An assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner turned what is usually a choreographed, slightly self-congratulatory night into something much more serious, very quickly. I had been at the Washington Hilton earlier, and what stood out in retrospect was how ordinary the setup felt. Security was clearly tight around the ballroom itself, but the rest of the hotel operated like a normal venue, with people moving in and out of the lobby without much friction. That gap matters, because it helps explain how someone armed could even get close enough to force a response from Secret Service. He never reached the inner event, but the fact that he got as far as he did cuts through the illusion that these environments are fully locked down.

It’s tough to dismiss this as a one-off. The rhetoric outside the event was already intense, with protesters framing politics in absolute, existential terms. When that becomes the baseline, it is not surprising that someone eventually acts on it. This is not the first attempt tied to Trump, and unfortunately, it wouldn’t surprise me if it weren’t the last. Even if the immediate danger was contained, the pattern itself is the more unsettling part, because it suggests a level of volatility that is not going away anytime soon.

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I left before everything happened and walked over to the Substack party, which ended up being chaotic in a completely different way. Because of the lockdown around the Hilton, a lot of people never made it over, so the party had this strange half full energy. Plenty of space, plenty of chatter, but also the sense that something had already gone off script for the night. That mood did not last long, because it quickly turned into its own kind of spectacle when Michael Tracy confronted Julie K. Brown over claims about Epstein related reporting.

What followed felt less like a serious dispute and more like a live action version of internet drama. Voices went up, Jim Acosta jumped in loudly, and suddenly a party conversation turned into a full scene with security stepping in. Tracy was eventually asked to leave, and that was that. Compared to what had just happened across town, it was trivial, but it also captured something real about the media world, where personal grudges and public arguments can spill over at any moment. Taken together, the night swung between genuinely dangerous and strangely ridiculous, which feels like a pretty accurate snapshot of the current political environment.

Chapters00:00 - Intro

01:23 - Trump Assassination Attempt

06:29 - Substack Party

Republicans are running out of places to redraw the map, and Florida is quickly becoming their last real shot to claw back seats before the midterms. The pressure is now squarely on Ron DeSantis to deliver a map that could net a handful of gains, but even inside the party there is real disagreement about whether that is possible. The risk is not just that the effort fails, but that it backfires, turning carefully engineered districts into competitive ones if turnout does not break the right way.

That is the core problem with aggressive redistricting at this stage. The more you try to maximize advantage by packing and slicing districts, the more you rely on your own voters showing up consistently. If they do not, those same districts can flip. That is why some Republicans are warning that what looks like a smart map on paper could end up being a “dummymander” in practice, especially in an environment where Democratic voters appear more motivated. In fact, this is starting to look risky, it might be more accurate to call this year’s elections “dummyterms,” a phrase I’m committed to making stick come hell or high water.

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At the same time, the conflict with Iran is entering a more volatile phase. New mines in the Strait of Hormuz and an expanded U.S. naval response signal that this is no longer just posturing. It’s a pressure campaign with real global stakes, especially given how much of the world’s oil supply runs through that corridor. The situation is starting to look less like a slow escalation and more like a standoff that will force a decision sooner rather than later.

What makes it even more unpredictable is the internal instability within Iran itself. Leadership shakeups, reports about the Supreme Leader’s health and — seriously — facial disfigurement, and a broader power struggle all suggest that there is no single, unified voice making decisions. That kind of vacuum makes negotiation harder and escalation easier, because different factions may be pulling in different directions at the same time.

The timeline here is being driven by economics as much as politics. With exports constrained and storage capacity nearing its limit, Iran will eventually have to decide whether to halt production or find another way around the blockade. Neither option is easy, and both come with significant costs. That’s why this moment feels compressed, with pressure building toward some kind of near term resolution.

Finally, a different kind of competition is playing out between the United States and China, this time over artificial intelligence. The Trump administration is accusing China-backed actors of effectively copying American AI systems by extracting outputs and using them to train rival models. It is a technical fight, but the implications are strategic, especially if it allows competitors to replicate advanced systems without the same investment or safeguards.

That accusation fits into a broader pattern of technological rivalry, where innovation, security, and economic advantage are all intertwined. If these claims are accurate, it raises serious questions about how U.S. companies can protect their models and whether current safeguards are enough. With a high stakes meeting between Trump and Xi on the horizon, this issue is likely to become part of a much larger negotiation over trade, security, and global influence.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:16 - Gabe Fleisher on the White House Press Corps and the Supreme Court

00:22:41 - Redistricting Fights

00:27:31 - Iran

00:33:14 - China and AI

00:36:29 - Gabe Fleisher on the Permanence of the Trump Administration

01:08:56 - Final Thoughts

Congress is in the middle of a rare moment where members are actually being forced out, and it is happening on both sides at once. Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales are already gone, both stepping down before they could be expelled, and now the pressure is shifting to others who are caught up in their own scandals. It is not subtle. This is a full blown house cleaning, and it is moving faster than Congress usually moves on anything involving its own members.

The fallout from Swalwell is still spreading, especially for Ruben Gallego, who had been one of his most vocal defenders just days before everything collapsed. Now he is stuck trying to explain what he knew and how close he really was to someone whose behavior is suddenly under a microscope. His answer, calling Swalwell “flirty,” lands awkwardly and undercuts the whole “normal guy” image that made him politically effective in the first place. It sounds like a line that was workshopped instead of something real, and that is exactly the kind of thing that voters tend to pick apart.

At the same time, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is staring down what looks like an inevitable expulsion vote over allegations that she funneled millions in COVID relief money into her campaign. The details are serious enough that even Democrats do not seem eager to defend her, and the lack of public support from party leadership says a lot. There might have been a time when members circled the wagons, but this feels different. The appetite to protect colleagues at all costs is not what it used to be.

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All of this points to a broader shift in how Congress is handling its own scandals. When four different members, tied to both financial and personal misconduct, are all facing consequences at the same time, it suggests that the internal pressure has reached a point where inaction is no longer politically safe. Members are not being pushed out because Congress suddenly became more ethical. They are being pushed out because keeping them has become more dangerous.

Meanwhile, the administration is dealing with its own turbulence as Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer exits under the cloud of an inspector general investigation. The official explanation is that she is leaving for the private sector, but the timing and the surrounding allegations make it clear that this was not a clean departure. Reports of inappropriate relationships, questionable travel, and internal complaints created enough heat that the White House appears to have decided it was easier to move on than fight it out publicly.

The pattern shows up again with FBI Director Kash Patel, who is now suing The Atlantic for defamation over a story that paints him as erratic and prone to heavy drinking. The lawsuit is massive in dollar amount, but legally it faces long odds, especially given the standard required for public figures. More than anything, it reads like an attempt to push back on a narrative that is already taking hold, one that questions both his professionalism and his control over the agency.

Taken together, all of this feels like a moment where institutions are trying to clean themselves up in real time, but only because the pressure to do so has become unavoidable. Congress is ejecting members, the administration is cycling out officials, and public fights over reputation are playing out in the open. It is not orderly, and it is not coordinated, but it is very clearly a system reacting to its own instability.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:43 - Virginia Redistricting

00:05:34 - Congress Cleans House

00:16:23 - Update

00:17:00 - Lori Chavez-DeRemer

00:22:09 - Reconciliation

00:25:36 - Kash Patel

00:32:20 - Tom Merritt on Politics, Tech, and AI

01:27:13 - Wrap-up