dying and continue to get high,” she said. It happened to one of her friends, a man in his mid-20s who appeared to be sleeping, but had died.
“They were gonna have a lot of life left,” she added.
A person smokes a foil of fentanyl on Park Avenue in downtown Portland, Oregon on Jan. 23, 2024. Possession of user amounts of all drugs became decriminalized in the state in February 2021 after voters approved Measure 110. The first-in-the-nation law turned possession into a Class E violation, punishable by a $100 fine. Selling and manufacturing drugs remains illegal. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
State of emergency
Oregon has turned into a battlefield in the war over drug policy since the state became the first to decriminalize drug possession. Nearly 60% of voters approved Measure 110 but, three years later, numerous polls suggest they regret that move. And no other states have followed Oregon’s lead, despite assurances from researchers and decriminalization advocates that the law is not responsible for increased addiction, overdoses and crime.
State lawmakers are poised to re-criminalize drug possession in a special legislative session that begins Monday, though Democrats and Republicans have drafted competing bills. And Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek declared a 90-day state of emergency this week in downtown Portland, where the fentanyl crisis has been most pronounced.
“Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly and addictive, and all are grappling with how to respond,” Kotek, a Democrat, said in a release. “We are all in this together.”
WATCH: FENTANYL ‘KILLING THE MENTALLY ILL FOR A DOLLAR A PILL’
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Fentanyl strikes fear among even longtime drug users.
“This is creating zombies,” Lori, a homeless woman in Portland, told Fox News last summer. “This sh– should be illegal because they’re killing the mentally ill for a dollar a pill, because I guarantee ya, all these people have some kind of mental illness.”
Michael Dusek, who uses marijuana and meth, agreed.
“They’re incoherent most of the time, they’re babbling about something to themselves quite loudly, like they can’t hear themselves,” said Dusek, who has been homeless off and on since 1992. “They’re like living dead.”
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Overdose deaths in the state surged from 800 in 2020 to 1,394 in 2022, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overwhelming majority of fatal overdoses are now attributed to fentanyl, according to Oregon health data.
“It seems like we got all of Oregon coming, just to pick up fentanyl now,” Dusek said of Portland.
Decriminalization advocates point out that fatal overdoses surged across the country beginning in early 2020, not just in Oregon. Many analysts attribute the spike to isolation and despair during the coronavirus pandemic.
Regardless, Nikki said she has revived 32 people in the past year, collecting as many doses of naloxone as she can from clinics, shelters and even places where citizens have “just nailed a box to a tree or to a wall and keep it stocked with Narcan.”
It seems like we got all of Oregon coming, just to pick up fentanyl now.
Most fentanyl users Fox News spoke to were difficult — if not impossible — to understand. One woman chattered breathlessly while absently sorting syringes inside her tent, one hand protected by a blue latex glove. A 27-year-old man muttered that he was originally from Idaho, then lived on the Yakama Indian Reservation before a family member dropped him off in Portland so he could “live homeless and do drugs.”
“Most of them are mentally ill, and the families don’t wanna take care of them,” Lori said. “Or they’re sick and old and their families don’t take care of ’em.”
The rise of fentanyl
Methamphetamine was historically Oregon’s drug of choice. But around 2018, law enforcement started to see a trickle of fentanyl, and then a surge, outpacing cocaine, heroin and meth. The small blue pills looked like Oxycodone and were filling the void left after states cracked down on opioid prescriptions.
And they were cheap to produce.
“It doesn’t take a whole lot of fentanyl to meet the supply side for particular users to give them the effects that they want,” said Chris Gibson, executive director of the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA).
The number of pills law enforcement seized soared from about 100,000 in 2019, to more than 3 million in 2022, according to HIDTA’s annual report. And while preliminary data from 2023 shows the increase in pill seizures slowing, powder seizures more than tripled last year. Police who participate in the HIDTA reported finding more than 180 kg (nearly 400 lbs) of fentanyl powder, Gibson said.
“When you start thinking about the fact that it’s estimated that two milligrams of fentanyl is a lethal dose to a new user, we start seeing the dangers of that,” Gibson said.
The ingredients to make fentanyl are typically shipped from China to Mexico, Gibson said, then the finished product makes its way up the I-5 corridor from border to border, fanning out along the way.
“Oregon can’t control the southern border, but we have Honduran cartel members all in our urban areas pushing deadly fentanyl,” Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West said. “We can’t control that. But that costs Oregonians lives and it causes a lot of criminality and despair.”
But Oregon can control its drug policies, West said, and “elections have consequences.”
The end of the decriminalization experiment?
Measure 110 made possession of user amounts of all drugs, including fentanyl, a Class E violation, punishable by a $100 fine that could be waived if the suspect called a hotline and completed a treatment assessment. But it quickly became apparent that drug users were not calling the hotline or paying the fine.
The other major part of the law — and one that many decriminalization critics want to keep — was redirecting a large chunk of the state’s marijuana tax revenue to pay for addiction services, theoretically improving access to treatment. But that rollout was beleaguered by bureaucratic flubs and a tight implementation timeline.
Oregon approved $264 million in grants for more than 200 service providers as of December, according to the most recent audit from the Secretary of State’s office, which found issues with oversight and noted it has been difficult to demonstrate the new law’s effectiveness.
Many Oregon voters feel duped.
Numerous surveys show Oregonians support re-criminalizing hard drugs and making treatment mandatory, not voluntary, in order to avoid jail time. (Ramiro Vargas/Fox News Digital)
“I voted for it because I thought it would reclassify drug crimes and allow people to get into treatment and then it would be treatment focused,” Kristin Olson, an attorney and host of the Rational in Portland podcast, previously told Fox News.
But the majority of users who take advantage of Measure 110 funds are accessing harm reduction supplies like clean needles, pipes and Naloxone. Residential treatment and detox centers were not prioritized in grant spending, raising alarm among some providers, according to a recent audit of the measure.
“In Oregon, it’s really easy to get high and really, really hard to get treatment,” West said. “You would think we would want to reverse that culturally.”
Providers that “required sobriety for housing or supportive employment” were more likely to have their grant applications denied for not being “in line” with the spirit of the law, the audit also found.
“There’s a lot of money that is being put into out of sight, out of mind programs,” said Matt Maceira, who suffered from addiction and frequent homelessness for 27 years. “The money’s wasted is what I’m saying.”
In Oregon, it’s really easy to get high and really, really hard to get treatment.
After getting sober, Maceira founded Be Bold Street Ministries, a Christ-centered nonprofit. Volunteers can often be found praying with those living in one of Oregon’s biggest encampments, just across the Wilamette River from the state capitol. They tell them about shelter and detox options and, on a cold Friday in January, helped a 28-year-old meth user call and register for treatment.
Maceira opposed Measure 110 from the start.
“The decriminalization of deadly, mind-altering substances — you know what that will never produce? Decreased crime, increased public safety and lives saved,” he said. “But that’s what was promised.”
He said drug use is rampant at the low-barrier shelters prioritized by Measure 110.
“People are dying in those places. I’ve done celebrations of life services for people that have overdosed at low-barrier shelters,” he said, adding that he would rather see providers require sobriety.
Matt Maceira hugs a friend Jan. 12, 2023, in the homeless encampment at Wallace Marine Park in Salem, Oregon. Maceira lived in the camp when he was homeless and now comes back to share the gospel and help those who are ready enter treatment for addiction. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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“Letting people use methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin or any other deadly substance is not compassionate,” he said. “Having a rule that says, ‘Hey, government money is paying for this, you can’t use drugs here,’ is a really loving message. Like, I actually care about you. I don’t want to see you be another statistic.”
Measure 110 a top priority in special legislative session
Democrats, who control both chambers of the state legislature, have signaled they want to make drug possession a Class C misdemeanor, the lowest crime classification available in the state. Their proposal offers numerous off-ramps for those caught with drugs to avoid charges.
Republicans, meanwhile, released a bill that would make possession of drugs like fentanyl, heroin and meth a Class A misdemeanor and would require treatment to avoid jail. If convicted, drug users could face up to a year behind bars, a $6,250 fine, or both. They argue the stiffer penalties are necessary to incentivize people to get clean.
Lawmakers will meet for a short session beginning Feb. 5. It’s not clear whether the sides can compromise.
“We’re not looking to put a Band-Aid on something,” GOP Rep. Lucetta Elmer said. “We’re looking to actually see effective change.”
Elmer is particularly passionate about addressing youth addiction.
“A tragedy that came out of Measure 110 is that there was no differentiation between youth and adults,” she said. “If a youth is caught with alcohol, they actually would get a minor in possession charge. But if that same youth is caught with fentanyl, under Measure 110, that’s decriminalized.”
Danielle Bethell, president of the Association of Oregon Counties, said she doesn’t know any county commissioners who favor locking up drug addicts.
“That’s just not the narrative,” Bethell said. “The reality, though, is that everybody who has an addiction needs help. And most of them, if not all, need a nudge. And that nudge doesn’t exist anymore.”
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Yamhill County Sheriff Sam Elliott said his rural community had a “very successful drug court program” that helped people recover from addiction and avoid a felony conviction. Now, that’s essentially nonexistent.
“When you give them a violation citation that they don’t have to appear on … they don’t come back in and have that interaction with those resources,” he said.
Decriminalization advocates don’t want change, though, arguing the law is “doing its part to address drug use and addiction with a health approach,” according to the George Soros-backed Drug Policy Alliance, which poured millions into the campaign for Measure 110.
“Our opponents are using it as a scapegoat for other, longstanding issues such as homelessness, crime, and public disorder,” the group’s website reads. The alliance did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Researchers at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine wrote in a September paper that they found no evidence of an association between decriminalization and fatal overdose rates in Oregon.
A woman sits inside her tent filled with syringes, a pipe, foil and other drug paraphernalia in Portland, Oregon, in July 2023. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
Gibson with the HIDTA and Elliott both said it’s difficult to attribute fentanyl’s rise in Oregon to Measure 110. The law took effect during the coronavirus pandemic, when overdose rates rose nationwide. And fentanyl has been ravaging east coast communities like Philadelphia’s notorious Kensington neighborhood for nearly a decade.
But Oregonians and their representatives seem unwilling to continue the experiment.
“I really think there is an opportunity to completely course correct,” Maceira said, by “not allowing people to use those deadly substances or be okay with it.”
Ramiro Vargas contributed to the accompanying video.
Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who leads the Appropriations Committee and is a longtime party political strategist, observed on Wednesday that congressional majorities are typically lost either through overreach or dysfunction.
Congressional Republicans seem to be opting for the latter.
“Right now we don’t look as functional as we need to look,” Mr. Cole acknowledged as the House and Senate strained to get some of their most basic work done in the face of bitter internal divisions and increased finger-pointing among Republicans.
With midterm elections approaching and control of both chambers at real risk, Republicans are struggling to pass essential legislation, let alone the political messaging bills typical of the months running up to Election Day.
The House floor was frozen on Tuesday and ground to a standstill for several hours on Wednesday as Republican leaders pleaded for votes and cut side deals. Two of those hours were spent laboring to win a preliminary vote to begin debate on a series of bills — what used to be considered a routine step until the current Republican majority assumed power and rank-and-file lawmakers, noting their party’s vanishingly slim margin of control, latched on to such moments as leverage.
Now the routine step has become an extraordinary travail for Speaker Mike Johnson, who is constantly toiling to please various Republican factions, cognizant that a misstep, or any reliance on Democratic votes to pass bills, could draw a challenge that could cost him his job.
“We live in a period where leaders are afraid of their members, and members are afraid of their voters,” said Mr. Cole.
On Wednesday, heated discussions were prevalent on the Republican side of the aisle. Lawmakers shouted at each other across the House floor. Mr. Johnson huddled with holdouts and defectors, beseeching them to get in line. Deals were cut, then reneged on and renegotiated, and even the G.O.P. budget plan — normally a unifying measure — stalled for more than five hours as unrelated disputes were hashed out behind closed doors.
“Guys, this is why they say lawmaking is like watching sausage be made,” a beleaguered Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday evening.
Some Republicans even accused their colleagues of being in the pocket of the pesticide industry — the sort of pointed critique usually aimed at members of the opposing party if made at all, since lawmakers do not like to remind voters about the influence of political contributions.
Other Republicans shrugged off the escalating political combat as the way business is done these days.
“It should be a fist fight on everything,” said Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee. “It shouldn’t be easy.”
But the congressional temperature was rising high enough that one former Republican House member from Texas, Mayra Flores, urged her ex-colleagues to take it behind closed doors.
“There is no reason to turn every issue into a public spectacle online,” Ms. Flores wrote on X, saying she was “honestly embarrassed” by the conduct of some of her former colleagues. “The country is facing real challenges, and constant public infighting only makes the work harder.”
Republican leaders, trying to break a logjam that threatened to derail their entire immediate agenda, relented on Wednesday and agreed to rework a major farm policy measure that is historically one of the more popular bills before Congress. But its path remained unclear because of a dispute over ethanol tax credits and opposition from a handful of Republican lawmakers who opposed a liability shield for pesticide producers that has outraged the Make America Healthy Again movement.
“This is causing cancer and it is making people sick,” Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, said as she urged reporters to investigate members of the Agriculture Committee and the donations they get from pesticide producers.
After sundown, Republicans got stuck on the budget resolution providing the framework for $70 billion in funding for President Trump’s immigration crackdown as they tried to quell protests over Mr. Johnson’s handling of the farm bill. The budget outline finally passed on a party-line vote, but it was a mark of the G.O.P. difficulties that a surge of money for tough immigration enforcement embraced by nearly all Republicans was almost sidelined by the farm bill furor.
The House voted to extend a surveillance law that the intelligence community says is critical to identifying potential terrorist attacks, but the Senate almost immediately said the House bill was unacceptable and that it would be sending back an alternative with barely 24 hours left before the statute was set to lapse.
What lawmakers were not talking about was how to break loose bipartisan legislation, passed in the Senate but stalled in the House, that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security after a more than 70-day shutdown, as the administration warned that funding for paying workers was again about to run out.
Top House Republicans blamed Senate Republican leaders for mishandling the legislation and then trying to jam it down the throat of the House. They said the fact that the measure explicitly says that “zero” dollars should be expended for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol is untenable for some Republicans, who fear they could be attacked for defunding the police.
Mr. Cole said the House wants changes, which could again slow the bill in the Senate.
“All of this is created by bad management in the Senate and by not being open and transparent with us in the House,” he said.
But Senate Republicans believe they had a deal with Mr. Johnson to pass the spending bill weeks ago, when he publicly endorsed it.
The standoff has tested the patience of the usually even-tempered Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, who reacted testily this week when Mr. Johnson suggested that his chamber wanted unspecified modifications.
“You’d have to figure out what they were doing and whether or not it materially affects in any way the bill that we passed not once, but twice, by unanimous consent,” Mr. Thune said, noting that he and Mr. Johnson jointly announced an agreement to pass the funding legislation on April 1, and that it still had not reached the House floor.
Should it get there, it would likely attract sufficient Democratic support to offset any Republican defections. But that is one of the reasons Mr. Johnson has been reluctant to move forward, since turning to Democrats to help pass legislation can upset his right wing and lead to a challenge to his leadership.
As he assessed the situation, Mr. Cole said that splintered Republicans had a clear choice: put aside their differences and move ahead, or face the consequences.
“You can either be part of a functional majority and get almost everything you want,” he said, “or you can hold out and get nothing and be in the minority next time.”
Megan Mineiro and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Politics
House Republicans unlock reconciliation process to fund ICE and Border Patrol without Democrats
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The House of Representatives approved a budget blueprint funding immigration enforcement for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term over Democrats’ fierce objections on Wednesday.
Lawmakers voted 215-211 along party lines to take a critical step toward ending the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security funding lapse that began on Feb. 14.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., who caucuses with Republicans, voted present. House Democrats united in opposition to the immigration enforcement measure while every Republican present voted in support.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., could spare just a handful of defections with Republicans’ slim majority.
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ICE agents depart the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on Feb. 4, 2026, in Minneapolis. (John Moore/Getty Images)
The House’s approval of the Senate-passed budget framework unlocks the partisan budget reconciliation process, which Republicans are using to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection without support from congressional Democrats.
Trump has given Republicans a June 1 deadline to send a budget reconciliation bill to his desk, giving GOP leadership little room for error.
“We have a real sense of urgency about getting this done,” Johnson told Fox News Wednesday.
The successful vote came after more than a dozen GOP lawmakers ranging from conservatives to farm-state and Midwestern Republicans withheld their votes over concerns unrelated to the budget framework.
Republican leadership held the vote open for more than five hours to win over the numerous holdouts and six GOP lawmakers who voted “no” before flipping to “yes.”
Those lawmakers included Reps. Max Miller, R-Ohio, Andy Harris, R-Md., Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Michael Cloud, R-Texas.
“This is why they say lawmaking is like watching sausage be made,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “That’s what this is, but we’ll get it done.”
The budget resolution teeing up funding for Trump’s immigration agenda is just one piece of Republicans’ DHS funding strategy.
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House GOP leadership has not specified when it plans to take up a Senate-passed measure funding the rest of the department.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., agreed on a two-track approach to fund DHS by steering around Democratic opposition weeks ago. But Johnson has so far declined to put the Senate’s partial DHS bill on the House floor over concerns that it zeroes out funding for immigration enforcement.
Johnson said earlier this week that some “modifications” to the measure may be necessary but has not gone into detail about specific changes.
The White House on Tuesday sent Hill offices an internal memo, obtained by Fox News Digital, urging passage of the Senate’s partial DHS bill, raising the pressure on Johnson to act.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., successfully steered a budget blueprint through the House of Representatives teeing up three years of funding for President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda on Wednesday. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg)
Many rank-and-file House Republicans want ICE and the Border Patrol funded before the rest of the department, which could mean a delay for several more weeks.
“I think that there’s a serious problem with the bill in that it zeroes out, ICE and CBP,” Rep. Eric Burlison, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Fox News. “It’s one thing to not do the funding, but it’s a whole other thing to put zeros in the bill.”
“I know that the speaker’s working on making sure that we have all the assurances and even maybe the cash in hand in terms of reconciliation being wrapped up, finalized before we take the 95% of the rest of Homeland Security,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said.
Meanwhile, the White House is warning that it will be short on funds to pay the department’s hundreds of thousands of employees beginning in May.
“If this funding is exhausted, the Administration will be unable to pay DHS personnel beginning in May, which will once again unleash havoc on air travel, leave critical law enforcement officers—including our brave Secret Service agents—and the Coast Guard without paychecks, and jeopardize national security,” the White House memo published Tuesday states.
House Republicans’ approval of the Senate blueprint also effectively shuts the door on adding other GOP priorities to the budget package. Some GOP lawmakers had floated adding affordability-focused provisions, defense supplemental funding and the SAVE America Act to the bill.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said Wednesday that the House of Representatives is unlikely to pass the Senate’s partial DHS bill until more progress is made toward funding immigration enforcement. (Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg)
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GOP leadership had argued for weeks that a larger bill risked derailing the budget reconciliation process.
“We’re focused on funding Homeland Security and stopping the Democrat shutdown and, in particular, using reconciliation to fund ICE and CBP because Democrats refused to fund it,” Arrington said. “Everything else is not germane to this conversation.”
Politics
Cole Allen case reveals Secret Service failures that could have led to tragedy at D.C. gala
According to Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and other top administration officials, the U.S. Secret Service did a fine job protecting President Trump and Cabinet members from the gunman who breached the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday.
“That horrible act was stopped because of the courage and professionalism of law enforcement — the officers who responded without hesitation and did their jobs as they were trained to do,” Blanche said Monday.
However, according to a detailed accounting filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors in the criminal case against suspect Cole Tomas Allen, the performance of the nation’s preeminent protection agency was marred by inattentiveness and misfires and saved by “extraordinary good fortune” and the gunman falling to the ground.
“The defendant, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, two knives, four daggers, and enough ammunition to take dozens of lives, was apprehended by [Secret Service] officers mere feet away from the ballroom where his primary target was located, along with other members of the Cabinet,” prosecutors wrote Wednesday, in a filing arguing for Allen to be held in detention pending trial on one charge of trying to kill the president and two firearms charges.
Contradicting a prior claim by Blanche that officers had “promptly tackled and detained” Allen, prosecutors wrote that the 31-year-old tutor from Torrance simply “fell to the ground” after blowing past a team of agents just two open flights of stairs from the ballroom.
They wrote that one officer fired at Allen five times, but never hit him.
The same officer saw Allen fire his shotgun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom,” prosecutors wrote, and officers later discovered “one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube.”
Prosecutors said nothing about the Secret Service officer who Blanche said was shot in his ballistic vest during the incident — adding to speculation that the officer may have been shot not by Allen, but by a fellow officer, or not at all.
Agency critiqued before
In all, the court filing brought further into focus a chaotic Secret Service response that appeared flawed from the start, including in a video Trump posted shortly after the incident in which agents appeared to be idling around an unobstructed entrance when Allen ran past them.
It added to concerns that law enforcement, security experts and members of Congress had raised about the performance of an agency that has been repeatedly called on to improve after previous attempts on Trump’s life. At a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., a gunman fired a bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, and that same year, another assailant prepared to shoot him from the unsecured perimeter of a Florida golf course.
Robert D’Amico, a former FBI deputy chief of operations for hostage rescue teams who is now a security consultant, said the security failures he saw in the Secret Service’s preparation for Saturday’s dinner — including its failure to set up basic barriers to prevent people from sprinting into the secured area — were stunning, especially given the past threats and the fact the nation is at war with Iran.
“It’s for a person like Trump, who’s had two assassination attempts before and is at war with Iran, which has terrorist training and proxies up, and you still don’t have the basics?” D’Amico said. “It’s unfathomable.”
Other concerns have been voiced by members of Congress, including Republicans.
The House Oversight Committee has requested a briefing from the Secret Service, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which also investigated the Butler incident.
In a letter urging the hearing, Hawley said the latest incident “raises questions about presidential security arrangements, potential resource needs, and the degree to which reforms previously proposed by Congress have been adopted.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News that from “a layman’s perspective,” event security “looked a little lax in terms of getting into the building,” and that it “doesn’t sound like it was sufficient.”
Sean M. Curran, director of the Secret Service, has been on Capitol Hill in recent days briefing lawmakers.
He told CBS News that agents did a “great job,” but also that the incident remains under review. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would be leading discussions on potential updates to Secret Service plans for securing the president.
Fear of graver threats
Blanche has argued that proof of the Secret Service’s effectiveness at the press gala was in the result: Allen was stopped, Trump and other officials were unharmed and no one was killed, despite Allen’s alleged intent.
However, the concerns being raised have to do with the vulnerabilities that were exposed as much as those that were exploited.
Because the dinner was not designated a major “national special security event” — such as a political convention — there were no trained counterassault agents on standby to prevent a breach or to take down a person with a weapon, officials have said.
Law enforcement experts said that was clearly a mistake given so many top officials — Trump, Johnson, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others — were in the room.
Such a gathering could have been targeted by foreign adversaries or others with far more experience, less regard for human life and much greater firepower than Allen, experts said.
“Most of my military friends are all saying the same thing,” said D’Amico, who is also a former infantry platoon commander in the U.S. Marines. “If you had had a team of three or four [gunmen], they would have gotten to [Trump].’”
In the initial criminal complaint against Allen, prosecutors included the text of an email Allen sent to family just as he was preparing to rush the security perimeter, in which he allegedly wrote that he had chosen to use buckshot in order to “minimize casualties” and prevent bystanders from being wounded by more powerful bullets penetrating walls.
He also allegedly wrote that he was willing to “go through most everyone” at the event to get to top administration officials, but that guests and hotel staff were “not targets at all.”
In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors describe Allen’s actions as “premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and say he was “laden with weapons” as he breached security. But none of those weapons included assault-style rifles that can fire bullets rapidly and have been used to kill civilians in mass shootings across the country for years.
The filing described Allen — a Caltech graduate and high school tutor — not as some trained tactical expert, but as an ideologue who spent part of his Amtrak journey from California to Washington waxing poetic about the landscape around him, describing Pennsylvania’s woods as “vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks in spring.”
Could have been worse
D’Amico said he and other Marines learned early on in Iraq that entrances to secured locations have to be designed in a “serpentine” fashion, forcing anyone approaching to move more slowly through the area and giving security officers more time to assess their intentions. And at an event the size of the correspondents’ dinner, with so many top officials gathered in a public hotel, you would want to make entrances “even more difficult.”
And yet no barriers seemed to be in place at the event, he said — something anyone trained more than Allen could have capitalized on.
“If they just had come through in a team of three or four who were coordinated and trained, there absolutely would have been penetration into the ballroom,” D’Amico said. “It would have been a gunfight.”
Allen himself questioned the security at the event, according to court records, allegedly writing that he had walked into the Washington Hilton with multiple weapons and no one considered “the possibility that I could be a threat.”
He wrote that if he “was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen,” he “could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed” — referring to a powerful machine gun.
“It is fortunate he was only armed with what he had,” said Ed Obayashi, a California law enforcement expert on use of force.
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