The Week: A Thwarted Assassination Attempt | May 1, 2026

◼ A gunman attempted to breach security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and assassinate President Donald Trump. This was at least the third major attempt on the president’s life. Thankfully, the shooter was quickly subdued by Secret Service agents. In his manifesto, sent to family members shortly before his attempted attack, he wrote, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” He posted more than a thousand times on the social media site Bluesky, used almost exclusively by progressives. Well after a great many details about the shooter and his worldview had been reported, former President Barack Obama posted on social media: “Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy.” The latter half of that statement is noble; the first half is a transparent attempt to obscure the fact that the shooter’s hatred of Trump is par for the course among the progressive grassroots. This doesn’t mean that harsh criticism of the president is off-limits. But the Left has a predilection for violence that it is unwilling to acknowledge, let alone confront.

◼ Two days before the Correspondents’ Dinner, in a skit on his ABC late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel remarked of Melania Trump, “You have a glow like an expectant widow.” Given that President Trump had already survived two assassination attempts, the joke was tasteless at the time. It sounded even worse after the dinner. In a rare statement, the understandably shaken first lady condemned Kimmel and urged ABC to “take a stand.” The president himself was more emphatic in calling for Kimmel to be fired immediately. Kimmel’s joke was crass, but it shouldn’t be the business of government officials to police what’s said by late-night comics. The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to revoke Disney’s broadcast license following the joke. That’s preposterous. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that left-wing voices should tamp down rhetoric that plays a role in convincing mentally unstable fanatics that violence is the only solution to what ails the nation. But to point the finger at Kimmel is to follow the same path by which Bill Clinton tried to blame conservative talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing. While the FCC can theoretically exert significant authority over broadcast media in the name of the “public interest,” that is an argument for abolishing the agency and not for wielding its power more bluntly. Kimmel’s career should end because he is painfully unfunny, not because he has angered the government.

◼ Negotiations between the United States and the Iranian regime have stalled, leaving the world economy in limbo as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to traffic. The threat of air strikes has kept many essential supplies idling in the Persian Gulf. Fuel shortages are developing in Europe and Asia, and fertilizer prices have spiked just as farmers are planting crops. To break the chokehold on the strait, Trump has maintained a naval blockade against Iran, depriving the regime of oil exports that are indispensable to its finances. It appears to be causing serious pain. Iran’s economy is reportedly collapsing, and government revenues are drying up. That is probably why the mullahs have made a new offer to reopen the strait in exchange for Trump’s lifting the blockade and ending the war. Yet the regime still considers limits on its nuclear program and other pillars of Iranian aggression to be off the table. If the blockade is working, it may need to continue until Tehran concedes to terms that America can accept. Until then, however, the world will pay for the energy scarcity that Iran has proven it can inflict.

◼ The Department of Justice dropped its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The investigation concerned alleged financial mismanagement of the central bank’s office renovations. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said that while her office has closed its investigation, the Office of the Inspector General will undertake the inquiry. In two previous investigations, the IG had looked into the renovation project and found no wrongdoing. Powell himself had also requested an investigation of the project in 2025, following mounting pressure from Trump and his allies. (The initial estimate for the project was $1.9 billion, but the renovations have far exceeded that, reaching at least $2.5 billion.) Powell’s term is up in May, and Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh as the new Fed chairman. The end of the investigation against Powell was crucial to Warsh’s confirmation, as Republican Senator Thom Tillis had said he would not vote for Warsh until the “bogus” probe was resolved. In part because of the possibility that the legal harassment will continue, Powell has said he will continue as a Fed official after his chairmanship ends, an unusual but legal move. The president’s pettiness is thus limiting his ability to shape monetary policy. Given his inflationary bias, that may not be such a bad thing.

◼ Seashells? Embarrassingly, the Department of Justice indicted former FBI Director James Comey for a juvenile social media post of a photo of shells arranged in the pattern of the numbers 86 and 47. While it is true that “86” can be construed to mean “kill” in criminal slang, it is also used to mean “to dispose of” something, and “86 47” has become a popular progressive shorthand for getting rid of Trump (the 47th president). Posting an image of it to express anti-Trump sentiment is protected speech. Besides, Comey quickly deleted the post, claiming that he didn’t realize its potentially violent connotation. When conservative commentator Jack Posobiec posted “86 46” on social media during the Biden years, he was not (as he should not have been) investigated or indicted. This is an instance of selective enforcement against someone Trump loathes, which alone would be a basis for dismissal. It also comes after Trump’s previous failed attempt to prosecute Comey on separate grounds. Less than a month after Trump sacked Attorney General Pam Bondi, complaining that she wasn’t prosecuting enough of his political opponents, the new acting AG, Todd Blanche is, to his shame, trying to cater to Trump’s lawless desires more. The sooner this case is tossed and this sorry episode forgotten, the better.

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◼ At a time of strained Anglo-American relations, King Charles III made a state visit to the United States. Fortunately, things went well. Trump called Charles the “greatest king” at a White House farewell. In a carefully crafted speech to Congress, Charles affirmed the importance of the Anglo-American friendship. He spoke with charm and humor, mentioning that “ours is a partnership born out of dispute,” before adding that it is “no less strong for it.” In a striking passage, Charles emphasized that this partnership—rooted in a shared intellectual heritage stretching back over the centuries—is historically unique. He is correct: the bond between Britain and America is too valuable to be overturned by a passing squall.

◼ Following the Virginia redistricting referendum, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis struck fast with a response: He unveiled a new congressional map for Florida that would increase Republicans’ advantage from 20–8 to 24–4. The map would leave Democrats in control of four urban districts. The Jacksonville and Tampa–St. Petersburg regions, according to the proposed map, are divided carefully to split their Democratic constituencies between multiple surrounding Republican districts. The Florida legislature speedily passed DeSantis’s new gerrymander, but it will need to survive review by the state’s supreme court. The mid-decade redistricting wars are regrettable but also unavoidable.

◼ Blue-state prosecutors have made an industry out of harassing pregnancy resource centers that offer alternatives to abortion. In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, the Court held—unanimously—that the targets of such subpoenas can challenge them in federal court rather than wait for charges or sanctions for noncompliance. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the Court ruled that a First Amendment injury was shown simply by the fact that a subpoena from New Jersey’s attorney general would deter donors from associating with a crisis pregnancy center. At argument, New Jersey’s lawyer admitted that the state had received no complaints about the center’s behavior before going after it. Responding to the New Jersey attorney general’s argument that the investigation targeted only some of the center’s methods for raising money, Gorsuch quipped, “a government that takes three limbs but spares the last imposes an injury all the same.”

◼ New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has focused his ire on Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, a successful hedge fund. Griffin is based in Florida, but he maintains a $238 million apartment in New York City. Citadel, meanwhile, has plans for a $6 billion new office building in Manhattan, a development that would be good news for Gotham. It was therefore tactless for Mamdani to single out Griffin’s apartment in a video promoting New York State’s proposed (and rapacious) new pied-à-terre tax. Griffin was not pleased, and the new office project may now be in jeopardy. But Mamdani seems more interested in power than in prosperity for his city. And as far as the former is concerned, independent-minded rich folk could be in the way.

◼ The Trump administration is in talks to bail out Spirit Airlines. Should that happen, taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill for an act of misguided government intervention. Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice in 2024. The market confirmed what the airline’s shareholders had conceded three years before: Spirit no longer makes economic sense as a stand-alone business. According to the Wall Street Journal, the terms of the proposed bailout, sketched by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, could give the government a significant stake in Spirit. Lutnick reportedly believes that the deal, which would save thousands of jobs ahead of the midterms, could be politically advantageous. That argument demonstrates why the bailout is a bad idea. Once the government is involved in Spirit, it will be politically hard for it to walk away. There is no reason to think that just one more cash infusion will be enough to turn Spirit’s business around. But there are good reasons to suspect that, in the government’s attempt to prop up Spirit, the airline will become the recipient of unfairly favorable treatment at the expense of its competitors. That would be bad for the airline industry and bad for its customers.

◼ Progressive “it” boy Hasan Piker has it all: He’s rich, he’s young and single, he’s a handsome Los Angeles playboy, he’s a progressive new-media star. He is also an openly Marxist antisemite best known for making regime-sponsored propaganda trips to places like China and Cuba. No matter: Democrats have concluded that he’s tuned in to the zeitgeist. Piker, after all, is also apparently a big fan of casual theft. He sat down with another scion of privilege, Jia Tolentino of the New Yorker, for a conversation published in the New York Times during which they expounded on the virtues of shoplifting. Tolentino claimed she regularly shoplifted from Whole Foods—an act of rebellion against The Man—while Piker averred he would steal priceless art from the Louvre if he could. Piker and Tolentino were roundly denounced for their endorsement of casual lawlessness, which never affects their lives but makes others’ worse, but the greater obscenity is that they were elevated to this point in the first place.