THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

Updated at 10:56 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 25, 2026We were under the table before we knew what was happening. One moment a military band was parading out of the Washington Hilton’s cavernous ballroom; hundreds of journalists and government officials, including two dozen of my Atlantic colleagues and myself dressed in our best or borrowed black tie, had turned to our arugula salads.The next moment, armed agents—maybe Secret Service, maybe police, maybe hotel guards; it was hard to tell from where we were huddled under a tablecloth—were pushing their way through mounds of people, climbing over chairs, rushing to the stage, where President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump just moments before had been seated.Just before 8:40 p.m., trays of plates and tableware fell to the floor with a crash and they screamed “Get down! Get down! Get under the table! Abajo! Abajo! ” There was at least one popping sound from the north end of the ballroom. People by the ballroom doors started to duck. Then plainclothes security rushed through the door.One attendee sitting in the upper level of the ballroom right by the doors said he heard five or six hollow shots close by, and saw a Secret Service agent with his gun drawn backing down towards the ballroom, before diving under the tables. Andrew Kolvet, a Turning Point USA spokesman who was seated at a table near the dais, said he heard a “pop pop.”Trump sat onstage for several seconds after the shots, watching people dive under tables before he was swarmed by his heavily armed security. It was the same hotel outside of which President Ronald Reagan was shot and injured in 1981. From then on, Washingtonians have known the sprawling building as the “Hinkley Hilton,” after shooter John Hinkley Jr.Secret Service rushed the president and Vice President J.D. Vance, seated several spots down the dais from Trump, from the room. Senior government officials were dotted throughout the crowd of more than 2,000 people. Those who had planned to attend the dinner, in addition to Trump and Vance, included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House adviser Stephen Miller.Under the tables, we were piled on top of each other, squished together between table legs, high heels, and purses. Colleagues texted loved ones and tried to understand what was happening around them. When I poked my head out, I saw two men… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Photographs by Caroline GutmanRepresentative Thomas Massie, the renegade Kentucky Republican who fiercely guards his political independence, doesn’t love being on President Trump’s bad side. He would prefer not to have the president’s allies spend millions to defeat him in a primary. In fact, if Massie had his way, he’d be working for Trump right now.In his telling, in the weeks after the 2024 presidential election, the two men talked about Massie, a farmer who champions raw milk, becoming Trump’s agriculture secretary. Massie had formally endorsed Trump late in the campaign, offering to help him win over libertarians who might be tempted to stay home or vote third party in key battlegrounds. Trump had been appreciative, and the two had chatted by phone to hash out the timing of the endorsement announcement. “Just tweet it. I’ll retweet you,” Trump had told him.The rollout went smoothly, but Massie’s endorsement didn’t get him the job in Trump’s Cabinet.  He was recounting this to me in, of all places, a bridal suite inside a converted barn in his northern-Kentucky district. Massie had just delivered remarks to a friendly crowd in the wedding hall downstairs, part of an acrimonious campaign that, if Trump gets his way, will be Massie’s last. The president’s allies are spending big to defeat Massie in a May 19 primary and prop up Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL and a political novice whom Trump personally recruited as a challenger. Massie first won election to the House during the pre-Trump Tea Party era and has handily prevailed in competitive primaries before. But he is also aware of Trump’s unique hold on the GOP: When the president decides he wants a Republican out of Congress, he usually gets his wish. Polls have given Massie a lead over Gallrein, who is not well known in the district, but his advantage is far smaller than in his previous reelection bids.Trump attacks Massie anywhere and everywhere, whether it’s on Truth Social (“A totally ineffective LOSER”), at an event in Massie’s district (“He’s the worst!”), or at the National Prayer Breakfast (“Moron”). He’s even impugned Massie’s new wife, accusing her of being “Radical Left” (Massie says that she voted thrice for Trump) and suggesting that Massie remarried too quickly after the death of his first wife.Massie, by contrast, often talks about Trump less like he’s a sworn enemy and more like he’s a jilted ex who’s still… [TheTopNews] Read More.

On Monday morning, CNN reported that the United States and Iran had been on the verge of striking a deal to end the war when Donald Trump made a series of comments to reporters and on social media that undermined the talks. Sources told CNN that the president’s boasts angered the Iranians. “The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” complained one source, who apparently pleaded with his boss to stop undermining their work.This was Trump’s signal to begin binge-posting about the Iran negotiations. The Iranians may not have appreciated Trump’s stream-of-consciousness messaging, and apparently their American counterparts did not either. But one very important person did.Trump can’t seem to refrain from touting his genius, especially when the subject is dealmaking, his professed speciality. And so, in a torrent of commentary, the president made the case that he is winning very greatly.Already, despite the president’s surface bravado, an undercurrent of nervousness had emerged. Trump was favorably comparing his prospective deal with the Obama administration’s in 2015. “The DEAL that we are making with Iran will be FAR BETTER than the JCPOA, commonly referred to as ‘The Iran Nuclear Deal,’ penned by Barack Hussein Obama and Sleepy Joe Biden, one of the Worst Deals ever made having to do with the Security of our Country,” he wrote on Monday. Simultaneously touting your prospective deal while comparing it to the worst deal ever is a bit like saying, I’m a fantastic basketball player, much better than my late grandmother, who never played the game.[Tom Nichols: Maybe Trump should not have given this speech]In a follow-up post, five minutes later, Trump addressed concerns that the war had gone beyond his promised six-week deadline. His technique, once again, was to reframe expectations. “Despite World War I lasting 4 years, 3 months, and 14 days, World War II lasting 6 years and 1 day, the Korean War lasting 3 years, 1 month, and 2 days, the Vietnam War lasting 19 years, 5 months, and 29 days, and Iraq lasting 8 years, 8 months, and 28 days, they like to say that I promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran, and actually, from the Military standpoint, it was far faster than that, but I’m not going to let them… [TheTopNews] Read More.

President Trump reportedly likes to go around asking aides about who his successor should be: J. D. Vance or Marco Rubio. If Trump were to ask his own voters the same question, he would, at least based on my recent experience, come away with a pretty clear answer.I run weekly focus groups, and the moderators regularly ask Trump voters whom they would like to see inherit the party in 2028 and beyond. More and more, what we’re hearing in response is a strange new respect for Rubio. Although Vance might seem like a more natural MAGA heir, many Trump voters see Rubio as a stabilizing force who comes off a lot better than many of his peers inside the administration, including the vice president.“Marco Rubio, I think, is an amazing dude,” said Ken, a Biden 2020/Trump 2024 voter from Georgia. “If anybody is left that we can see on the TV or C-SPAN that’s just genuine,” he said, “it’s Marco Rubio.” Ken called Rubio “a family man and still a stand-up politician,” and said, “He also is about putting America first, which I agree with.” (To protect participants’ privacy, we disclose only their first name.)In a recent group of Republican Jewish voters, Boris from Texas called Rubio “a real statesman in my eyes.” Steve from Florida said, “Marco Rubio, my former senator, is doing great as secretary of state. He will be a great president too.” And Andrea from Georgia said, “Marco Rubio’s been, like, killing it from an international-policy perspective.”[Read: Trump voters are over it]This is not what I would have expected, based on all my years of listening to Republican voters, who tend to abhor politicians of the pre-Trump vintage. Rubio was the driving Republican force behind the last serious push for comprehensive immigration reform, in 2013. He stood as the avatar for the new wave of moderate, sunny-dispositioned conservatism that was supposed to inherit the party after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss. He was a staunch defender of NATO and of America’s role as a force for global stability. His 2016 campaign slogan was “A New American Century.” (He was, I admit, my preferred candidate for much of the Republican primary that year.)All of this is repellent to today’s Republican base, and anyone who has observed the past decade of American politics might have assumed that Rubio’s future political aspirations were DOA. Vance, who has spent the past… [TheTopNews] Read More.

When President Trump last summer implored Republicans to launch a nationwide gerrymandering blitz to pad their narrow House majority, the fight he started did not seem fair. GOP lawmakers had both the will and the power to draw their party new seats, while Democrats were hamstrung by limits of their own making. The question was not whether Republicans could expand their edge in Congress, but by how much.This morning the landscape looks a lot different, after Virginia voters yesterday approved a lopsided new House map that could hand Democrats an additional four seats that Republicans currently hold. The Democratic redistricting victory is the party’s second in a statewide referendum. When combined with new lines that California voters endorsed in November, Democrats have now succeeded in drawing districts that will likely yield them nine more seats this fall, at least matching what Republicans have been able to achieve in states that they control. By some measures, Democrats have jumped into the redistricting lead, bolstering their chances of winning back the House majority in the midterm elections.The battle is not over. The GOP-dominated Florida legislature will hold a special session next week to consider redistricting, and the Democratic victory in Virginia could help Governor Ron DeSantis win over lawmakers who are reluctant to press the Republican advantage too far. Officials in both parties expect the Supreme Court to issue a ruling in the coming months that will weaken if not eviscerate a key part of the Voting Rights Act, which would allow states such as Louisiana and Alabama to carve up districts now held by Black Democrats. (Such a decision would have an even larger impact in southern states come 2028.)But for now, Trump’s move to open this new front in a centuries-old gerrymandering war between the parties looks like an enormous tactical blunder. Republicans have appeared taken aback by the ferocity with which Democrats have responded—and the speed with which they’ve set aside their drive to ban gerrymandering in the name of good government. In both California and Virginia, Democrats swamped the opposition in campaign spending, using the redistricting referenda to rile up a party base seeking any opportunity to push back against an unpopular administration. The margin of victory was much narrower in Virginia, where Republicans accused Democrats—wishfully, it turned out—of overreaching with a push to take 10 out of 11 seats in a state that had a GOP governor… [TheTopNews] Read More.