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What We Know About The Correspondents' Dinner Shooting

Flying Taxis Hit NYC & DeSantis Redraws Florida

Author

Marcus Gee-Lim
April 28, 2026

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Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, shots fired from Germany, Canada’s investment plans, redistricting in Florida, TSA losing agents, and flying taxis in New York City.

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.” ― E.E. Cummings

What Happened At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner

On Saturday night, a man armed with a pistol and shotgun tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, running through the event’s security checkpoint and exchanging fire with law enforcement before quickly being arrested. As the shots were fired, chaos broke out at the dinner. While attendees hid under their tables, Vice President JD Vance was quickly ushered out of the main ballroom to safety. President Trump, meanwhile, didn’t get out of his seat for about ten seconds after Vance was evacuated – once he did get up, the president appeared to fall to the floor before eventually getting pulled back up and led out of the room.

The main suspect in the shooting is 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, a part-time teacher and game developer who graduated from CalTech. He appeared in federal court yesterday, and was charged with attempting to assassinate the US president, transportation of firearms to commit a felony, and unlawful discharge of a firearm during violence. Federal prosecutors publicly released a memo that Allen allegedly sent to some close family members just before he was arrested

“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed,” he supposedly wrote. “I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes … I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he went on, referring to the president.

In the manifesto, Allen allegedly laid out his goals for the attack and his rules of engagement. “Administration officials (not including Mr Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” it reads. “In order to minimize casualties, I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls),” he went on. “I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary … but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.” Federal prosecutors say that they expect to bring more charges against Allen as their case against him unfolds, though the current list of charges is probably more than enough to ensure that he gets life in prison.

The Backseat Driver From Berlin

“Friedrich Merz and Donald Trump” by NATO via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

  • According to a study published in the Lancet yesterday, an estimated 75,000 people were killed during the first 16 months of the war in Gaza. That number outstrips death toll data posted by the Gaza health ministry at the time by about 25,000. The study also estimates that roughly 42,200 Palestinian women, children, and elderly people were killed over that same time period.

  • “The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,” the study’s authors wrote. They estimate that at least 8,200 people died due to non-violent causes (such as malnutrition or untreated disease) over that 16-month period.

  • Currently, Gaza health ministry data shows that the death toll has exceeded 71,660, and an Israeli military officer recently supported those numbers, telling the press that at least 70,000 Palestinians had been killed over the course of the war. It’ll take years – if not decades – to work out the actual fatalities from the war, but all of the evidence suggests that the health ministry numbers are significantly lower than the real death toll.

A Wealth Fund With No Wealth?

  • To kick off the week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the country will be launching a so-called sovereign wealth fund. A wealth fund is a state-owned investment vehicle which uses government money (and some funding from individual investors) to invest in businesses and projects. Canada’s fund will start with an initial investment of C$25 billion, and will focus on investing in public and private development projects across the energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture, and technology sectors.

  • The wealth fund is the latest in a series of efforts from the Carney government to make Canada less dependent on the U.S. “The US has changed, that's their right,” he said after announcing the wealth fund. “And we are responding, that's our imperative.” He added that other resource-rich countries such as Norway operate their own sovereign wealth funds.

  • The country’s conservative wing, though, isn’t convinced that the fund is a smart investment – “Norway, Singapore and Saudi Arabia run big budget surpluses which they accumulate and put into their sovereign wealth funds,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said. “Carney has no surplus, and therefore no wealth to put in such a fund.”

Additional World News

The CEOs of NVIDIA, Tesla, & Microsoft Agree on One Secret

This year, the world’s biggest tech CEOs all said the same thing:

NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang called robotics a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella said 2026 is when AI will deliver real impact.

Tesla’s Elon Musk predicted, “AI and robots will make everyone wealthy.”

That opportunity’s arrived. Miso Robotics is leading the charge in bringing robotics solutions to the $1T fast-food industry.

Miso’s Flippy Fry Station AI robot has already logged 200K+ hours for fast-food brands like White Castle. Now, Miso has added iconic restaurant brands like Jersey Mike’s, Jamba, and Cinnabon as new customers.

With a new NVIDIA collaboration, strategic investment by industry leader Ecolab, and a growing manufacturing partnership, Miso can now scale to meet 100,000+ US fast-food restaurant locations, a $4B/year revenue opportunity.

This is a paid advertisement for Miso Robotics’ Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.misorobotics.com.

Redrawing The Sunshine State

  • On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposed a plan that would redraw his state’s voting districts, bringing four new Republican-leaning districts into existence. Up until recently, Florida Democrats controlled 8 of Florida’s 28 Congressional seats, but they lost a vote last week when Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned in the face of an embezzlement investigation – DeSantis’ proposed redistricting would bring that total down to 4.

  • The new plan will eliminate two left-leaning districts in South Florida, another near Tampa, and a final one in the Orlando area. Despite the fact that the new map could net the GOP a handful of critical seats in an important midterm election, many of the politicians you’d expect to support the measure don’t seem too happy about it. Florida state legislators affected by the redistricting aren’t looking forward to adjusting their campaigns to the last-minute changes, and the state’s national representatives are wary of the changes after Democrats flipped two red districts in special elections held earlier this year. “I think the Legislature needs to be very cognizant of the fact that if they get too aggressive,” said Representative Greg Steube, a Republican from Southwest Florida, adding, “you could put incumbent members at risk.”

TSA Agents Are Taking Off

  • Since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown began on February 14, over 1,110 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers have permanently left their jobs. That number, provided by a DHS spokesperson, marks a large jump from last week, when the department said just 830 TSA officers had left their jobs. As of March, the department employed roughly 50,000 TSA officers, meaning this shutdown has caused a roughly 2% decrease in the agency’s manpower. New TSA officers, according to the spokesperson, take roughly 4 to 6 months to be fully up-to-speed, which might be a cause for concern as the World Cup approaches this summer.

  • Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected a Senate-approved bill that would reinstate DHS funding to the entire agency besides ICE. Republican Senators had approved the bill thinking they would later work with House Republicans to fund ICE via a process called party-line budget reconciliation, but Johnson is now saying that the measure could “orphan” ICE funding. That’s because a small group of conservative hardliners in the House seem to have reservations about the budget reconciliation – but isn’t it Johnson’s job to make them fall in line?

Additional USA News

Flying Taxis In The Big Apple

  • Last week, a new kind of taxi hit the streets of New York City. Or rather, it hovered above them. On Friday, Joby Aviation completed the first test flight of its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi, which saw a human pilot safely and quietly fly the electric-powered aircraft from a helipad in Manhattan all the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

  • The aircraft kind of looks like a jumbo-sized drone – it features six propellers, and can carry five humans (including its pilot). While Joby actually offers similar air taxi services in normal helicopters, the company says that its eVTOL aircraft are distinct for their quietness and lack of greenhouse gas emissions.

  • “We operate some of the busiest airports in the world, and with that comes a responsibility to think seriously about what aviation looks like in the decades ahead for our passengers, for our communities, and for the environment,” said the executive director of New York City’s Port Authority. “These demonstration flights are one data point in a larger body of work we’re building around next-generation electric aviation, and it reflects our conviction that responsible exploration of these technologies now is how we prepare this region for the future.” Joby has already completed test flights in San Francisco, and will continue to conduct its tests in New York over the next week. The company says it plans to offer passenger flights in New York, Texas, and Florida by the end of this year. But we’ll believe it when we see it.

Additional Reads

Peanut For Your Thoughts

From a now-edited NYT live article about the shooting: “The FBI Director, Kash Patel, came tearing across the hallway with two men in tow; his girlfriend was hiding in a room with another man who was holding her hand.”

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella