Read Online  |  April 26, 2026  |  E-Paper  | 🎧 Listen

“There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, pure, simple and useful life.” 

—Booker T. Washington

Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor

Good morning. It’s Sunday. Here are today’s top stories.

• President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday evening after an assailant breached a security checkpoint near the ballroom and shot a Secret Service agent.
• The Justice Department said that the suspect behind the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner faced two charges and would be arraigned after the weekend.
• America’s energy exports have hit record highs as the world navigates the uncertainty surrounding oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
• California voters will have the opportunity to decide this November whether or not to require photo identification at polling places, as the secretary of state certified that supporters of the measure had collected more than enough valid signatures to put the question on the ballot.
• 🍵Health: These everyday rituals quiet the ache of loneliness. 

Agents stand guard after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner April 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Gettyimages)

Shots Fired at White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Evacuated

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday evening after an assailant breached a security checkpoint near the ballroom and shot a Secret Service agent.

The Secret Service has confirmed that the president, the first lady, and all protectees are safe. The agency said the alleged shooter is in custody.

Several Epoch Times staff on the scene heard shots from inside the ballroom at about 8:40 p.m. and witnessed the chaotic aftermath. Immediately after around five shots rang out, Secret Service agents rushed the stage.

Later in the evening Trump shared photos on Truth Social of the alleged suspect on the ground, with his arms behind his back. He also posted security footage showing a man rushing through the security perimeter.

“He was running full blast,” Trump said during a press briefing at the White House after the incident. “And they got him before they got any further, I was very far away.”

The president also confirmed that one Secret Service agent had been shot during the incident.

“One officer was shot, but saved by the fact that he was wearing an obviously, a very good bulletproof vest,” Trump said from the White House briefing room. “He was shot from very close distance with a very powerful gun.”

The president said he had spoken with the agent and that he was “doing great.

Trump said the suspect is from California and authorities were going to investigate his apartment. He described the man as “very sick.”

“My impression was that he was a lone wolf,” Trump said.

At the briefing, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche praised law enforcement and said the investigation is “ongoing and just started.”

“The charges should be self evident, given the conduct, but as you’ll hear, there will be multiple charges surrounding the shooting, around the possession of firearms and anything else that we can get on this guy,” he said.

“There is federal law enforcement already working on search warrants and doing their job, and I don’t want to get ahead of them.”

FBI Director Kash Patel urged people to call the agency with tips if they had information. He said that the process of examining the suspect’s background had already begun.

“We will analyze all evidence immediately to make sure that we safeguard this country,” Patel said at the briefing.

Trump was attending the dinner for the first time as president and he was scheduled to deliver a speech at approximately 9 p.m. ET. He was seated on stage at the front of the ballroom.

During the briefing, he recounted that he heard a noise at the dinner and thought it was “a tray going down.”

Though the shooter’s exact motivations were unclear, Trump indicated he thought he was the target. “I guess,” he said, when asked whether he thought the shooter was targeting him.

“The people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact,” he said. “They’re the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much, because they like it that way.”

Trump faced two assassination attempts as a candidate during the 2024 presidential race, including one at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump told reporters on Saturday nightthat he wouldn’t stop participating in events because of the violence he faced. (More)

IRAN WAR

• The Iranian regime offered the United States a “much better” peace dealwithin 10 minutes of President Donald Trump canceling talks in Pakistan, the president said.
• The U.S. military said that three aircraft carriers are currently operating in the Middle East, marking the first deployment of such a large force to the region in more than two decades.

POLITICS

• The Department of Justice (DOJ) has made it a priority to revoke the U.S. citizenship of criminal immigrants, and has already brought more than 20 caseson the issue.
• A group of U.S. lawmakers has expressed solidarity with Falun Gong practitioners on the 27th anniversary of a peaceful protest in China, an event whose impact still reverberates today.

MORNING READ: A Taste of American Legacy: 5 Days in Cowboy College (Read)

An international passenger train travels on the Korea–Russia Friendship Bridge (Tumen River Railway Bridge), leaving North Korea (DPRK) and entering Russia. July 15, 2014. Creative Commons. 

WORLD

• North Korea and Russia aim to soon open a road bridge over the Tumen River to connect the two countries directly, North Korea’s state media KCNA said on April 23. But the Tumen also flows through China, so the bridge will further block China’s access to the Sea of Japan, with multiple implications on Northeast Asian geopolitics, analysts told The Epoch Times.

 

OPINION

• Why the Anglo-American Relationship Still Matters—by Lamont Colucci(Read)
• Alliance Fracture Is Now Global—by Gregory Copley (Read)
• Common Ground: How Genealogy Can Reunite a Divided America—by Siri Terjesen (Read)
• When the Stakes Are High—by Mollie Engelhart (Read)

John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) and Dottie Achenbach (Maxine Peake), in “I Swear.” (Graeme Hunter/ Sony Pictures Classics)

🍿Film Review: “I Swear” (Read)

🇺🇲 American Thought Leaders: Over 1,000 CCP-Linked Groups in America: Exposing United Front Operations—Peter Mattis (Watch)

🎵 Music: Handel: “Music for the Royal Fireworks” (Listen)

🍊(Sponsored) Why You Should Never Take a Vitamin C Pill Again – Your body can’t produce vitamin C – making it essential for collagen, brain health, and antioxidant support. Discover a smarter, more absorbable way to get it. Learn More.*

ARTS & CULTURE 

(clu/Getty Images)

American-Made: The New Gentlemen and the Republic 

During the 18th century and well into the 19th, class governed Britain.

In the House of Lords sat the Lords Temporal and the Lords Spiritual. The former consisted of hereditary nobility such as dukes and barons; the latter, of bishops and archbishops. 

Membership in the House of Commons was more diverse: lawyers, military officers, a few wealthy merchants, and most importantly, the landed gentry, which consisted of knights of the shire, men with large estates and an eminent lineage, and country gentlemen, who were one tier down but “of high birth or rank, good social standing, and of wealth, especially the inherited kind.”

While tradition and culture did allow some social fluidity, a gentleman owned land and didn’t dirty his hands or his reputation with trade or manufacturing. Ideally, his money derived from property rentals to tenants and income from his own farm, on which others performed menial labor. 

Land ownership gave him the right to vote, and his position in local politics and governance gave him status and clout. As the 18th century closed, there were approximately 20,000 officially designated gentlemen in England.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the republic, which had just escaped the bridle and bit of British rule, was fashioning its own definition of a gentleman.

While serving as ambassador to Britain from 1785 to 1788, John Adams wrote and published his three-volume “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.” 

Here, he wrote that in America a gentleman no longer “meant the rich or the poor, the high-born or the low-born, the industrious or the idle: but all those who have received a liberal education, an ordinary degree of erudition in liberal arts and sciences. (More)

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Thanks for reading 🙏

Have a wonderful day!

—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li.

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