Politics
‘Shots Fired!’: Inside the Pandemonium at the Washington Hilton
A man armed with knives, a shotgun and a handgun was barreling through security at a full sprint, heading toward the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.
At that moment on Saturday night, President Trump and many of America’s top government officials and journalists were one floor down, crammed into the ballroom for a black-tie dinner. The mentalist Oz Pearlman, the night’s entertainer, was leaning over Mr. Trump and the first lady, demonstrating one of his mind-reading tricks by trying to guess the name that the White House press secretary had picked out for her baby, due to be born any day.
Suddenly, the look on Mr. Pearlman’s face changed to one of alarm. Several loud but strangely muffled bangs were going off somewhere in the distance. The first lady ducked under the table. The president stayed seated as Secret Service agents, dressed in tuxedos, surrounded him and began to draw their weapons.
The pop-pop-pop that the crowd was hearing was the sound of gunfire before the authorities managed to tackle the suspect, who never made it into the ballroom. But in the moment, it was difficult to tell what exactly was happening. Guests dived to the floor and hid behind chairs. Secret Service agents climbed over tables to protect cabinet members and some of the country’s most high-ranking officials, smashing plates of spring peas and burrata that had been served only minutes earlier.
As agents hustled the president out of the room, Mr. Trump appeared to trip or get pushed down. Vice President JD Vance was pulled from his seat by his shoulders. When agents grabbed Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, they briefly got stuck between two tight tables and had to redirect toward a different exit.
The suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., was taken into custody quickly. And while the investigation is in its early stages, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said Mr. Trump was “likely” a target, along with others in the administration.
It was a shocking night. And in that way, it was in keeping with the nonstop, previously unimaginable events of Washington in the Trump era, in which no week seems to pass by without some extraordinary turn of events. By the end of the evening, the president would show graciousness to the journalists he had planned to skewer and, after 15 months of attacking Democrats and reporters as enemies, he would take the occasion to call for unity.
Mr. Trump rushed back to the White House to speak to the nation about what he had just been through, suggesting that only the most consequential leaders become targets of assassins and using the moment to sell the need for his beloved White House ballroom. Reporters, editors and influencers on the scene scrambled for cover, but not without holding their phones aloft for livestreams, Instagram posts and documentation of a crime in progress.
Some of them made it out to after-parties scattered all over town, but the gatherings were scaled back or half empty, since many reporters ended up working late into the evening.
This account of the pandemonium that erupted on Saturday night at the White House correspondents’ dinner is based on reporting by New York Times journalists who were on the scene, surveillance footage and interviews with other witnesses.
‘Shots Fired!’
Even before the chaos broke out, Saturday was expected to be an intense spectacle. Just not like this.
It was Mr. Trump’s first time attending this black-tie dinner as president. He would be showing up to make remarks after a year spent sparring with reporters who cover him, suing them and their employers for billions of dollars and insulting them, often in viciously personal terms.
As he pulled out of the White House driveway a few minutes before 8 p.m., he could be seen looking over a printed copy of the speech he planned to give that evening — one he would later characterize as the “most inappropriate speech ever made.”
No one would get to hear it.
Inside the cavernous ballroom, guests were seated at tables of 10. Waiters, squeezing through the packed room of more than 230 tables, made the rounds to pass out bottles of champagne.
Most of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and top officials were in attendance. Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, was seated toward the back of the room with The Daily Mail. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, were closer to the front.
The main course had not even been served by the time the gunshots were heard.
Gun-toting agents started running through the hallways outside the ballroom, screaming at people to get low. Caterers in white jackets cried out in terror as they bolted for cover in a stairwell. The gunfire sounded like shattering plates; the president would later say he thought it was a tray clanging to the floor.
“Shots fired, shots fired!” agents called out as they pinioned the small group of reporters and photographers traveling with the president into a corner against a wall.
A moment later, various cabinet members with heavy security details were escorted out of the ballroom with stricken looks on their faces. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Cheryl Hines, appeared around the corner first; guards were gripping Mr. Kennedy so tightly that he appeared to be limping. Bystanders worried he had been shot. His guards stood him up a little straighter as they began banging their fists on an elevator door to open.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, came wheeling around the corner and into a different elevator. Mr. Patel tore down the hallway with two men in tow.
Inside the ballroom, as guests took shelter under tables and behind chairs, Michael Glantz, a top agent at Creative Artists Agency, stayed in his seat and picked at the burrata on his plate — a stark contrast to the chaotic scene unfolding and one that was captured live on CNN and went viral on social media.
On Sunday, Mr. Glantz said he did not consider leaving his seat.
“First of all, I have a bad back,” he said. “I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And No. 2, I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening.”
‘Let the Show Go On’
Shortly after Mr. Trump was whisked offstage, he made clear that he wanted the dinner to proceed.
“Quite an evening in D.C.” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social at 9:17 p.m. “Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement.”
Hotel staff reset the place settings at the head table and refilled the cups with water and ice. Weijia Jiang, a CBS News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, briefly returned to the stage and said the dinner would begin again shortly.
“I know everyone is going to want as many details as possible, and right now we don’t have them,” Ms. Jiang said. “But I can tell you that our program is going to resume momentarily and we will have more details to share also momentarily.”
Security officials ultimately decided Mr. Trump had to leave, however. “Law Enforcement has requested that we leave the premises, consistent with protocol, which we will do, immediately,” the president posted on Truth Social at 9:36 p.m.
He also said he would be giving a news conference “in 30 minutes.”
The group of journalists that travels with the president wherever he goes — known as the press pool — was ushered back upstairs, out of the Hilton and into the waiting vans. The presidential motorcade peeled out of the parking lot at 9:45 p.m., racing down the hill back toward the White House.
Back at the White House, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio was pacing outside on the driveway outside the West Wing in his tuxedo. He would soon be by the president’s side at a news conference that started just after 10:30 p.m.
‘It’s Always Shocking’
The 30-minute notice for a presidential news conference set off a mad dash among some journalists who struggled to find taxis with the hotel swarmed with law enforcement. Some decided to travel the mile and a half to the White House on foot, setting off at a quick trot.
The briefing room was filled with reporters in evening wear; the president, first lady and cabinet officials in attendance were also still in their formal clothes.
Mr. Trump updated the media on the situation — he said that a Secret Service officer had been shot but was protected by a bulletproof vest. He was taken to a hospital, officials said. There were no other reported injuries, according to Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens,” Mr. Trump said, standing with the first lady, the vice president, the defense secretary, the secretary of state, the acting attorney general, the F.B.I. director and the press secretary.
He also used the moment to argue that his 90,000-square-foot ballroom project is necessary.
“I didn’t want to say this,” he said, “but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s a much more secure. It’s got — it’s drone proof, it’s bulletproof glass.”
It’s not clear why the ballroom was entirely relevant; the dinner is staged by the White House Correspondents’ Association, a large collective of journalists, and not the administration. It has been held at the Hilton for more than five decades.
Still, Mr. Trump said he had spoken with the organizers of the correspondents’ dinner, and vowed to reschedule it within 30 days.
Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
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Senate Republicans have struggled to move the ball on President Donald Trump’s voter ID and citizenship verification bill, but a late-night vote in the upper chamber breathed some life into an issue once thought dead.
During the Senate’s marathon “vote-a-rama” to advance the GOP’s $70 billion immigration enforcement package, Republicans tried twice to attach the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to the massive bill.
They failed both times, with a cohort of Republicans joining Senate Democrats to stymie the effort, which was destined to fail either way given that the amendments from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, had to break through the filibuster.
REPUBLICANS FAIL TO ATTACH SAVE AMERICA ACT TO PARTY-LINE FUNDING PACKAGE
Senate Republicans have struggled to move the ball on President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Graham’s attempt was to attach the modified version of the SAVE America Act, which included several policy additions, like barring men in women’s sports, that Trump demanded months ago.
Four Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., voted against it. Their defections prevented the bill from even getting 50 votes, a prerequisite for success if Republicans were to launch a talking filibuster.
But Lee’s attempt did hit 50 votes, with Collins flipping her vote to support the original version of the SAVE America Act.
Lee cheered the moment on X shortly after as the vote-a-rama still raged and noted that, with Vice President JD Vance serving as a possible 51st vote, the SAVE America Act could pass.
WATCH: HAWLEY FUMES AFTER 4 GOP SENATORS HELP SINK TRUMP-BACKED VOTER ID LAW
“That means that but for the Zombie Filibuster, the House-passed SAVE America Act would now be on its way to the White House for President Trump’s signature,” Lee said.
The moment was a big victory for the legislation, which thus far has wallowed in the Senate for months.
Conservatives like Lee have pushed Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to launch a talking filibuster to grind down Senate Democrats and pass the legislation at a simple majority threshold.
SEN LEE DARES DEMOCRATS TO REVIVE TALKING FILIBUSTER OVER SAVE ACT, SLAMMING CRITICISM AS ‘PARANOID FANTASY’
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has been leading the effort for the Senate to take up the SAVE America Act, which would federally require voter ID nationwide. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
But Thune hasn’t pulled the trigger out of concern that Republicans wouldn’t stay together to bat down a deluge of Democratic amendments that could substantially change the legislation or target other elements of Trump’s agenda.
Senate Republicans did launch a quasi-floor takeover to debate the SAVE America Act in March, but the steam behind that push has since fallen off substantially.
The other option for Republicans would be to nuke the filibuster, something Trump has demanded they do sporadically throughout his second term.
Again, it’s an issue that Republicans aren’t unified on, and one that several fear could haunt them if and when Democrats regain control of the upper chamber.
Trump has also shifted his ire to the Senate rules referee, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth Macdonough, who ruled that the SAVE America Act didn’t pass muster to be a part of the immigration package at a 50-vote threshold. He’s called on Thune to fire her a handful of times in recent months.
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“We have every right to change her, and should do so, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “As long as she’s there, we will never get our desperately needed, SAVE AMERICA ACT, approved, and put into full force and effect!”
But, like the talking filibuster or outright nuking of the filibuster, it’s a move Thune isn’t in a hurry to make.
“That’s not a new request, as you all know, and as is typically the case, the parliamentarian, the rulings break both ways,” Thune said. “And, you know, we lose a few, we win a few, but that’s been true when Democrats have been in the majority, too.”
New surveillance footage and other evidence from Southern California Edison confirms that a century-old, idle transmission line that the utility failed to remove ignited last year’s deadly Eaton wildfire, lawyers for insurers said in a court filing.
Video obtained from a surveillance camera at Gerrish Swim & Tennis Club in Pasadena shows two bright flashes occurring in the location of the tower holding the idle line at 6:11 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2025.
The flashes correspond to the time that Edison recorded two faults, three seconds apart, on another transmission line more than five miles away, the lawyers said in the filing, citing new data provided by the utility.
Soon after the faults, residents nearby recorded videos of a fire burning at the base of the tower, which is known as M16T1.
“Southern California Edison has spent the last sixteen months attempting to forestall the inevitable legal consequences of razing a large swath of the communities of Altadena and Pasadena to the ground,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.
“The Eaton Fire could not have occurred if SCE had simply disassembled and removed Structure M16T1,” the lawyers added.
The lawyers filing the May 18 motion represent property insurers that paid tens of millions of dollars to residents who lost their homes. Their motion asks the judge to order a judgment in the insurers’ favor that would make Edison liable for the damage under inverse condemnation, a legal doctrine in the state constitution.
Courts have ruled that the doctrine requires private utilities such as Edison to pay for property they destroy, even if they haven’t been found to have acted negligently.
Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said the company did not learn about the existence of the swim club video until the lawyers submitted it in court with their filing.
“It’s very disappointing and inappropriate that this video was not produced in discovery,” she said. “We hope that video has been turned over to the appropriate authorities.”
Dunleavy said the company believes the lawyers’ motion “is wrong on the facts and the law.”
“We’ll respond more fully in our own court filing,” she said.
Attorneys for the insurers did not respond to requests for comment.
In a February 2025 letter to state regulators, Edison said it had detected a single fault on a line more than five miles away from Altadena about 6:11 p.m. on the night the fire ignited. It said the fault caused a brief surge of electricity on its four live transmission lines in Eaton Canyon.
The company said in the letter that it was looking into whether the power surge could have caused electricity to jump to the idle line that runs parallel to the live wires through a process called induction.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, later said that a leading theory of the fire’s ignition was that the idle line became energized briefly through induction, sparking the fire.
At the same time, the company has not accepted blame for the fire, saying repeatedly that its own confidential investigation into the cause, as well as a separate inquiry by Los Angeles County and state fire officials, is continuing.
According to the court filing, evidence obtained by the lawyers shows that the company stopped using the transmission line in 1971 and designated it as “out-of-service.”
“The declaration of Out of Service shall only be used when the line … or piece of equipment is expected to remain permanently out of service,” Edison stated in an internal document known as a system operating bulletin, according to the filing.
Edison executives told The Times last year that they left the line in place because they believed it might be needed in the future.
“We have these inactive lines still available because there is a reasonable chance we’re going to use them in the future,” Shinjini Menon, Edison’s senior vice president of system planning and engineering, said then.
Dunleavy said Friday that the idle lines are kept in place for a variety of reasons, including to preserve the right of way Edison had obtained to construct them and to support future needs for more electricity as the state aims to meet its clean energy goals.
Last year, The Times reported that state regulators, knowing old electric lines posed hazards, proposed a rule in 2001 that would have forced Edison and other utilities to remove idle lines unless they could prove they would use them in the future.
Under pressure from Edison and the other companies, the rule was weakened to allow utilities to keep the unused lines in place until executives decided they were “permanently abandoned.”
In their May 18 filing, the lawyers said Edison executives had known about the risk of induction for more than 100 years. They cited a 1923 contract between Edison and Pacific Electric Railway Co. that said that “leakage of electricity or induction from or between” conductors was an inherent risk of operating multiple electrical circuits in proximity.
“That’s why SCE grounds idle lines and inspects them,” Dunleavy said of the risk.
Copies of Edison’s fault records from that night, its operating bulletin and thousands of other documents, including depositions, are sealed from public view under a protective order that Edison and lawyers for the victims asked the judge to approve last year.
The L.A. County district attorney is investigating whether Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in the fire, the company said in an investor filing this year.
The fire killed at least 19 people and left thousands of families homeless.
A hearing on the lawyers’ motion is scheduled for Aug. 11 in L.A. County Superior Court.
Edison has offered to compensate victims of the fire who give up their right to sue the utility.
The company said last week that it had so far received more than 3,500 claims from about 10,000 people. It said it had extended nearly 1,900 offers to those people, totaling more than $650 million.
Many victims have refused the offers, saying they don’t fully cover their losses from the devastating blaze.
Edison has told its investors it expects to actually pay little or nothing for the fire because of a 2019 state law. The company anticipates that it will be reimbursed for its payments to victims by a $21-billion fund created by the law known as
Assembly Bill 1054.
The law shields utilities from the damages of fires sparked by their equipment as long as they follow certain requirements, including submitting a plan to state regulators for reducing the risk that their equipment sparks fires. Regulators review the plan and track whether the utilities are making progress in reducing the fire risk.
Since 2019, Edison has spent billions of dollars on making its lines safer, including by undergrounding them and installing insulated wires. Those costs continue to raise customer electric bills.
In the last 10 years, Edison’s rates increased by 101%, according to an April report by the public advocates office at the California Public Utilities Commission.
Despite the spending, Edison’s electric lines sparked more fires in 2024 than in 2019. The company blamed the increase on erratic weather that created more dried vegetation.
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The Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that would remove “outdated and offensive language” used to describe people with disabilities in the state’s General Laws.
The measure would eliminate various terms, including “handicapped,” “disabled,” and the “r-word” in favor of language such as “persons with a disability” and “person with an intellectual or developmental disability.”
The bill, which was introduced by Democratic state Sen. Pat Jehlen and listed with 17 petitioners, now heads to Democrat Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.
The 61-page bill updates 346 sections of Massachusetts law.
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The 61-page bill updates 346 sections of Massachusetts law. (Getty Images)
“Language is constantly changing. And it’s changing because of the activism of people who were ignored and demeaned for too long,” Democrat state Sen. Pat Jehlen, the Senate’s primary sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement. “When people tell us they feel insulted and offended by the use of outdated words, we worked to change the legal language. It took a long time, because we kept finding more examples of offensive language. Language and activism will continue to evolve, and there’ll always be more work to do, but this is a gigantic step forward in respect.”
Some of the updated language featured in the bill includes replacing “disabled person” with “person with a disability,” “handicapped” with “disability” and “retarded” with phrases such as “person with an intellectual or developmental disability.”
The legislation also scraps terms such as “crippled” and “deformed” when referring to people with disabilities.
The measure would eliminate various terms, including “handicapped,” “disabled,” and the “r-word.” (Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group)
The term “hearing-impaired” was revised to “deaf or hard of hearing” and the “chronically ill” was changed to “persons who are chronically ill.”
Additionally, the bill amends specific legal definitions, including changing the current definition of “caretaker” — which describes an individual or entity responsible for a “disabled person” — to instead use the phrase “a person with a disability.”
“When dusty and dangerous relics of a bygone era darken our laws, it creates the potential for real harm to residents today,” Senate President Karen Spilka, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Thanks to the voices of advocates like former Senate staff member Melissa Reilly and the leadership of Senator Jehlen and Senator Kennedy, the Legislature has acted to make our laws better represent who we are in 21st-century Massachusetts.”
MASSACHUSETTS DROPS CONTROVERSIAL GENDER IDEOLOGY MANDATE FOR LICENSING FOSTER CARE PARENTS
The bill now heads to Democrat Gov. Maura Healey’s desk. (Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“With a White House that glorifies, and seemingly longs for, the days when many Americans were discriminated against because of who they are, now is the time to make sure our state laws respect and support the rights and dignity of our residents,” she added.
The passage of this measure comes after a 2024 law that renamed the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission to MassAbility, which state officials argued was a display of a broader effort to modernize disability services and promote inclusion. That law also reflected a broader move away from terms state officials described as outdated or offensive.
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“As lawmakers, we know that words matter,” said state Speaker of the House Ronald J. Mariano, a Democrat. “This legislation is our latest effort to ensure that our state laws do not use antiquated words that carry negative connotations, words that also serve as a reminder of past injustices.”
The bill passed with broad legislative support, including unanimous recorded votes in both chambers.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Massachusetts GOP for comment.
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