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MORNING GLORY: Trump saw the truth legacy media missed — sick minds are fueling violence
"He was probably a pretty sick guy," President Trump correctly concluded about his would-be assassin in a Sunday night "60 Minutes" interview on CBS about the Saturday night attack on the White House Correspondents’ Association annual gathering. "A man with a lot of problems," the president added later in the interview.
"I wasn’t worried," the president said. "I understand life. We live in a crazy world."
"Look, you have sick people, and you have to mitigate the risk," President Trump concluded. He’s right, of course. But how?
TRUMP CALLS '60 MINUTES' HOST 'DISGRACEFUL' FOR READING WHCD SUSPECT'S ALLEGED MANIFESTO ON AIR
President Trump also flashed some justifiable anger at the 20-minute mark in a 40-minute interview, when Norah O’Donnell repeated the slanders in the would-be assassin’s manifesto. There are so many excellent questions that could be asked in a 40-minute interview that this was an abuse of time that, while predictable, should trigger a shake-up at "60 Minutes." It is not hard to interview the president in a responsible fashion.
The decision to quote a crazy person’s libel in front of that enormous audience is a massive failure of editorial judgment, and another incredible unforced error by legacy media that just cannot read the national room.
That decision ranks with former CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood’s epic fail in a 2016 debate when he asked then-candidate Donald Trump whether his run for the White House was a "comic book version of a presidential campaign," a dropping of the mask that may have ultimately forced Harwood to move to another network in 2019.
Many credentialed journalists seem to lose their professionalism when talking to Trump. It’s remarkable how they can’t resist trying to "score" a moment on him and use that time to, who knows, do something crazy like ask questions about the battle with Iran?
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The questions about the motives of assassins and would-be assassins and their "manifestos" do not interest me. It takes only a diseased mind and enough money to acquire a weapon to grasp at infamy after scratching out ramblings from a disfigured reality. What they write is of some interest, but not much. Lunatic scribbles are just clues to the origin of the psychosis.
What would be interesting — and does not appear to have appeared anywhere … yet — is a serious review of all the unbalanced-past-the-point-of-violence people. Where are they coming from, and what characteristics in their past do they share?
These are not "ordinary" criminals seeking money or using violence from impulse or because of a criminal enterprise. They are a small subcategory of the mentally ill, the vast majority of whom cannot function well in society, but exist on its margins, noticed only when their conditions leave victims in their wake.
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This subcategory is perhaps best classified as "statement" people, though the "statements" are incoherent.
From Columbine to this weekend’s third major attempt to kill President Donald Trump — and this time much of his Cabinet — there have been dozens of nightmarish plots to kill either large numbers of innocents who are strangers to the criminal or public figures, many but not all of them accompanied by "manifestos." There have also been ambuscades where the shooters took their "agendas" to the grave and whose "motives" or self-proclaimed "agendas" are either unknowable or have not been released to the public.
There are enough murderers involved in their own heads, in some kind of macabre theater, that the question should have been answered by the FBI or some other serious students of violence years ago: What do they have in common? What happened to them to knock them off the ordinary highways of human development? Or, perhaps, what was missing from their lives? Gun control activists have their explanations, but they do not reach this category of killer or would-be killer.
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The second set of questions is what to do about the widespread mental illness that permeates society and spreads at the speed of the internet. "We are living in a different world with the internet than we had years ago, but even years ago it was pretty dangerous," President Trump told "60 Minutes."
"The internet, maybe more than anything else, has radicalized some people. It’s made them mentally sick," the president said, returning to the general issue and not the specific ramblings of an unbalanced individual. He also praised the benefits of the new world before concluding: "It’s a different age. It’s a very different time."
Joseph Loconte, author of the excellent "The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945," charts how two of the most widely read and influential writers of the last century lived through a dozen nightmare years. The stories of their experiences do not provide answers to our current dilemma, but they do provide some relevant observations.
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Both men were veterans of World War I, and Loconte had chronicled their experiences in that vast charnel house in a 2017 book, "A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918." Loconte returned to the subject of the two men and their specific experiences in the prewar and war years of World War II in November of last year.
"Every age has its own outlook on the world, a mixture of clarity and blindness," Loconte observes in "The War for Middle-earth." "Yet the moral blindness of the twentieth century represented something new, something entirely novel: ideologies that threatened to destroy the foundations of civilized life."
"Tolkien and Lewis believed that only an outlook rooted in the ancient truths could resist it," Loconte continued before borrowing from Lewis. "The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books."
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Loconte’s study of these men and their friends and their collective, incredible awareness of the approach of an eruption of world-shattering violence includes fascinating glimpses of life at Oxford and Cambridge in the war years, but its focus is on how two men of genius anticipated and then responded to the horror of the twisted and frothing declarations and practices of the killers who drenched those dozen years in the blood of millions.
In our recent history in America, there are so many strands of violence — much of it rooted in views of politics untethered to reality — that it is possible to find evidence for any theory you would like to claim. No theory accounts for them all or even most of them. But has anyone done pattern recognition based on their biographies?
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What are they doing, for example, at Quantico, where the FBI studies serial killers and other categories of crime at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime? One "study" of "right-wing extremism" from the Center was removed from the Department of Justice’s website for unknown reasons, but it is still available online and does not reach the question of patterns in development.
Last year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies published a study of left-wing extremism by Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe that, while interesting, does not do the deep dive into the individuals who attempted or carried out the violence.
The tempting, all-purpose answer for busy people is simply to do what the president did: blame radicalization via the internet. That is true but tells us nothing at all about the commonalities, if any, among the would-be Oswalds. The fear of a "Minority Report" culture that prejudges idiosyncrasies as threats may inhibit the research.
Still, what dots have never been connected about factors in the upbringing of the actors that tip the unbalanced into the land of the "statement" killers? If there’s a serious study of that topic, link to it in the comments. But if there isn’t, perhaps the Bureau or somewhere in the academy, some researchers will take note of the gap.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
STEVE FORBES: 4 ways to fix what’s wrong with New York City and stop the exodus
The political class in New York keeps looking for complicated explanations for a very simple fact: people leave when government makes life too expensive, too cramped, too disorderly, and too unrewarding.
That is what has happened in New York City.
For years, City Hall and Albany behaved as though New York’s appeal was permanent and its taxpayers, captive. They assumed families would tolerate shrinking apartments, swelling rents, dirty streets, unreliable transit, rising taxes, bureaucratic arrogance and diminishing public order because, after all, this is New York. That conceit is now colliding with reality. New Yorkers across income levels have been voting with their feet.
The numbers are striking. The Citizens Budget Commission found that New York City lost 166,000 people, representing 52,600 households, to domestic outmigration in 2022 alone. That loss reduced city tax revenue by an estimated $309 million, including at least $259 million in personal income tax revenue.
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This is not merely a story of a few wealthy financiers decamping to Palm Beach. It is broader and more troubling than that. The New York City Comptroller found that between 2019 and 2023 the city lost roughly 83,000 full-year resident tax filers and nearly 347,000 people attached to those returns. The decline was concentrated among married couples and families with children, while virtually all the net decline in filers and population was concentrated among returns with incomes of $50,000 and under.
In plain English, New York is losing people from the bottom, the middle, and the family-forming ranks. Lower-income residents are being squeezed out. Families are leaving because they need space and functioning systems. Middle-income earners are leaving because they are being asked to pay luxury prices for increasingly mediocre results. And higher-income residents, newly empowered by remote work, no longer must remain in place simply because their offices once demanded it.
The same CBC report noted that one in four college-educated New Yorkers reported working primarily from home in 2022, especially in higher-wage sectors such as finance, media and technology.
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What is the root cause? Start with housing, which is where so many of New York’s other failures become most punishing. The city has spent years making it too hard, too slow and too costly to build. Zoning restrictions, permitting delays, endless procedural choke points, anti-growth politics and regulatory excess have throttled supply.
The result is not merely high rent. It is a market so distorted that ordinary life becomes harder at every stage. The CBC found that 25% of New York City households are moderately or severely overcrowded, while only 9% meet the standard for aligned household size and space.
This is what overregulation looks like in real life. It means young families cannot find an apartment large enough to stay. It means workers spend a greater share of their paychecks merely to remain in place. It means people who might once have endured New York’s inconveniences now realize they can live better elsewhere.
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But housing is not the whole story. New York also suffers from a deeper governmental disease: it spends enormous sums badly. The city’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget totals $115.9 billion. That is an astonishing level of spending. The state of Florida has a smaller budget with almost three times the population. Yet New Yorkers do not experience a city run with the competence such a budget should buy.
Here is the heart of the matter: New York does not just have a big government. It has an undisciplined one. The comptroller warned in late 2025 that chronically underbudgeted costs in Fiscal Year 2026 totaled an estimated $3.76 billion, with even larger gaps projected in the outyears. In other words, the city too often understates expenses, postpones reckoning and pretends future pressures are smaller than they really are.
That is not prudent stewardship. It is budgetary illusion.
Nor is the problem solved by simply appropriating more money. Bloated budgets are not the same thing as good government. In fact, they often conceal bad management. Taxpayers are asked to finance ever-larger spending plans while they encounter dirty streets, persistent disorder, procurement failures, service delays and agencies that too often seem incapable of basic execution. New York’s problem is not that government is too small. It is that government is too expensive for what it delivers.
Then there is labor policy, another topic the city’s establishment handles with kid gloves. Municipal workers deserve fair compensation. But taxpayers deserve a government organized around performance, efficiency and results. Too often, labor agreements in New York amount to higher costs without corresponding modernization.
The CBC has noted that health insurance costs have grown most rapidly among compensation expenses, rising at an average annual rate of 7% from fiscal year 2009 to 2019. It also points out that more than 95% of city municipal employees choose plans requiring no employee premium contribution, leaving the city to shoulder costs that are far more generous than those borne by most public and private employers.
This is where union demands become more than a budget line. They become a structural obstacle to reform. Collective bargaining becomes a one-way ratchet for pay and benefits, while work-rule reform and productivity improvements are treated as optional or offensive. Taxpayers end up with the worst of both worlds: a more expensive government and an underperforming one.
So, what should New York do?
First, it should embrace a genuine supply-side housing policy. Upzone more neighborhoods. Streamline permitting. Reduce procedural delays. Remove rules and mandates that make construction financially irrational. A city that will not build is a city that will drive out its families. Along the way, why don’t the state and city knockout the rent control and rent stabilization jungle that is ruining landlords and leading to structural decay?
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Second, it should restore honesty to budgeting. Stop lowballing predictable costs. Stop relying on rosy assumptions and fiscal gimmicks. Force agencies to justify spending according to measurable performance and real outcomes.
Third, it should reform labor costs with seriousness and fairness. Future labor agreements should link compensation growth to productivity gains, modernized work rules, greater managerial flexibility and sane benefits.
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Fourth, it should focus relentlessly on the visible quality of daily life. Clean streets, safer public spaces, dependable transit, responsive city services and orderly neighborhoods are not superficial concerns. They are part of the city’s competitive position.
New York is still one of the world’s great cities. But as ancient Rome demonstrated, greatness is not self-executing. A city can live for a long time on inherited prestige, accumulated capital and memories of better management. Eventually, however, reality intrudes. If government overregulates housing, mismanages budgets, inflates payroll costs and delivers declining performance, people will leave.
And they have.
The lesson is not that New York is doomed. It is that New York must rediscover a truth it once understood well: prosperity does not come from squeezing the productive, subsidizing dysfunction and governing through inertia. It comes from freedom to build, discipline in spending, competence in management and respect for the taxpayers and families who make the city possible.
BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: My year with DOJ's Religious Liberty Commission: Why I said yes
As my time with the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty comes to a close, I would like to reflect on the experience, but also on the frankly bizarre reaction that some people had to my participation.
Just about a year ago, I received a call from the White House inviting me to serve on a newly formed commission dedicated to fostering religious liberty in our country. I had, and still have, no idea who recommended me or how my name was surfaced. But upon receiving the invitation, I thought, "Well, the president of the United States is inviting a Catholic bishop to be a voice around the table as the crucially important issue of religious freedom is being discussed."
Why would I say no, especially since the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had made religious liberty a central concern?
And the commission did indeed do exceptionally important work. In the course of the year, we brought to light violations of religious liberty in the arenas of health care, education and the military. We explored the sources of religious freedom in the work of the Founding Fathers, and we drew special attention to the antisemitism that is currently bedeviling our country. One of the most significant contributions we made was to bring into sharper relief the issue of church-state relations.
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Far too much of the jurisprudence of the last roughly 75 years has been dominated by Thomas Jefferson's ambiguous metaphor of a "wall" that purportedly separates civil government and religion.
As many have indicated, there is no mention of such a wall in either the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers or the Constitution itself. What we do indeed find in the First Amendment is the prohibition against any formal establishment of religion through an act of Congress, but this has nothing to do with eliminating religion from public life or even reducing religious expression to private acts of worship.
In point of fact, that same First Amendment insists that nothing should prevent the free exercise of religion in our country. Many of the witnesses we heard from during the year testified to the cynical way that Jefferson's "wall" was used to justify severe restrictions on their free exercise of religion. To be sure, no student in an American classroom should be compelled to pray according to any particular religious tradition, but we heard of students who were forbidden from singing Christian songs at a talent show, or, in the most absurd case, forbidden from wearing COVID masks inscribed with "Jesus loves me."
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A point that I made frequently in the course of our deliberations is that the greatest threat to religious liberty today comes from what amounts to an alternate religion, which I characterize as "the culture of self-invention." This ideology dictates that there are no objective moral values and no stable human nature, and hence the determination of value is entirely a product of individual choice.
The more this philosophical perspective comes to hold sway, the more the leaders of the culture want religion out of education, health care and other institutions, for they rightly recognize that the advocates of traditional religion are their most powerful ideological opponents. In many ways, the testimonies we heard and the discussions we had echoed this fundamental theme.
I must say, furthermore, that my colleagues on the commission, including and especially the chairman, Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have been marvelous. They showed great interest in my perspective as I brought Catholic teaching to bear on the matter of religious liberty. There was never an attempt to censor me or question the legitimacy of my participation. I was allowed free rein to express my point of view, to interview witnesses as I saw fit, and to engage my fellow commissioners in lively conversation.
No one ever demanded that I demonstrate unquestioned fealty to the Trump administration or any particular political point of view. I'm proud to have contributed to the final statement that we are about to communicate to the president.
I fully realize that, for some, the simple fact that the president whose administration invited me to join the commission was Donald Trump was enough to inspire a negative response, but I thought that objection was silly.
In all honesty, if President Joe Biden had invited me to serve on such a commission, I would have said yes, though I rather vehemently disagree with many of his policies.
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To serve at the beckoning of a president on a commission dedicated to a very specific issue is not thereby to endorse every policy, proposal or action of that president.
Relatedly, other critics opined that no churchman should be so closely associated with a government agency; but I took as my inspiration Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, the legendary president of the University of Notre Dame, who served on, believe it or not, 16 separate presidential commissions under five presidents, both Democratic and Republican. There is simply no way that Hesburgh could possibly have agreed with all the policies of those various chief executives, but he served nonetheless. The point is this: If church leaders absent themselves from advising government officials, then the church's voice does not resonate in the halls of power.
A complaint that I found particularly puzzling was that my service on this commission made me part of the Trump administration, and that Pope John Paul II had strictly forbidden churchmen from serving in government positions. But I was not part of the Trump administration!
Those in the administration of a president are dedicated to the implementation of that president's policies. Thus, for example, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are indeed charged with making Donald Trump's proposals a reality. But the kind of commission on which I served is, so to speak, on the other side of the ledger. That is to say, we were not endeavoring to implement policy, but rather to shape it.
Our job was to recommend to the president actions he could take, either through legislation or executive order, that would enhance religious liberty. But giving advice and implementing policy are entirely different things.
In sum, participating in the Religious Liberty Commission was a wonderful experience, and I'm very glad that I accepted the president's invitation.
The criticisms and objections were, in the final analysis, spurious and born, I would maintain, largely out of pique and envy.
DeSantis under pressure as Florida redraw could tip House balance in GOP map fight
All eyes are on Florida this week, as it is likely the final battleground in the high-stakes fight between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats over congressional redistricting.
A special session of the Florida legislature, called earlier this year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to redraw the right-leaning state's U.S. House districts, kicks off on Tuesday. At stake is which party will control the House of Representatives during the final two years of Trump's second term in the White House.
DeSantis unveiled his plan for those maps on Monday, Fox News Digital exclusively reported, which shows the GOP gaining an extra four seats.
"Florida got shortchanged in the 2020 Census, and we’ve been fighting for fair representation ever since," DeSantis told Fox News Digital. "Our population has since grown dramatically, and we have moved from a Democrat majority to a 1.5 million Republican advantage. Drawing maps based on race, which is reflected in our current congressional districts, is unconstitutional and should be prohibited."
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Republicans and Democrats over the past nine months have been redrawing the House district maps in states they control to gain partisan advantages heading into this year's midterm elections, when the GOP will be defending its razor-thin congressional majority.
Lawmakers in the GOP-dominated Florida legislature are meeting one week after voters in Virginia narrowly passed a referendum that, if it clears legal hurdles, will give the state's Democratic-controlled legislature — rather than the current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election. It could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia's congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge.
The vote in Virginia put more pressure on DeSantis to deliver a new map in Florida that could create between three and five more right-leaning congressional districts.
"Florida has the right and the intention to do it. And my view is that they should," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday when asked if Florida's maps should be redrawn in time for the midterms.
A Florida-based Republican in the governor's wider political circle who asked for anonymity to speak more freely told Fox News Digital, "Gov. DeSantis is under tremendous pressure to deliver an answer to Virginia for Trump and Speaker Johnson."
The road ahead for DeSantis is not easy: the governor already pushed through a new House map four years ago, which helped secure the GOP's current 20-8 majority in Florida's U.S. House delegation. Redrawing the map again just four years later is harder.
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There are also legal hurdles DeSantis faces: It is illegal under Florida's constitution to redraw maps for partisan gain, known as gerrymandering. Democrats have vowed lawsuits against any new map that may come out of Tallahassee.
U.S. House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries last week took aim at what some are dubbing "dummymander," a play on words for "gerrymander," and argued that redrawing the maps in Florida — where the GOP suffered setbacks earlier this spring in special legislative elections — would harm Republican members of Congress.
"Our message to Florida Republicans is, ‘F around and find out,’" Jeffries told reporters as he referenced next week's redistricting legislative session. Jeffries said the redistricting move would lead Democrats to increase their target list of vulnerable Florida House Republicans.
He warned DeSantis and Republicans that "the electoral tide is turning in Florida."
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Pushing back, DeSantis said, "Please. Be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida to campaign."
"I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We will take you fishing," the governor added.
Not all Florida Republicans are on board with the effort, due to concerns it may backfire.
A Florida-based GOP strategist told Fox News Digital some Florida members of Congress "don't want this."
And pointing to the legislature, where there are some grumblings, the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak clearly, said "some don't want to do it, but their hands will be forced."
Florida has already moved the filing deadline for congressional candidates back from April to June, but for candidates already running for Congress, the late-in-the-game map redraw brings plenty of complications.
"Changing the map changes the race. Candidates have been interviewed for a job description that just got a requirement change," veteran Florida-based GOP donor and bundler Dan Eberhart told Fox News Digital.
Eberhart noted that "these candidates are going to have to call an audible really soon - changing districts and probably new competitors."
Florida may be the final battlefield in a political war that started a year ago.
Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump last spring first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.
The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP's fragile House majority to keep control of the chamber in the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
When asked by reporters last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, "Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five."
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.
But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.
Among those leading the fight against Trump's redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
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California voters in November overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that temporarily sidetracked the left-leaning state's nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.
The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.
Republican-controlled Missouri and Ohio and swing state North Carolina, where the GOP dominates the legislature, have drawn new maps as part of the president's push.
In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge late last year rejected a congressional district map drawn by the state's GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms.
Republicans in Indiana's Senate in December defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House. The showdown in the Indiana statehouse grabbed plenty of national attention.
Fox News Digital's Preston Mizell contributed to this report
CBP seizes massive meth haul worth millions stashed in secret tile shipment
A routine Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspection of a commercial truck last Tuesday became the most recent in a string of drug apprehensions when officers discovered $8.1 million worth of methamphetamine, commonly referred to as meth, disguised as a shipment of tiles.
The apprehension is an example of the many ways smugglers attempt to bring narcotics across the U.S. border and sparked praise from officials for CBP’s operations.
"As this significant seizure aptly illustrates, CBP officers work tirelessly to ensure that commerce flows and hard narcotics are stopped in their tracks," Port Director Carlos Rodriguez said in a statement.
CBP officials were first alerted to the contents during a canine unit screening.
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Upon further inspection, CBP officers discovered packets of white powder contained within the pallets of tile, unveiling a haul with an estimated street value of $8,119,696. Officers extracted 200 packages with a combined weight of 908.30 pounds.
The apprehension is just one of many such seizures that smugglers have tried to bring over into the U.S., posing as some other product.
In February, CBP detained a truckload of "roses" concealing over 515 pounds of cocaine.
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More recently, on April 2, CBP reported seizing 298 pounds of cocaine worth roughly $2.6 million in another commercial truck allegedly carrying carrots.
Just two weeks later, CBP announced they had stopped 1,002 pounds of cocaine worth up to $8.9 million masquerading as a shipment of chayote — a type of squash native to Mexico.
Officials called the seizures a fulfillment of President Donald Trump's promises to secure the U.S. Southern Border against drug cartels and narcotraffickers.
"Fulfilling President Donald J. Trump’s mandate, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the leadership of DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, have delivered the most secure border in history, stopping dangerous criminal aliens and illicit narcotics from entering our communities, which will keep America safe for generations to come," CBP said in a press release.
LIZ PEEK: Angry, affluent and adrift — what's driving some young Americans to violence
It’s 2026, and America’s youth are not ok.
Young people in the U.S. are angry and miserable, surveys show, despite living in the most prosperous nation on earth. They are likely to stay that way. They hate capitalism, despair about climate change and social justice, have devalued the things that matter most like family and religion and instead put their faith in false prophets like Zohran Mamdani.
Oddly it is our privileged elites — highly educated, meaning highly indoctrinated by our leftist schools, that are the most rudderless and unhappy.
The result is people like Cole Allen, 31-year-old graduate of prestigious Caltech university, who allegedly decided to shoot Trump administration officials attending the White House Correspondents Dinner this past weekend. Or Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Charlie Kirk, or Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot and wounded President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Or Colt Gray, Phoenix Ikner or Robin Westman, all three under the age of 25 and accused of deadly school shootings.
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These are just a few names; there are plenty more. What do they have in common? They’re not destitute, not starving, they’re just angry.
Some blame young people’s woes on social media, which is undoubtedly part of the problem. But they themselves are also to blame. Young people hew liberal, which is normal, but today’s leftists are not just critical of the status quo and want to improve it. They hate the status quo and have bought the idea that American institutions and businesses are corrupt and must be punished, even if that means violence.
Consider the piece published last Wednesday by the New York Times titled ‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ The article celebrated "petty theft" as "the new political protest" and summarized a podcast that included Hasan Piker, an anti-American antisemite who once declared that the U.S. "deserved" to be attacked on Sep. 11, 2001. Piker’s main credential is a large following among young people on Twitch. The podcast, which included NYT opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, lit up social media. The vast majority of readers expressed disgust over the moral depravity of the conversation’s participants, who cooly contemplate the justification of political violence, including murder.
Most of their ruminations are just plain dumb, as when Piker applauds stealing artwork from the Louvre saying, "We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature."
This champagne socialist, who went to Rutgers and lives in a $3 million house in LA, pretends to align with the working man. He thinks stealing art from a public institution, where it can be seen for free by working-class people, is "cool."
But it is abhorrent that the trio ventures close to justifying the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, claiming that health insurers are "merchants of social murder, of structural violence upon people."
On a lesser scale, they condone sharing Netflix passwords and skirting firewalls but draw the line, thankfully, at burning down factories "to protest wage theft".
The Times’ own editor seems to condone the rationale behind a new trend that she describes as "microlooting", or stealing from large outfits like Whole Foods, suggesting that many think, "Because the rich don’t play by the rules, so why should I? And Jeff Bezos has too much money — he’s a billionaire — so why should I have to pay for organic avocados?"
But the biggest takeaway from this pathetic conversation is that these people wallow in their liberal guilt, and it is making them miserable.
Jia Tolentino whines, "It is so hard to live ethically in an unethical society."
She confesses, "There are so many perfectly legal things I do regularly that I find mildly immoral. Like getting iced coffee in a plastic cup. I find that to be a profoundly selfish, immoral, collectively destructive action. I have taken so many planes for so many pleasure reasons; I have acted in so many selfish ways that are not only legal, but they’re sanctioned and they’re unbelievably valorized, culturally."
Spiegelman responds in kind: "I’m constantly acting in ways that don’t align with my belief system… like ordering in food when it’s raining out. There are just so many moments when I’m like, my comfort is more important than someone bringing me food through the rain. And it doesn’t feel good."
Imagine beating yourself up because you order takeout occasionally or fly to Miami for a midwinter break. These women have politicized and denounced so many normal acts of everyday life that their lives have become a boiling cauldron of self-loathing.
It isn’t just plastic cups that make them unhappy, it’s also parking for free on the street, and private schools. More important, it’s the recognition that to be politically potent — to actually make a difference in the lives of those who bag groceries at Whole Foods — they would have to spend years working there and unionize the workforce. That, for this spoiled trio, would be a step too far.
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These three "influencers", heaven help us, have bought the Left’s dishonest outrage about our "unjust" capitalist society hook, line and sinker. They deplore the existence of billionaires, they hate big corporations that conduct what Piker calls "wage theft" and, incredibly, are wildly optimistic that New York’s vacuous Mayor Zohran Mamdani will provide the answers they are seeking.
After lamenting that trust in the government has plummeted, Piker declares that Mamdani "does instill confidence in governance... People for the first time ever see someone actually making that positive change…"
Actually, they see nothing. Mamdani’s free buses have been put off, the highly-touted "affordable" grocery story will cost multiples of what it should, and the budget doesn’t work. It will only get worse.
Piker’s naivete is stunning, but not surprising. He may have a college degree but, like Mamdani, is entirely ignorant of how the world works.
Trump squeezes Iran with maximum pressure — why it hasn’t forced a breakthrough
After two months of conflict, neither a deadly bombing campaign nor a blockade on Iranian exports has forced Tehran to make the concessions the Trump administration is seeking.
The campaign has intensified in recent weeks, targeting Iran’s oil exports and financial networks while a naval blockade has disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global energy flows. U.S. officials argue the combination of military pressure and economic isolation is intended to weaken Iran’s capabilities and force it back to the negotiating table on more favorable terms.
While the U.S. has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of top military and political figures, the regime itself remains intact. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected to succeed him, and leadership remains firmly hardline.
Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East negotiator and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said the administration may have misjudged the type of negotiating partner it would face.
HORMUZ CHOKE POINT PERSISTS AS IRAN HALTS OIL TRAFFIC DESPITE TRUMP CEASEFIRE
"Trump was looking for an Iranian Delcy Rodriguez," he told Fox News Digital. "More likely, he's going to end up with an Iranian Kim Jong Un."
He expressed doubt that any decisive victory was possible while the current Iranian regime remained in power.
"And we do not have the capacity to remove the regime."
The standoff increasingly has become a test of whether U.S. pressure can be converted into political concessions — or whether it is instead being diluted through workarounds, institutional resilience and competing constraints.
So far, analysts say, Iran has proven more capable of absorbing and rerouting pressure than Washington has been able to translate it into durable gains.
On Monday, Iran floated a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for relief from the blockade, while deferring negotiations on more contentious issues.
But analysts caution that such proposals do not address the core dispute and may not even mean the same thing to both sides.
"What the Iranians mean by opening the straits, and what Trump means, may be two different sorts of things," Miller said.
At the center of the standoff is Iran’s nuclear program, where the gap between the two sides remains wide. The Trump administration has pushed for Iran to eliminate its uranium enrichment capability entirely, while Iran insists that enrichment is a sovereign right and non-negotiable — leaving little room for compromise.
That divide continues to block a broader agreement, even as both sides explore more limited steps to reduce immediate tensions.
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"It’s almost unimaginable that this administration and the Iranian leadership are willing to make the kinds of concessions that would allow this administration to walk away with a win," Miller said.
"Iranians are willing to give concessions, but Trump is looking for capitulation," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft think tank. "And you can't get a country to capitulate unless you have defeated them."
Instead of folding under pressure, Iran largely has responded by adapting.
Despite the blockade, Iran has continued to move at least some oil through workaround methods, including sanctioned vessels, smaller ports and alternative routing strategies, even as overall exports have come under strain.
Those efforts have expanded in recent weeks. Reports indicate Iran is exploring overland shipments, including potential rail exports to China, while vessels have increasingly rerouted through Iranian territorial waters or controlled shipping corridors to bypass restrictions.
"The United States successfully closes off one avenue for them, and slowly but surely they are finding workarounds," Parsi said.
The financial impact of the campaign has been significant, even if uneven. Estimates vary, but some analysts put Iran’s potential losses from the blockade at roughly $400 million per day, largely driven by disrupted oil exports and reduced access to hard currency.
At the same time, Iran has not been fully cut off. The country has continued to generate billions in oil revenue in recent months, underscoring both the scale of the pressure and its limits.
While a sustained drop in oil revenue would strain the government’s official budget and force cuts to public spending, the country’s most powerful institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, operates through its own economic networks, including smuggling routes and cross-border trade.
That allows key parts of the regime to continue functioning even under heavy sanctions, meaning economic pain often falls unevenly — hitting civilians before it weakens the state’s coercive apparatus.
Even attempts to directly destabilize Iran’s leadership have not fundamentally altered that dynamic. U.S. and Israeli operations earlier in the conflict killed Khamenei along with dozens of senior military and political figures.
Yet the regime has remained intact, with power consolidating among remaining political and security elites aligned with hardline positions.
How long Iran can sustain that posture remains uncertain. Miller said a prolonged blockade could eventually force a breaking point — but only if Washington is willing to maintain it.
"If the administration is prepared for six months to keep up this blockade, I think they could probably break the Iranian economy," Miller said.
But he cautioned that such timelines are difficult to predict and that even U.S. intelligence lacks a clear picture of when economic pressure might translate into political concessions.
That uncertainty raises a broader question about the sustainability of the strategy. While Iran’s leadership may be willing to absorb significant economic pain, the U.S. faces its own constraints, including potential strain on military resources and growing risks to global energy markets.
"There are no midterms. There are no primaries. There are no sell-by dates for Iran," Miller said. "And Trump has a sell-by date."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
For now, both sides appear to be waiting for the other to lose the political will to sustain the standoff, with global energy markets caught in the middle.
Trump appeals for unity, rips '60 Minutes,' after a history of inflammatory rhetoric on both sides
I don’t want to hear any more about motives.
When someone engages in a mass shooting – or attempts to kill a president – they are by definition crazy.
In the case of the Washington Hilton gunman, his motive is spelled out in his so-called manifesto: He hates President Donald Trump.
Despite a background in engineering and teaching, he somehow became convinced that Trump was in cahoots with Jeffrey Epstein, calling the president a rapist and pedophile.
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But again, who cares about motive? Anyone who would storm an event protected by the Secret Service – knowing he could easily wind up dead – is not sane.
We do this all the time, try to impose a rational framework on irrational attackers.
The shooter was charged in court yesterday with attempted assassination of the president.
Another thing we do regularly is blame an entire class of people for the actions of a single attacker.
After the Secret Service captured the California gunman – who I’m not naming, under my usual policy of not providing the attention they crave – many conservatives blamed "the left."
Trump himself accused the Democrats of "dangerous" and "hateful" speech.
MS NOW anchor Antonia Hylton countered that the president should have said more about inflammatory rhetoric.
Just weeks ago, she said, he "posted about the possible extermination of an entire civilization online" and "has called his political foes ‘vermin, lunatics, scum, terrorists, the enemy within.’ He has certainly contributed — at a minimum — to the political rhetoric."
This ideological finger-pointing is nothing new. One year ago, a gunman posing as a police officer killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat and former speaker, and her husband in their home. The killer, a Trump supporter, also wounded a Democratic senator and his wife in their home. Trump said he was "not familiar" with the case.
One year ago, a man with a history of mental illness and a criminal record set fire to the mansion of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, on the first night of Passover. He said he would have attacked Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he had encountered him. He had tried to convince his family to vote for Trump and slammed Shapiro for his position on the Palestinians. Trump didn’t contact Shapiro that day but did call the next day.
The gunman who badly wounded Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, and killed six others in Arizona, was said by many in the press to have been inspired by a Sarah Palin political map that put political opponents in crosshairs. Turns out the killer never saw the map. The New York Times apologized and corrected the false accusation, and a Palin suit against the paper was unsuccessful.
This even goes back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which President Clinton blamed on the atmosphere caused by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters.
The security lapses at the Washington Hilton were unforgivable. It’s no accident that President Reagan was shot outside the same hotel in 1981, an attack I covered, in which Reagan lost far more blood than was originally disclosed.
All the gunman had to do to beat the system is take trains to Washington and check in as a guest. As at past White House Correspondent Association dinners, the checking even for tickets was inconsistent. Some journalists and other guests are there only for the pre-parties hosted by news organizations.
As Red Letter reporter Abi Baker explained:
"I didn’t have a dinner ticket, just an invite to a pre-party, so I flashed my phone at security, pulling up the email invitation. There was no barcode to scan, no list to check—just an email for a network news reception that could have been forwarded by anyone. At the party I was invited to, no one asked for ID, only my name. At others, just feet from the ballroom, I walked in without being stopped."
Incredibly, the Secret Service didn’t even invoke the highest level of security for an event attended by the president, vice president, House speaker and top Cabinet officials. There were other events and receptions going on at the hotel at the same time, so the building couldn’t be secured. There may be other reasons to get rid of the press dinner, but it can never again be held at the Hilton, a sprawling structure that has now been the target of two attempted presidential assassinations.
KIMMEL CALLS MELANIA TRUMP AN ‘EXPECTANT WIDOW’ BEFORE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER SHOOTING
Melania Trump, meanwhile, ripped Jimmy Kimmel for telling this joke:
During a parody skit about the press dinner, he said: "Our First Lady Melania is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expected widow."
Tasteless, to be sure. But this was days before Kimmel or anyone else imagined there would be gunfire at the dinner.
"Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country," the first lady said in a statement. "His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America," she said in a statement. "People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate…
"A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community."
The president added his voice yesterday, saying that in light of his "despicable call to violence," Kimmel should be "immediately fired by Disney and ABC." In fairness, Kimmel wasn’t calling for violence, he was doing a comedy sketch, but his words were offensive.
MELANIA TRUMP CALLS FOR ABC TO FIRE JIMMY KIMMEL OVER ‘HATEFUL AND VIOLENT RHETORIC'
In December, as part of their long-running feud, Trump called Kimmel "a dead man walking!" and that CBS should "put him to sleep…it is the humanitarian thing to do!"
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that Trump has been the target of "completely deranged" rhetoric since he first ran for president. She blamed a "left-wing culture of hatred." By falsely accusing him of being a "fascist" and "threat to democracy," she said, elected Democrats and some in the media have "helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, while calling for a lowering of the temperature, said "you have some of the most prominent figures in the House and in the Senate on the Democrat side effectively calling for war. They use those kinds of metaphors. And it incites violence, because there are crazy people in society, and they get radicalized online."
During an interview on "60 Minutes," Norah O’Donnell read from the shooter’s document. Having somehow convinced himself that Trump was part of Jeffrey Epstein’s child abuse network, he wrote: "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes."
"I was waiting for you to read that," Trump said, "because I knew you would – because you’re horrible people…I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. Excuse me, I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person... You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that – because I’m not any of those things."
O’Donnell said she was just citing the shooter’s words.
TRUMP CALLS '60 MINUTES' HOST 'DISGRACEFUL' FOR READING WHCD SUSPECT'S ALLEGED MANIFESTO ON AIR
It’s important to recognize that Trump also has a history of violent rhetoric. He has accused journalists of "treason," a crime punishable by death.
He has said "if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath," though he was referring to the auto industry.
During the campaign, he said the Democrats were running a "Gestapo administration."
In 2020, he reposted a video of a supporter saying, "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."
Two days before the election, he said this about renegade Republican Liz Cheney:
"She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."
And, of course, he pardoned and praised the Jan. 6 rioters.
A Utah prosecutor said the man charged last September with killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, despite coming from a Republican family, had moved toward a leftist ideology, and had become "increasingly concerned about gay and trans rights." (He had a transgender roommate.)
The shooter, in court last week, asked that the media be barred from covering the trial because it taints the jury pool.
But that brings us back to the useless question of motive. Who cares? There’s no question the recent spate of violence has come from shooters and suspects who at a minimum could be described as anti-Trump.
Some criticized the president for bringing up his planned White House ballroom, because it would be bulletproof and heavily secured. It’s hardly surprising that he would use the occasion to plug his pet project.
But a tragedy was averted that could have been so much worse was thankfully averted.
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FBI Director Kash Patel, who was at the Hilton media dinner, said at a briefing yesterday that Trump had delivered a "message of unity" after the gunfire on Saturday night. We could use more of that, from both sides.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said "the political violence and rhetoric has got to stop." He did not exclude "many in this room" for their negative coverage of the president.
Fortunately for all of us, the Secret Service did its job at the last security checkpoint that prevented the irrational gunman from opening fire in the room below.
Jasmine Crockett's social media posts about WHCD shooting show different tones
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, posted on social media what appeared to be contradictory messages about the shooting over the weekend at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
In the shooting that unfolded at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., gunman Cole Tomas Allen of California rushed through a security checkpoint with guns and knives. One Secret Service agent was shot in the chest but was saved by his bulletproof vest.
The Justice Department charged Allen with attempting to assassinate the president, transporting a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.
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President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials were in attendance, as were members of Congress and the media. Trump and other attendees were rushed off the stage, and the suspect was taken into custody.
Crockett, who lost in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate this year, has made multiple posts about the shooting since it happened, with some condemning political violence and others questioning whether assassination attempts against Trump were staged.
On her official X and Threads accounts, she said, "The political violence is unacceptable and must stop."
"I am grateful that everyone attending tonight’s WHCD is safe," the congresswoman added.
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But on her Jasmine For US campaign Threads account, she posted, "Has there ever been a president have this many close 'attempts' on their life?"
"Maybe it’s lax gun laws, maybe it’s lack of mental health funding, or maybe it’s fake… who knows," the post continued.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Crockett's office for comment. A message was also left with the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., seeking comment.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Trump began claiming that the incident showed the need for his proposed White House ballroom. Other administration officials and the president's allies in Congress quickly began pushing for the ballroom as well.
But the dinner was hosted by the White House Correspondents' Association and not the White House, and it had more than twice as many guests as the proposed ballroom could hold.
A judge had, on multiple occasions, halted construction of the $400 million White House ballroom, ruling that it lacked congressional approval, while offering an exception for "actions strictly necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House and its grounds."
Jimmy Kimmel remains defiant, insists 'expectant widow' jab against Trumps was about age difference
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel remained defiant Monday night, insisting his now-viral "expectant widow" joke about President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump was simply about their age.
"This was Thursday, and there was no big reaction to it until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm," Kimmel said during his monologue. "I said, our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at her. So beautiful. This is from the glow. Like an expectant widow, which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they were together."
"It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80, and she's younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination — and they know that," he continued. "I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house."
Kimmel said the joke referred to the couple’s age difference and denied that it was a call to assassination.
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"And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do it, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it," Kimmel later told the first lady. "Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you, as am I, as are all of us. Because under the First Amendment, we have as Americans a right to free speech. But with that said, I am sorry that you and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am. Just because no one got killed, that doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic and scary. We should come together and be the best."
Notably, celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman, the entertainment headliner who was scheduled to perform at the WHCA Dinner until the attack upended the evening, backed out of his slated appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and was replaced at the last minute by liberal "Pod Save America" host Jon Lovett.
MELANIA TRUMP CALLS FOR ABC TO FIRE JIMMY KIMMEL OVER ‘HATEFUL AND VIOLENT RHETORIC’
Kimmel's joke from Thursday went viral on social media in the wake of Saturday's attack at the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) Dinner, which federal authorities say involved an armed man trying to storm the event while targeting Trump and top Cabinet officials.
Both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump issued statements calling for Kimmel's firing from the Disney-owned network.
"Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America," she posted on X.
"People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough," the first lady continued. "It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community."
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The president later followed suit, writing Monday on Truth Social that Kimmel’s remark amounted to a "despicable call to violence."
"I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said, but this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC."
Last year, Kimmel was briefly suspended by Disney after controversial remarks about the assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked outrage, and ABC said the show would be preempted indefinitely. He returned to the air days later and insisted he never intended to make light of Kirk’s death.
In December, ABC extended his contract until at least May 2027.
Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, the 31-year-old accused of targeting top Trump administration officials, is facing three counts, including attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, transporting a firearm across state lines, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Top DOJ officials said Monday that additional charges are expected, and he faces life imprisonment.
Neither ABC nor its parent company Disney, responded to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.