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ZEITGEIST

April 26, 2026

A gunman turned the White House Correspondents' Dinner into chaos Saturday night, sending Secret Service agents rushing to pull President Trump off the stage minutes after the event began. Cole Allen, a 31-year-old from Torrance, Calif., ran at a security checkpoint at about 8:36 p.m. armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives. He was a guest at the Washington Hilton — outside which Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 — where attendees could access the lobby and lower levels without a security scan; magnetometers were only at the ballroom entrance. One law enforcement officer was wounded in the exchange of fire but was wearing a bulletproof vest and later spoke with the president. No other injuries were reported.

Trump had been eager for the evening — his first time attending the dinner as president, a détente with a press corps his administration has spent years antagonizing. He and his advisers had packed his prepared remarks with jokes, including jabs at members of his own cabinet. Instead of delivering them, he was pulled offstage as agents swarmed the ballroom, standing on tables with weapons drawn. Vice President Vance was ushered in the opposite direction. Senior officials — White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — crouched down. A waitress cried out in Spanish, "I don't want to die here. I don't want to die in this room." Trump initially told people backstage the event should continue, but it was eventually canceled. He remained at the hotel for hours before posting a photo on social media of the suspect face down on the carpet, then returned to the White House, where he spoke to reporters. "I want to live because I want to make this country great," he said. "But when you're impactful, they go after you."

Allen is a Caltech graduate who earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 2017 and completed a master's in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills last year. He worked as a teacher at C2 Education, a private tutoring and test-prep company, where he was named teacher of the month in December 2024. Voting records show no party preference; federal filings show a $25 donation to ActBlue earmarked for Harris for President in 2024. Police said they believe he acted alone. Trump called him a "lone wolf" and a "whack job." He is being charged with two counts — using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on federal officers using a dangerous weapon — and is expected in court Monday. No motive has been shared.

For a president who survived two assassination attempts in 2024 — one at a Pennsylvania rally and another at his Florida golf club — the evening was another reminder that political violence now threads through American public life. A video posted online showed Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last year, in tears as she was escorted out. Protesters gathered outside the hotel as guests trickled out late Saturday; one waved a sign that read, "Death to All of Them."

Beyond Washington, the Iran standoff lurched backward again. Trump scrapped a planned trip by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan on Saturday, saying Iran's initial offer fell short. "We're not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time, going back and forth, to be given a document that was not good enough," he said — before adding that Iran had sent a much better offer ten minutes after he canceled, one involving Iran not having a nuclear weapon. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had been in Islamabad, departed for Oman and then Russia, which has warm ties with Tehran and is seen as a possible destination for transferring Iran's uranium stockpiles. The gap remains vast: the U.S. is demanding a 20-year suspension of enrichment, while Iran has signaled openness to five years with a possible additional five under restrictions. "They don't see value in meeting because it gives Trump too much control of the narrative that they are desperate to talk," said Sanam Vakil of Chatham House. If Araghchi concludes after consulting mediators that a deal is possible, both sides could still meet in coming days.

The AI-driven stock market, meanwhile, keeps climbing into territory that is making some people nervous. The S&P 500 has hit record highs, and the central question dominating markets is whether the boom is a bubble. Signs of froth are everywhere: the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to be the biggest ever, Cisco finally passed its March 2000 share price after 26 years thanks to data-center sales, and investors have proved willing to buy anything with an AI label — including, briefly, sneaker maker Allbirds. The pro-AI case is that this time is different: the technology will have bigger effects, and more quickly, than past bubble-driving innovations from canals and railways to electricity. The cautionary note from history: the biggest winner from the internet, Google, wasn't even public when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.

The physical infrastructure feeding that boom is straining at its limits. ASML, the Dutch company that is the world's sole supplier of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed to make cutting-edge chips, is racing to keep up with demand from four U.S. tech giants planning more than $600 billion in capital spending this year. The company plans to make at least 60 standard EUV machines this year, 36% more than it sold in 2025, but each one is roughly the size of a school bus, takes months to assemble and can be ruined by a single particle of dust. ASML is now Europe's most valuable company, having surpassed luxury stalwarts like LVMH and Hermès.

But the boom is meeting fierce resistance on the ground. In Festus, Missouri — a city of 14,000 near the Mississippi River — residents voted out four council members who had supported a $6 billion data center project, and more than 4,000 have signed petitions to recall the mayor. More than 90 local governments across the country have enacted or are considering measures to limit data-center construction, worried about power consumption and soaring utility bills. A Quinnipiac poll found that most Republicans and Democrats would oppose an AI data center in their community. The 81-year-old Festus mayor, a Marine veteran, is undaunted. "I got spit on when I came home from Vietnam in the '60s," he said. "So it's not worse than that."

The pandemic's economic aftershocks, meanwhile, keep surfacing. About 30% of borrowers who traded in a car to buy a new one in the first quarter owed more on their loan than the vehicle was worth, with the average underwater amount at roughly $7,200 — a 42% jump from five years ago. The roots trace to the semiconductor shortage that sent car prices soaring during lockdowns; those overpriced vehicles are now depreciating while the debt remains. Default rates on auto loans in March hit their highest since 2010. The average new-car loan now stretches 70 months, and monthly payments averaging $932 for underwater borrowers are the highest ever recorded.

And in a quieter signal about shifting daily life: researchers found that Americans spoke far fewer words in 2019 than in 2005 — a drop of about 28%, from roughly 16,600 a day to 11,900 — amid broader shifts toward app-based ordering, texting over phone calls and AirPods-induced isolation. The decline was slightly steeper for people under 25 but present across all ages. The researchers suspect the pandemic and generative AI have widened the gap further since.

A president pulled offstage after surviving two assassination attempts in 2024, an Iran impasse neither side can break, an AI boom simultaneously hitting record prices and provoking local revolts — Sunday morning's picture is of a country where the extraordinary keeps becoming routine, and the quiet things, like talking to the person next to you, keep slipping away.

ZEITGEIST DISPATCH — April 26, 2026

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