On Thursday afternoon, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas ordered an evidentiary hearing to review the auction process that resulted in Infowars being sold to satire site the Onion, saying he wanted to ensure the “process and transparency” of the sale. Infowars’ founder, the conspiracy mega-entrepreneur Alex Jones, has unsurprisingly declared that the auction process was “rigged” and vowed that the review process will return the site to him, while the Onion’s CEO told Mother Jones and other news outlets that the sale is proceeding. For reasons that no one has yet explained, attorneys for X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media giant now owned by Elon Musk, entered an appearance during the hearing and asked to be included on any future communications about the case.

“I was told Elon is going to be very involved in this,” Jones said during a live broadcast on X. After Infowars was seized and the site shut down, Jones promptly began operating under the name and branding of a new venture, dubbed the Alex Jones Network, which streams on X. Jones noted that lawyers for X were present at the hearing, adding, somewhat mysteriously, “The cavalry is here. Trump is pissed.” (He later elaborated that “Trump knows I’m one of his biggest defenders.”)

An attorney who entered an appearance for X didn’t respond to a request for comment; nor did X’s press office. Onion CEO Ben Collins, previously a journalist at NBC News covering disinformation, told Mother Jones on Friday morning, “We won the bid. The idea that he was just going to walk away from this gracefully without doing this sort of thing is funny in itself.” In a statement reprinted by Variety and other outlets, Collins said that the sale is “currently underway, pending standard processes.” Collins had said previously that the plan was to relaunch Infowars as a satirized version of itself in January.

As this odd situation played out, however, Infowars’ website came back online on Friday afternoon; soon after, Jones and his staff had also returned to Infowars‘ studios. Throughout Friday and Saturday morning, the site was full of stories preemptively declaring Jones’ victory over the Onion. 

“I told you,” Jones crowed during a Friday night broadcast, back behind his usual desk. “If you want a fight, you got one.”

(After the original publication of this article, Collins responded to the revival of Infowars in a Twitter thread, reiterating that the Onion won the bid and writing that his company “left the hearing with clear next steps to complete the sale. InfoWars’ current management asked to continue operating until then. We always knew the guys who currently run InfoWars were going to take this badly and use a loss to fundraise off of it. They did not disappoint!”)

Jones also vowed that even if Infowars is sold he would sue anyone who “impersonates” him, as well as “the big Democrat gun control group,” involved in the sale. (The New York Times has reported that Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun law reform, plans to advertise on the relaunched, satire version of the site.)

Judge Christopher Lopez of Texas’ Southern District has been overseeing the years-long bankruptcy process for Infowars. The company and Jones personally filed for bankruptcy protection amid civil lawsuits brought by the parents of children who died at Sandy Hook. Jones was found liable by default for defaming the Sandy Hook families by repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a “hoax” and suggesting some of the parents were actors. In the Thursday hearing, Lopez said, “nobody should feel comfortable with the results of the auction” until the evidentiary hearing was held. Christopher Murray, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who declared the Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron LLC, to be the auction’s winner, considered the bids in private. According to Bloomberg, Murray told Lopez that Global Tetrahedron’s bid was a better option because the Sandy Hook families agreed to waive some of the money owed to them in order to pay off Jones’ other creditors. 

“I’ve always thought my goal was to maximize the recovery for unsecured creditors,” Murray said, per Bloomberg. “And under one bid, they’re clearly better than they were under the other.” 

Jones has made it clear that he was working with a group of what he dubbed “good guy” bidders, who he hoped would buy the site and keep him on air. The only other bid besides the Onion’s was $3.5 million from First United American Companies LLC, the company that operates Jones’ online supplement store. 

The evidentiary hearing is expected to be held next week. 

Colorado voters on Tuesday brought to victory a ballot measure that will provide millions of critical dollars to organizations supporting victims of domestic and sexual violence through the creation of a new tax on firearms and ammunition.

With nearly three-quarters of the votes counted as of this morning, the measure, known as Proposition KK, passed with 54 percent of votes. When it takes effect in April, it will impose a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition, which will provide an estimated $39 million in annual revenue. The bulk of those funds, roughly $30 million, will go toward organizations that support victims of crimes, mostly domestic and sexual violence. The rest of the funds will support mental health services for veterans and young people, as well as increased security in Colorado public schools.

The money is especially crucial in light of the yearslong decline in federal funding from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), which has forced organizations that support survivors of domestic abuse to cut staff and scale back services, as I recently investigated for Mother Jones. In Colorado, the state went from receiving $31.3 million in VOCA funds in fiscal year 2017 to about $13.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, when the money was used to support more than 125,000 survivors, mostly women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, according to Department of Justice data.

When we spoke last month, Roshan Kalantar, executive director of Violence Free Colorado, the statewide domestic violence coalition, told me that at least two programs in the state were on the verge of closing because of funding cuts. Now, thanks to the passage of Prop KK, they have a lifeline that may help keep them open, she said. But the earliest the funds would be disbursed to eligible programs would be January 2026, according to a spokesperson at the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. In the meantime, “there will be a gap and it will be difficult,” Kalantar said, adding that more federal funding cuts are expected. “We are hopeful that programs can weather this year with minimal impact.”

Democratic state Rep. Monica Duran, who introduced the bill that would become the ballot measure in the legislature earlier this year and who is a survivor of domestic violence herself, said in a statement late Tuesday: “Tonight really is a full circle moment for me; without the support from crime victim services as a young single mother trapped in an abusive relationship, there is no way I’d be here today celebrating the passage of Prop KK.”

“As federal dollars dwindle, Coloradans made the right choice this evening to step up and help fill the funding gaps in crime victim services,” Duran continued. “From navigating the challenging judicial system to helping secure child care, crime victim services play a major role in uplifting survivors by providing them the resources they need to start anew.”

Domestic violence advocates I spoke to said they see the new tax as particularly appropriate, considering the role firearms play in domestic violence homicides. Last year, there were 58 domestic violence fatalities in Colorado, more than three-quarters of which were caused by guns, according to state data. As Kalantar put it when we last spoke: “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors.

The ballot measure faced strenuous opposition from the gun lobby, which alleged the tax—which will not apply to firearms vendors that make less than $20,000 annually, law enforcement agencies, or active-duty military personnel—is unconstitutional. It could also face legal challenges, like the one California faces after the state enacted a similar measure earlier this year.

When Monica Duran, the Democratic majority leader in Colorado’s House of Representatives, was 19 years old, she escaped domestic abuse with her young son and did what many survivors try to do: She fled to a shelter and sought counseling.

“For so long, you hear that you are worthless,” Duran told me. The support she received after leaving, she said, helped her realize that “I was worthy, I did have something to offer.”

As intimate partner violence continues to rise, such services are critical for helping survivors of domestic and sexual violence heal. But as I learned during my recent investigation for Mother Jones, they are becoming increasingly difficult to access due to a yearslong decline in federal funding from a pot of money created by the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. Colorado is not exempt. The state went from getting $31.3 million in VOCA funds in fiscal year 2017 to about $13.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, when the money was stretched to help support more than 125,000 survivors—mostly women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, Department of Justice data shows.

Like most states, Colorado has tried to stave off the worst effects of the funding cuts, with state lawmakers allocating millions of dollars to affected programs. But those providers are still struggling after years of plummeting federal funding. Roshan Kalantar, executive director of Violence Free Colorado, the statewide domestic violence coalition, said some have had to close office space and eliminate legal advocacy services, which help survivors file for divorce or obtain emergency protective orders against abusers. More could soon follow. “We have at least two programs that might close,” Kalantar told me last week, “but many more will essentially limit what they can do.”

Duran and Kalantar are trying to avoid those outcomes. They are among the forces behind a ballot measure that, if passed by voters next month, would create a new funding stream for victims’ services in the state by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition as of next April, when it would take effect. The measure, known as Proposition KK, would create an estimated $39 million in annual revenue, the bulk of which—$30 million—would support VOCA-funded services for victims of crime, as well as crime prevention programs in Colorado. The rest of the funds would go toward mental health services for veterans and young people and increasing security in Colorado public schools. The bill that proposed the ballot measure passed in the Colorado General Assembly in May, with most Democrats supporting it and most Republicans in opposition. Should voters support the measure, the tax would not apply to firearms vendors that make less than $20,000 annually, law enforcement agencies, or active-duty military personnel.

Supporters—including Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and Everytown for Gun Safety—say Prop KK would bolster desperately needed services in the state and could serve as a model for other states trying to come up with innovative ways to respond to federal VOCA cuts. Accessing support after intimate partner violence, Duran said, “is a matter of life and death—this is how serious this is.”

The tax on firearms has resulted in strenuous opposition from the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, the organization’s lobbying arm, said earlier this year that the proposal “should be seen as nothing more than an attack on the Second Amendment and those who exercise their rights under it” and pointed to a similar measure in California, which imposed an 11 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition earlier this year and has faced a court challenge for being unconstitutional.

Several Colorado pro-gun groups—including the NRA state chapter, the Colorado State Shooting Association; Rocky Mountain Gun Owners; and Rally for Our Rights—have also opposed Prop KK, noting that firearms and ammunition are already taxed at 11 percent on the federal level. Ian Escalante, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said in a video posted to X: “This is the radical anti-gun left trying to punish gun owners for exercising their rights.” Spokespeople for the three state-level groups did not return requests for comment from Mother Jones.

Duran, who said she’s a gun owner, said she’s “disappointed that this has been turned into a Second Amendment issue,” especially because domestic violence and the shortage of resources to support survivors is “a crisis.” Kalantar sees the tax on guns and ammunition in Prop KK as fitting, given the role that firearms often play in intimate partner violence. Research has shown that more than half of domestic violence homicides involve a gun and that access to a firearm makes that outcome more likely. Last year, there were 58 domestic violence fatalities in Colorado, more than three-quarters of which were caused by guns, according to data released this month by the state attorney general’s office. “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors, Kalantar said.

If the measure passes, the Blue Bench, a sexual assault prevention and support center in Denver that served about 7,000 survivors last year, is one of the organizations that would benefit from this new source of revenue. Executive Director Megan Carvajal says VOCA funds make up half of its budget, paying for counselors who lead therapy sessions for survivors, the 24-hour hotline they can call in a crisis, and case managers who offer support at hospitals and police stations in the aftermath of assaults. In June, Carvajal learned that the Blue Bench’s latest VOCA award would be less than $650,000—a 40 percent cut compared with the previous year’s budget—which will mean laying off three therapists, two case managers, and a community educator who visits schools to talk about informed consent and healthy relationships. The organization will also have to move out of its Denver office space by the end of the year and transition to being mostly remote, Carvajal said.

If Prop KK does not pass and organizations like the Blue Bench face even further funding cuts, Carvajal’s prediction is grim: “People are going to die.” Research suggests that more than 30 percent of women contemplate suicide after being raped and more than 10 percent attempt it. More than half of all suicides involve a firearm, and suicides by firearm are highest in states with the fewest gun laws, according to a KFF analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. For Carvajal, the work she and other advocates do is essential to reduce those statistics—but is only possible with adequate funding.

“If you pick up the phone and someone says, ‘I believe you,’” Carvajal said, “it can change your mindset from wanting to die to wanting to live.”

If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788, calling 800-799-SAFE (7233), or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.

If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or go to 988lifeline.org.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa has volunteered as a trauma surgeon in Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. But when he went to Gaza in March and April of this year, it changed him. Sidhwa had never seen so much horror in his life.

“There’s nothing like Gaza right now,” he said. “Almost 100 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless and displaced…does that sound like a place where people are going to survive?”

With international journalists banned from Gaza and Palestinian journalists openly targeted by the Israeli military, international medical aid workers have become some of the few people able to tell the world about the toll of the war.

Sidhwa has spent the past six months speaking widely about his time in Gaza. He went to the Uncommitted movement panel at the Democratic National Convention, wrote an article for Politico about what he’s seen, and organized a group of nearly 100 doctors to sign a letter to President Joe Biden begging him to stop sending weapons.

When the New York Times approached Sidhwa to write for its opinion section about what he saw in Gaza—widespread starvation, collapsed sanitary systems—he took it as an opportunity. He went beyond writing from his own experience and corroborated his account with 64 other doctors. In particular, he was haunted by something he saw again and again: children shot in the head.

“Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die,” he wrote. At first, he thought this was an anomaly, the work of “a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby.” But when he asked other health care workers, he found that dozens were seeing the same thing.

After his essay in the Times was published, prominent right-wing accounts on X and Instagram, as well as publications like the New York Sun and Israel Hayom, began insisting that the CT images included in Sidhwa’s essay—showing bullets embedded in children’s skulls—had been photoshopped and that Sidhwa was a propagandist desperate for the fall of Israel.

The New York Times did something unusual in response: It released an editors’ note defending its own fact-checking process. “While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos—of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck—were too horrific for publication,” Times editor Kathleen Kingsbury wrote. “We made a similar decision for the additional 40-plus photographs and videos supplied by the doctors and nurses surveyed that depicted young children with similar gunshot wounds.” 

Sidhwa found the pushback odd. “I don’t really care about Palestinian nationalism. In fact, I don’t really care about any nationalism as a concept,” he told me. The issue, he said, is simpler than that: “My government, meaning me, is involved in major crimes, and I don’t want that.”

On October 18, as reported by the Washington Post, Israel banned six medical aid organizations—including the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), which Sidhwa has worked with—from entry to Gaza going forward. The WHO received no explanation from Israel as to why. 

I spoke with Sidhwa by Zoom between surgeries about his work in Gaza, his advocacy since then, and why he’s still hoping—even now—that the US government might be pressured to change course. 

Let’s go back to before all the media attention. How did you end up going to Gaza? 

So a very large number of physicians, and especially surgeons, have been killed and probably about an equal number have fled.

Mark Perlmutter, he was involved in a telemedicine project with Gazans. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. He was looking at pre- and post-op X-rays, and he was like, “What on earth is this stuff? Who’s doing these operations?” He found out it was just junior residents or sometimes medical students. And he asked, “Where’s your attending?” And they said, “Well, he’s dead.” 

We said: Well, we will go provide that service.

I was at European Hospital from March 25 to April 8. At that time, European Hospital was easily the best-resourced city block in all of Gaza—and it was still a total disaster. There were 10,000 to 15,000 people sheltering on the grounds of the hospital. I walked the hospital grounds several times. I was able to find four toilets, so 10,000 to 15,000 people, four latrines, one water spigot.

I got the chance to go to Rafah, before it was obliterated, and drive through Khan Younis. And while we’re driving through, there was a group of four boys, probably like 10 to 12 years old. Young kids. They’re going through a garbage heap, trying to find anything, and they’re working together to do it. It’s pretty obvious that this wasn’t the first time they had done this. 

On the way through Khan Younis, I told the driver to stop. He said it’s not safe, but I asked him to stop, just for a second. I got out and I looked around. 

I don’t think, if I grew up at this intersection, I would know where I am. There weren’t any buildings that were more than 3 feet tall anymore. It looked like an atomic bomb hit the place.  

Since your New York Times article came out, you’ve been the subject of a backlash campaign, with people claiming to be former law enforcement officers suggesting that the X-rays of children with bullets in their skulls embedded in the article were fabricated. What’s your reaction to those claims? 

The article polled 65 American health care workers—doctors, nurses, one paramedic—and gathered their experience in the Gaza Strip. How many of them saw children who had been shot in the head? How many of them regularly? How many of them saw malnourishment and easily treatable infections? How many of them saw infants die from malnutrition or dehydration? How many saw such extreme, universal psychiatric distress in small children, to the point that small children were actually suicidal? 

It’s 65, which represents, as far as I can tell, about half of the health care workers in the US that have been to Gaza since October 7 [of 2023]. 

The New York Times fact-checking process is fanatical. It’s beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. I don’t know if people realize it took months to write this. It was an incredible effort of time and resources, on my part and theirs—the team of four people working on it. 

So then when all this manufactured nonsense from people claiming to be either doctors or ballistics experts, none of whom are either one of these things, came up…

I asked them: Guys, how are we going to prove that? They’re like: Oh, Feroze, we have photographs of these kids. We have the entire CT image on video. Like, there’s no question. I saw 13 kids who had been shot in the head. So there were almost certainly more kids who came in when I wasn’t in the ER, got shot in the head, died, and were sent directly to the morgue. 

On the occasions where the child survived, and I think this only happened once, honestly—on the occasion when the child survived long enough and there was family available in the ICU the next day to ask what happened—they would say, the kids were just playing. I never heard from a family that they were in a crossfire, that there was lots of fighting and the bullet went through the window; I never heard that. 

What do you think people are getting out of ignoring the evidence here? When you spoke at the Uncommitted press conference at the DNC, you referenced the book Slavery by Another Name and talked about what Douglas Blackmon calls “moral rationalization”—when people know something’s wrong and illegal and continue to do it anyway. Is that part of what’s happening here?

The book is about how slavery was resurrected in the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. And it’s quite literally chattel slavery was just reinstituted in the South, maybe on a smaller scale, but nevertheless reinstituted. And this is under Northern occupation, with the Northern judicial systems, you know? 

It’s interesting, because you read through it and you think, how could this have happened? Like, slavery was a large part of the reason for the war, and then after the war…the whole society just knew when to lie and when to tell the truth. They knew who to beat up and who not to beat up. They knew who to kill, who not to kill, who to torture, who not to torture.

I don’t remember the exact words I used at the DNC, but I said something like, lying became a virtue. It just turned all of our normal moral values on their head when the whole society committed to this transparently and obviously immoral enterprise. 

It’s hard not to see that here. 

I hope the fact that this piece was published in the New York Times—and you gotta remember that the Times opinion section reached out to me, I didn’t go to them—I hope that it represents a change in the elite consensus around Gaza.

I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding. They say, “Oh, look, the mainstream is becoming pro-Palestine.” I seriously doubt that. I think there’s a recognition that the Israelis have kind of gone nuts in Gaza and that American objectives there have been achieved. And the extent of what has been done to Gaza—it takes about 10 minutes just to describe the actual extent of destruction and devastation of the Gaza Strip in any accurate form.

How does it feel to see people online refusing to believe these images are real?

I think that’s just, it’s completely amongst die-hard believers.

I’m not Israeli, I’m not Jewish, I’m not Palestinian, I’m not Arab, I’m not Muslim, I’m not Christian—like, I don’t know how much further away I can get from the conflict. It’s just got nothing to do with me, except for the fact that I’m an American.

After this is done, we Americans need to take a long, hard look at ourselves. What does it say that the United States doesn’t have a mainstream political party for which genocide is just a no-go? 

The US entered four or five caveats to its signing of the of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. So it basically immunized itself from the convention. And yeah, that was [under then-President Ronald] Reagan. But still, we don’t have a mainstream political party that is opposed to genocide on principle. 

That’s very scary, given the power of the state that we live in. My intention in writing the piece was to bring people to such realizations. It doesn’t seem to have worked. 

Beyond your media work, you helped lead this effort to send Joe Biden a letter signed by, I think, 99 volunteer medical professionals who served in Gaza. And in that letter, you all asked him to meet with you and support an arms embargo. Have you received any response to that letter from the administration?

No, nothing, which is quite frustrating. I don’t know how often almost a hundred doctors send a letter to the president of the United States, but it doesn’t happen very often. So I’m kind of surprised that we received literally no response whatsoever. 

I’m not that important of a person, I understand that. But I mean, on that letter are veterans, are reservists, are people whose names don’t sound scary like mine: Monica, Nina, Mike, Mark, Adam. It’s not just people that you can dismiss, and yet they’re dismissing them. It’s a little scary to see the American elite kind of ignoring its own. You kind of wonder how extreme that can get. 

There’s no shortage of information about this. It’s not like Brett McGurk [the White House coordinator for the Middle East] and people like him and [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken—they know what’s going on. They’re not idiots. They can read English, just like I can. There’s no way they didn’t see that New York Times piece, or at least one of their aides did and told them about it. 

If I could, I’d say: “Mr. Biden, the Israelis have decided to turn Gaza into a howling wilderness, and there are a million children there. You don’t have to let the Israelis keep spitting in your face like this. You can just tell them the money’s gone, the arms are gone. Withdraw from Gaza, withdraw from the West Bank, remove the settlements.” 

Did you stay in touch with the folks you met at European Hospital? What have you been hearing from them? 

There was a young man whose name was Abdulrahman Al-Najjar. And he was a third-year med student, a smart kid. If he was born in the US, he really would have gone far. He was probably 21 or 22 when I met him. The medical students were all at European Hospital because it was the safest place to be, and they had all been displaced from Gaza City and were living in tents just like everybody else. But they would come to the hospital, and they would help run the ER. Even the first-year med students, who know literally nothing about anything, they just came and did their job, and these are 18- and 19-year-old kids. 

But Abdulrahman, he was a good kid. He wanted to be a plastic surgeon or maybe a neurosurgeon. And I remember when I left, he said: “Don’t remember Gaza like this. Come back when there’s no war, and we’ll go to the beach and we’ll have tea. And that’s how you should remember Gaza.” He’s a sweet kid, smart, you know? 

He was killed in an airstrike on August 31. That’s the same day Hersh Goldberg-Polin is thought to have been killed. The 23-year-old Israeli American guy who was taken hostage at the music festival and was found dead in a Hamas tunnel, probably executed before he could be rescued. 

When I saw the pictures of him in the news, I thought, good lord, he looks exactly like Abdul. If you look at them side by side, they’re almost identical human beings. They have the same smile. They have the same ears, the same nose. And I didn’t find out Abdul was dead until the day after. 

I’m still in touch with some people. They don’t have much cell service. And my Arabic is as close to zero as you can imagine, so it’s hard. 

As you know, six medical aid groups were banned from sending doctors to Gaza, including PAMA, the group that you’ve worked with. What was your reaction to that? 

It’s kind of wild. COGAT, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories—the part of the Israeli government that’s supposed to coordinate between humanitarian groups and the military—COGAT apparently provides nothing to the WHO in writing. I couldn’t believe that. I was like, this is insane, what are you talking about? All of this is just by word of mouth. It’s actually not even clear how many organizations have been banned or who they are. So who the hell knows?

They were western NGOs—some were American, some were Canadian, and one was from Australia or New Zealand. But they have Arab boards. That’s all it is. Arab names on their boards. It’s just outrageous. They knew they could get away with it, and they did. No one even claims that there has ever been a security incident associated with any of these people that any of these groups have brought to the territories. 

It tells you something about our own society. I just got an email five minutes ago from the [Kamala] Harris campaign saying, oh my God, Michigan is in play, and we’re so screwed. Like, yeah, that’s your fault. I’m sure everybody wants to vote because they’re so frightened of Donald Trump. I mean, it’s a sensible thing to be frightened of; I am, too. 

But all she would have to do is get on TV and say, “Israel has banned several Arab-led western NGOs, I find this totally unacceptable, and when I’m president, I will tell the Israelis they have to reverse that immediately.” If she did that, she’d probably get, like, 90 percent of that Arab vote back. She won’t even do that. It’s pathetic. It’s so crazy how committed this administration, including very clearly its vice president, is to this insane project of just obliterating Gaza. It’s just a fanatical dedication to this project, and it’s weird. 

There’s been some speculation that the ban might’ve had to do with how doctors like yourself are serving as these sort of de facto international spokespeople. What do you think about that? 

I’ve had several people tell me this is my fault, for the New York Times article. And I have to tell them, honestly, you might be right. I don’t think you are, but it’s entirely possible, you know? They were trying to help people. They feel like that’s been cut away from them. They’re angry about it. If they want to blame me for it, that’s understandable. 

The Israelis have always had veto power over who goes in when. I suspect that this has been in the works for a while, and the timing probably just is happenstance, but I can’t prove it. I don’t know.

You mentioned wanting to go back. Why do you want to go back to Gaza? 

I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t want to leave. I think it’s kind of a universal thing. Everybody, as they exit, suddenly has an existential crisis, like, why do I get to leave and these people have to stay? 

And then you’re thinking, man, I’ve got to come back somehow. These people need help, they need protection. They need a hand to hold. They need—anything. 

When the vans were coming to pick us up, we had all gathered there at 8 in the morning, 7:30 in the morning. The sun’s just come up. And there was this security guard who was there with his one-and-a-half-year-old, 2-year-old son, just kind of playing with him, babying him, you know. I remember Mark, like, force-feeding the kid all the candy he had left over. At one point, the conversation stopped, and we all just kind of looked at each other, and then we looked at that kid, and we were all thinking exactly the same thing. Why does this kid have to live in this Hobbesian hellhole of violence and hunger and fear and terror, and we just get to leave?

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric during his 2024 campaign has been the darkest in modern memory. He has emphasized grievance and demagoguery ever since he first ran for president, most infamously with his build-up to the January 6 insurrection. But in recent months he has gone to new extremes. In numerous speeches and media appearances, he has peddled false conspiracy theories about the two assassination attempts against him and stoked fear and anger nonstop about an alleged “invasion” of murderous migrants, who he claims are “poisoning the blood of” America and “conquering” cities and towns nationwide.

Throughout the election homestretch, Trump has woven these virulent strands into his core message about a supposed grand conspiracy by Democrats to steal the White House from him. Trump and multiple top surrogates have spent months asserting that his political opponents “even tried to kill him” as part of this plot—a canard Trump further amplified when he returned for a second rally at the site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman opened fire in mid-July.

During a speech in Atlanta, Trump reiterated lies about Democrats conspiring to use undocumented migrants to transform America. “It’s so sinister,” he said, “but they want to sign these people up to vote, and if they do that, this country is destroyed. We’d become a dumping ground for the entire world.” Trump has drawn on such “Great Replacement” themes—an extremist ideology embraced by multiple mass shooters—ever since he was in the White House. And Trump’s biggest financial backer, Elon Musk, is now also advancing this theme, speaking at Trump rallies and posting with massive reach on his social media platform, X.

Most news media rarely, if ever, frame Trump’s rhetoric for what it is: methodical, sustained incitement. Proving a direct connection between Trump’s incendiary messaging and acts of violence can be all but impossible—a gap of plausible deniability that is central to the method of stochastic terrorism, as it’s known to national security experts. Nonetheless there is a long history of Trump’s rhetoric correlating strongly with subsequent menace and violence: a surge in threats targeting journalists as “the enemy of the people,” a Trump supporter attacking an FBI field office after Trump raged against the raid on Mar-a-Lago, threats to kill FBI agents over a “stolen election” and the Hunter Biden case.

The intensifying demagoguery from Trump this election season has caused high concern among threat assessment and law enforcement experts, as I’ve been reporting since June. Fortunately, their worst fears about the kind of catastrophic violence it might provoke have yet to be realized. But according to two senior federal law enforcement sources I spoke with in recent weeks, Trump’s extremism has been accompanied by a rise in violent threats reflecting his messaging.

According to these sources, multiple cases of threats have involved individuals citing or parroting Trump’s ongoing claims about violent migrants invading and taking over the country. Trump’s continual focus on that alleged menace has produced a noticeable hardening effect, one source told me: “We see that the longer it’s talked about, the more it becomes perceived as fact.” Other cases have included talk of “payback or revenge” against Trump’s political adversaries for the assassination attempts, including threats focused on elected officials.

Trump’s hyperbole at recent rallies has included macabre descriptions of alleged rape and murder by migrants, such as telling his supporters, “they’ll cut your throat.” After his rally last Saturday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, most media coverage focused on his lewd comments about golf legend Arnold Palmer’s genitals, but less noted was that Trump also conjured a specter of war against migrants: “We will not be invaded, we will not be occupied, we will not be conquered. That’s what they’re doing. This is an invasion into our country of a foreign military.”

He has continued to blame Vice President Kamala Harris for this non-reality: “She’s letting vicious gangs take over whole communities,” he inveighed at a rally on Monday in Greenville, North Carolina. “She’s bussing and flying them in by the millions.”

A threat assessment expert who consults for federal law enforcement told me that the fear and contempt generated by such rhetoric is potent, and can be interpreted by some people as permission to commit violence. “It’s really poisonous, and it’s giving justification to people who are on the edge to take extreme actions.”

In September, the town of Springfield, Ohio, endured waves of paralyzing bomb threats and other harassment after Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, spread lies about Haitian immigrants supposedly stealing and eating neighbors’ pets. Risk for violence escalated in the southeastern US when Trump and his allies seized on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, falsely accusing FEMA and the Biden administration of abandoning victims. These repeated lies were debunked by state and local leaders, including Republicans, but that didn’t stop Trump. “They spent their money on illegal migrants,” he declared again at Monday’s rally in Greenville. “They didn’t have any money left for North Carolina.”

Trump has continued to tell this lie in his stump speech—even after a Trump supporter armed with multiple guns was arrested in western North Carolina in mid-October for allegedly threatening to harm FEMA workers. That and other armed threats disrupted the agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims.  

Risk for violence around Election Day remains a high concern and a focus for law enforcement, the sources confirmed to me. As one longtime election official in Georgia explained this week to the Wall Street Journal: “People have had four years of just marinating in all sorts of different conspiracy theories, and we worry they’ll come in looking for a problem. Then you got, ‘Hey everyone come down to the polling place,’ and mobs showing up, maybe armed, and it can really snowball very quickly.” 

The temperature also has been rising with adversarial partisan crowds, as seen in Pennsylvania on Sunday in the vicinity of a McDonald’s where Trump posed briefly as a fry cook. Concern will extend well beyond Election Day, through a period of uncertainty about voting results that is likely to follow—and that undoubtedly will be further weaponized by Trump and his allies using baseless claims of fraud, sand-in-the-gears litigation, and beyond.

National security and threat assessment experts told me after the January 6 insurrection that quashing the violent extremism unleashed by Trump requires a fundamental change in what political leaders treat as acceptable rhetoric. But through the years of Trump’s continuing grip on the Republican Party, that standard has trended in the wrong direction, with many Republican politicians excusing or even joining in on Trump’s tactics.

With Election Day fast approaching, no Republican member of Congress or high-profile figure in the party is speaking out forcefully against Trump’s dark rhetoric. House Speaker Mike Johnson and others stick to misdirection or feigned ignorance, if they address the matter at all. As one threat assessment source told me: “Silence is its own form of participation.”

In an extraordinary monologue Tuesday at a Univision town hall, Donald Trump repeated the lie that the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6—which he described using the pronoun “we”—was unarmed.

“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” Trump said. “That was a day of love.”

That is a lie. The latest evidence showing that Trump’s claim is false came in a guilty plea Wednesday by a Texas man named Roger Preacher. Preacher admitted to carrying a pistol on the grounds of the Capitol on January 6, though he knew that doing so was illegal.

Preacher said that he traveled to Washington with two other men who also brought “pistols and AR-style” rifles on the trip. They drove into Washington on January 6 from a Virginia hotel room with three rifles in a bag, the filing says. They left the bag in the car, but Preacher carried his pistol in “an inside-the-waistband holster “ to the lower West Terrace of the Capitol grounds where he remained for around an hour. Preacher said he believed the other two men “were also carrying firearms on their persons.”

Preacher’s admission adds to the heap of evidence that many people in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6 had guns. Mother Jones compiled evidence of the many guns among January 6 perpetrators back in 2021, in a report based on public video footage, congressional testimony, and criminal cases.

Because police officers made few arrests on January 6 itself to limit violence, few of the attackers were caught with firearms on them. This has allowed the myth pushed by Trump and his allies that the crowd was unarmed to spread. But numerous cases since have revealed that some rioters carried weapons or, like members of the Oath Keepers militia, stashed arms nearby.

The House January 6 committee’s final report, released in 2022, cited police reports indicating that DC officers spotted numerous people descending on the National Mall that day who appeared to be carrying guns. Police stopped few of them, presumably because they feared being shot.

The committee’s report notes that many Trump supporters who arrived for his speech at the Ellipse that day were armed, and that White House officials, including Trump, knew that.

In testimony to the House committee detailed in its final report, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, said that Trump berated a top Secret Service official on January 6 because agents had placed magnetometers around the Ellipse, deterring some of his gun-toting fans from attending. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me.”

Preacher is one of around 1,500 people charged with crimes related to January 6, among them Trump himself. Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote in a filing on Tuesday that Trump was responsible for the attack. The former president, the filing said, “willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C.”

In July, former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old man wielding an AR-15-style rifle. That near miss hasn’t stopped the Rod of Iron Ministries from holding a raffle this coming weekend for a special Trump-branded AR-15 at its fifth annual “Freedom Festival.”

Billed as the “largest open carry rally in America,” the festival draws attendees to celebrate the Second Amendment and hear from headliners that will include former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, radio host Sebastian Gorka, former US Rep. Allen West, former Trump ICE Director Tom Homan, and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Anyone who registers early for the free tickets can enter the raffle to win the Trump gun.

The Rod of Iron Ministries was founded by Hyung Jin ”Sean” Moon as a militant breakaway from the Unification Church founded by his father, the late Sun Myung Moon. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Pastor Sean Moon’s sermons and social media videos espouse a particular End Times theology that predicts a future overthrow of the American government. He believes the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s divine justice—the “rod of iron” invoked in Revelation 2:27.

Moon often wears a crown of bullets, carries a gold-plated assault weapon, and rides a Harley in a helmet with a creepy skeleton facemask. (Moon also seems to have musical aspirations: He raps under the name King Bullethead and will also perform at this weekend’s Freedom Fest.)

With the help of a $5 million loan from their father, Moon’s brother Justin founded the Kahr Firearms Group in 1995. It started off manufacturing mostly small arms designed to tap into the growing market for American-made concealed weapons as states began to relax their gun laws. It has since expanded, and now Kahr is a sponsor of “Freedom Fest,” which will be held at its TommyGun warehouse in Greeley, Pennsylvania.

Both Moons have cultivated significant MAGA ties, including with the Trump brothers, Eric and Don Jr. Kahr Firearms now offers several Trump-themed weapons, and the company’s products are frequently promoted in Don Jr.’s weapons-themed outdoor magazine, Field Ethos. When the firearms company opened its TommyGun warehouse in 2016, Eric Trump gave a speech.

Given Sean Moon’s obsession with the downfall of the current American government, it’s no surprise that he was involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He was at the US Capitol on January 6, and while he didn’t go in, he was close enough to get tear-gassed.

The Rod of Iron pastor has never seemed especially concerned with appearances or suggestions that his ministry is a cult. “We’re used to that type of persecution,” Moon told Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson in 2022, noting that followers of his father’s church are known colloquially as “Moonies.”

Under Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church gained some renown for conducting mass weddings for its believers. (One at Madison Square Garden in 1982 joined 2,075 couples.) In 2018, the Rod of Iron updated this tradition by holding a mass wedding and vow-renewal ceremony in which couples carried (unloaded) assault weapons similar to the one used just days before to mow down dozens of staff and high school students in the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting.

This year won’t be the first time the Freedom Festival has given away a Trump gun. But considering the Rod of Iron’s reverence for Trump, I wondered whether the Freedom Festival organizers might have had second thoughts about raffling off a weapon favored by the former president’s would-be assassin. “That wouldn’t affect the decision to do this, not at all. I don’t think we’d see the connection,” Tim Elder, the church’s director of world missions, told me. “It’s not the AR’s fault. It’s the guy that was pulling the trigger. It’s his fault. We’re not going to blame the AR for that incident.”

But if the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s justice, what does it mean if it’s used to try to assassinate Trump? “We see that God’s hand is on this man,” Elder said simply.

The festival starts Friday, with an appearance by Flynn and a screening of his eponymous new movie.

In July, former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old man wielding an AR-15-style rifle. That near miss hasn’t stopped the Rod of Iron Ministries from holding a raffle this coming weekend for a special Trump-branded AR-15 at its fifth annual “Freedom Festival.”

Billed as the “largest open carry rally in America,” the festival draws attendees to celebrate the Second Amendment and hear from headliners that will include former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, radio host Sebastian Gorka, former US Rep. Allen West, former Trump ICE Director Tom Homan, and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Anyone who registers early for the free tickets can enter the raffle to win the Trump gun.

The Rod of Iron Ministries was founded by Hyung Jin ”Sean” Moon as a militant breakaway from the Unification Church founded by his father, the late Sun Myung Moon. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Pastor Sean Moon’s sermons and social media videos espouse a particular End Times theology that predicts a future overthrow of the American government. He believes the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s divine justice—the “rod of iron” invoked in Revelation 2:27.

Moon often wears a crown of bullets, carries a gold-plated assault weapon, and rides a Harley in a helmet with a creepy skeleton facemask. (Moon also seems to have musical aspirations: He raps under the name King Bullethead and will also perform at this weekend’s Freedom Fest.)

With the help of a $5 million loan from their father, Moon’s brother Justin founded the Kahr Firearms Group in 1995. It started off manufacturing mostly small arms designed to tap into the growing market for American-made concealed weapons as states began to relax their gun laws. It has since expanded, and now Kahr is a sponsor of “Freedom Fest,” which will be held at its TommyGun warehouse in Greeley, Pennsylvania.

Both Moons have cultivated significant MAGA ties, including with the Trump brothers, Eric and Don Jr. Kahr Firearms now offers several Trump-themed weapons, and the company’s products are frequently promoted in Don Jr.’s weapons-themed outdoor magazine, Field Ethos. When the firearms company opened its TommyGun warehouse in 2016, Eric Trump gave a speech.

Given Sean Moon’s obsession with the downfall of the current American government, it’s no surprise that he was involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He was at the US Capitol on January 6, and while he didn’t go in, he was close enough to get tear-gassed.

The Rod of Iron pastor has never seemed especially concerned with appearances or suggestions that his ministry is a cult. “We’re used to that type of persecution,” Moon told Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson in 2022, noting that followers of his father’s church are known colloquially as “Moonies.”

Under Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church gained some renown for conducting mass weddings for its believers. (One at Madison Square Garden in 1982 joined 2,075 couples.) In 2018, the Rod of Iron updated this tradition by holding a mass wedding and vow-renewal ceremony in which couples carried (unloaded) assault weapons similar to the one used just days before to mow down dozens of staff and high school students in the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting.

This year won’t be the first time the Freedom Festival has given away a Trump gun. But considering the Rod of Iron’s reverence for Trump, I wondered whether the Freedom Festival organizers might have had second thoughts about raffling off a weapon favored by the former president’s would-be assassin. “That wouldn’t affect the decision to do this, not at all. I don’t think we’d see the connection,” Tim Elder, the church’s director of world missions, told me. “It’s not the AR’s fault. It’s the guy that was pulling the trigger. It’s his fault. We’re not going to blame the AR for that incident.”

But if the AR-15 is an instrument of God’s justice, what does it mean if it’s used to try to assassinate Trump? “We see that God’s hand is on this man,” Elder said simply.

The festival starts Friday, with an appearance by Flynn and a screening of his eponymous new movie.

Donald Trump has faced two assassination attempts in the past three months—horrifying events that he has used to spread unfounded conspiracy theories and smear Democratic leaders with false blame. He has been aided in this effort by vice presidential candidate JD Vance, his sons Eric Trump and Don Jr., multiple Republican members of Congress, and backers of Project 2025. Their coordinated messaging—that Democrats supposedly “tried to kill” Trump—has been featured at the Republican National Convention, at Trump’s campaign rallies, and in numerous media appearances, from Fox News to Dr. Phil’s show.

Trump and his surrogates took the effort to the next level when the former president held a large rally on Saturday at the same site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was wounded by a would-be assassin during a July 13 appearance. The Trump campaign billed the heavily produced event—which included a live opera singer and an awkward performance by Elon Musk—as a return to “the very same ground where he took a bullet for democracy.”

Speaking ahead of the former president, Eric Trump highlighted the familiar theme: “They’ve tried to get my father every single second since he went down that golden escalator,” he declared from the podium, standing alongside his wife Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee. “They tried to smear us, they tried to bankrupt us, they came after us, they impeached him twice, they went after his Supreme Court justices, they weaponized the entire legal system…and it has not worked.”

As the audience cheered, Eric Trump emphasized: “And then guys, they tried to kill him. They tried to kill him, and it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.”

Eric Trump has sought to directly blame Democrats ever since the attack in Butler, including in multiple appearances on Fox News. Trump himself repeated the theme from the podium on Saturday: “Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows: maybe even tried to kill me.”

This was a planned element of the former president’s speech; he read the lines from a teleprompter.

Amid multiple investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and Congress, no evidence has emerged that either of Trump’s would-be assassins had any connections to Democratic leaders. Neither perpetrator appears to have been driven fundamentally by partisan politics—a common, if somewhat counterintuitive pattern among political assassins, as I documented in previous reporting and in my book, Trigger Points.

The motive of the man charged with targeting Trump in Florida remains unclear; his background indicates that he voted for Trump in 2016 but later turned against him and grew sharply critical of his foreign policy. The FBI has said that the motive of the deceased 20-year-old who shot Trump and others in Butler, who was a registered Republican voter, remains unknown.

Notably, Vance used a slightly modified approach at the Butler rally, four days after conspicuously working to soften his political rhetoric and image during the vice presidential debate with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

“Just look at everything they’ve done to President Trump,” Vance said on Saturday. “First, they tried to silence him. When that didn’t work, they tried to bankrupt him. When that didn’t work, they tried to jail him. And with all the hatred they have spewed at President Trump, it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to kill him.”

Vance then reiterated that the assassination attempts had resulted from Democrats calling Trump “a threat to democracy.” No evidence supporting that claim has emerged in either investigation.

Vance has led the way with this blame, starting in the immediate hours after the Butler shooting, and in subsequent campaign speeches, as I highlighted in my previous reporting. This time, he subtly shifted that blame to “somebody” while keeping the the litany of accusations essentially the same.

Other top GOP leaders continue to play along with this false messaging, which threat assessment and national security experts have told me is fueling potential retaliatory violence. On Sunday, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos confronted House Speaker Mike Johnson in an interview about the rhetoric from the Butler rally, after Johnson called out Democratic campaign messaging as overheated.

“Eric Trump actually did specifically reference Democrats,” Stephanopoulos said. “He said, ‘They tried to kill him. And it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.’ Do you support those comments or not?”

“I don’t know what Eric was saying because I only heard just a snippet there,” Johnson replied. “I don’t know the context.”

In the early afternoon on Sunday, a suspected gunman got within several hundred yards of former President Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspect was shot at by a Secret Service agent, fled the scene in a black SUV, and was quickly apprehended by police. Over the next 24 hours, Trump and his allies unleashed a deluge of blame against Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats for what the FBI said was being investigated as an assassination attempt against Trump, the second in just over two months.

As of Monday, the motive of the suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, remained unclear. His social media history indicated that he voted for Trump in 2016 but turned against him later. Routh was critical of Trump’s Putin-friendly policy on Ukraine; in 2022, he’d gone on an unsuccessful quest to help recruit foreign fighters to join the battle against the Kremlin’s invasion. He also donated to a Democratic PAC in the 2020 election cycle. On Monday, authorities announced two federal gun charges against Routh, with additional charges possibly to come.

Whatever Routh’s motive may have been for allegedly targeting Trump with an AK-47-style rifle, law enforcement authorities have cited no evidence that his actions were connected to or caused by the rhetoric of top Democrats, who have long emphasized the rejection of political violence. But that has not stopped Trump and his allies from moving immediately to exploit the disturbing near-miss in Florida for political gain—just as they did after a gunman wounded Trump in a horrific attack at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the news broke about the danger on Sunday, the Trump campaign sent out an email to supporters with a statement from Trump linking to his fundraising page and saying he was safe and well. “But there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us,” the Republican presidential candidate said in the statement. “I will Never Surrender!”

On Monday morning, Trump declared in an interview with Fox News Digital that Routh’s alleged actions were caused by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his 2024 opponent for the White House.

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said, providing no evidence to support that claim. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out.” Trump added that Biden and Harris are “the enemy from within,” according to Fox News Digital. “They are the real threat.”

Biden and Harris both put out statements on Sunday expressing relief that Trump was unharmed and denouncing political violence. Biden also said that he had directed his team “to continue to ensure” adequate protection for Trump from the Secret Service.

Trump added to his partisan blame with a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday: “The Rhetoric, Lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC Debate, and all of the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe’s, then Kamala’s, Political Opponent, ME, has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”

Top surrogates piled on the partisan attack. Trump’s son, Donald Jr., railed on social media about telling “my 5 young children about [a] radical leftist trying to kill their grandfather.”

“The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop,” posted billionaire supporter Elon Musk, in response to Don Jr.’s comments.

Longtime Trump advisor and right-wing media commentator Steve Cortes called his former boss “the most persecuted public figure in American history” and said that the danger to Trump’s life both in Pennsylvania and Florida was caused to a great extent by “the corporate media” disparaging the ex-president.

The deluge of partisan messaging adds a whole new layer to an ongoing effort to cast unfounded blame for violence on Biden, Harris and the Democrats. As I’ve been documenting in the two-plus months since the Trump shooting in Pennsylvania, the ex-president and his allies have carried out a sustained, coordinated effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories and smear Trump’s political opponents with such blame. Participants have included Trump’s running mate, JD Vance; his sons, Don Jr. and Eric Trump; his wife, Melania Trump; and a multitude of Republican congressional members, including Cory Mills, Eli Crane, Ryan Zinke, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Mike Collins.

This propaganda effort, as I first reported in early September, now also involves backers of Project 2025.

During the presidential debate on ABC News on Sept. 10, watched by 67 million people, Trump reiterated baseless blame for the shooting at his rally in Butler.  “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” he inveighed, pointing at Harris. “They talk about democracy, I’m a threat to democracy—they’re the threat to democracy.”

These efforts may be intended in part to distract from Trump’s own incitement of violence. He has used the tactics of stochastic terrorism, as national security experts call the method, for many years. This has continued apace with his incessant demagoguery on the campaign trail against migrant “invaders.” Most recently that has included the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio—falsely smeared by Trump, Vance, and their allies for supposedly stealing and eating other residents’ pets. Schools and government offices in Springfield have since been under siege with bomb scares and other threats of violence.

Several threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me since this summer that Trump’s incitement is a top concern when it comes to potential political violence during the election season. According to these sources, the rhetoric from Trump and his allies about the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania—and now with the apparent close call in Florida—is deepening that danger.

The FBI is investigating what officials believe is another attempted assassination of former President Trump, and a “potential suspect” is in custody.

Shots were fired near Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the president was golfing, at about 1:30 p.m. The Trump campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement Sunday afternoon that Trump “is safe following gunshots in his vicinity.”

Secret Service personnel who were walking ahead of Trump on the golf course opened fire after seeing a rifle barrel sticking out of a fence, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters Sunday afternoon. The suspect—who Bradshaw said was 300 to 500 yards from Trump, around the length of three to four football fields—fled on foot before getting in a car, Bradshaw said. As of Sunday afternoon, it was unclear whether the suspect had fired any shots back at the Secret Service. A witness provided a photo and details of the license plate, which allowed the Martin County Sheriff’s office to identify the vehicle and detain the suspect soon after on the I-95 freeway, authorities said.

Law enforcement found an AK-47 assault rifle with a scope—a device used to improve aim—two backpacks, and a GoPro camera in the shrubbery where the victim fled from. “With a rifle and a scope like that,” Bradshaw said, the shooter was “not a long distance” from the former president.

A male is in custody, Bradshaw said. The FBI is leading the federal investigation, according to Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the Miami Field Office, who added that the public should avoid the area around the golf course and contact officials if they have information on the shooting.

The news marks a stunning development, coming just about two months after the shooting that killed a spectator and injured Trump and two others at a Pennsylvania rally. That shooting remains the subject of a federal investigation, and the Secret Service has been criticized for the massive security failures that allowed it to unfold. On Sunday, though, officials lauded their response: “The Secret Service did exactly what they should have done,” Bradshaw said. “They provided exactly what the protection should have been and their agent did a fantastic job.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, Trump seemed to be in good spirits. “Nothing will slow me down,” he wrote in a fundraising email just hours later. “I will NEVER SURRENDER!”

In a post on X, Vice President Kamala Harris said she was briefed on the incident, adding, “I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The FBI is investigating what officials believe is another attempted assassination of former President Trump, and a “potential suspect” is in custody.

Shots were fired near Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the president was golfing, at about 1:30 p.m. The Trump campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement Sunday afternoon that Trump “is safe following gunshots in his vicinity.”

Secret Service personnel who were walking ahead of Trump on the golf course opened fire after seeing a rifle barrel sticking out of a fence, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters Sunday afternoon. The suspect—who Bradshaw said was 300 to 500 yards from Trump, around the length of three to four football fields—fled on foot before getting in a car, Bradshaw said. As of Sunday afternoon, it was unclear whether the suspect had fired any shots back at the Secret Service. A witness provided a photo and details of the license plate, which allowed the Martin County Sheriff’s office to identify the vehicle and detain the suspect soon after on the I-95 freeway, authorities said.

Law enforcement found an AK-47 assault rifle with a scope—a device used to improve aim—two backpacks, and a GoPro camera in the shrubbery where the victim fled from. “With a rifle and a scope like that,” Bradshaw said, the shooter was “not a long distance” from the former president.

A male is in custody, Bradshaw said. The FBI is leading the federal investigation, according to Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the Miami Field Office, who added that the public should avoid the area around the golf course and contact officials if they have information on the shooting.

The news marks a stunning development, coming just about two months after the shooting that killed a spectator and injured Trump and two others at a Pennsylvania rally. That shooting remains the subject of a federal investigation, and the Secret Service has been criticized for the massive security failures that allowed it to unfold. On Sunday, though, officials lauded their response: “The Secret Service did exactly what they should have done,” Bradshaw said. “They provided exactly what the protection should have been and their agent did a fantastic job.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, Trump seemed to be in good spirits. “Nothing will slow me down,” he wrote in a fundraising email just hours later. “I will NEVER SURRENDER!”

In a post on X, Vice President Kamala Harris said she was briefed on the incident, adding, “I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Melania Trump broke her months-long silence on the assassination attempt against her husband with a video that amplified unproven conspiracy theories about the July shooting before swiftly turning to promote her forthcoming memoir.

The video—which, in my opinion, resembles a deep fake overlaid with a Kris Jenner filter— was posted to X on Tuesday morning, and featured Melania standing before a black backdrop while ominous music plays in the background. “The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” she says, addressing the camera. “Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?”

“There is definitely more to the story,” she adds, “and we need to uncover the truth.” A visual of the cover of her eponymous book then flashes on the screen, along with a message encouraging followers to order the book at her website. It’s unclear what, if any, connection the memoir, slated for release in early October according to the publisher, will have to her husband’s shooting. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions.

The rare video appearance makes Melania now one of many people in Trump’s orbit who has conspiratorially suggested that nefarious forces enabled the shooting. As my colleague Mark Follman has covered, two of Trump’s sons, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and Republicans in Congress have cast blame on Democrats for the shooting—all without evidence. (As Mark reported, the motive of the shooter—who was a registered Republican—remains unknown.) Trump himself has also taken part in the narrative, telling television psychologist Dr. Phil in a late August interview, “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”

“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump added in that interview. “They would say that, that was [a] standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going…Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

Experts warn that such unfounded allegations can give rise to retaliatory violence from Trump-loving extremists.

This continuing vilification adds to what law enforcement and threat assessment sources have told me is a paramount risk headed toward the election: potential bloodshed stemming from Donald Trump’s long-running campaign of incitement, including his message that he is supposedly the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by his political opponents. That core Trump narrative has now been supercharged by the assassination attempt, in which three attendees also were shot, one fatally.

As Melania mentions in her video, questions do remain about the catastrophic security failures that allowed the shooter to scale a roof without law enforcement intervening sooner. But those questions are the subjects of ongoing federal investigations—which will not be led or solved by Melania or anyone else in MAGA-world.

Melania Trump broke her months-long silence on the assassination attempt against her husband with a video that amplified unproven conspiracy theories about the July shooting before swiftly turning to promote her forthcoming memoir.

The video—which, in my opinion, resembles a deep fake overlaid with a Kris Jenner filter— was posted to X on Tuesday morning, and featured Melania standing before a black backdrop while ominous music plays in the background. “The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” she says, addressing the camera. “Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?”

“There is definitely more to the story,” she adds, “and we need to uncover the truth.” A visual of the cover of her eponymous book then flashes on the screen, along with a message encouraging followers to order the book at her website. It’s unclear what, if any, connection the memoir, slated for release in early October according to the publisher, will have to her husband’s shooting. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions.

The rare video appearance makes Melania now one of many people in Trump’s orbit who has conspiratorially suggested that nefarious forces enabled the shooting. As my colleague Mark Follman has covered, two of Trump’s sons, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and Republicans in Congress have cast blame on Democrats for the shooting—all without evidence. (As Mark reported, the motive of the shooter—who was a registered Republican—remains unknown.) Trump himself has also taken part in the narrative, telling television psychologist Dr. Phil in a late August interview, “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”

“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump added in that interview. “They would say that, that was [a] standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going…Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

Experts warn that such unfounded allegations can give rise to retaliatory violence from Trump-loving extremists.

This continuing vilification adds to what law enforcement and threat assessment sources have told me is a paramount risk headed toward the election: potential bloodshed stemming from Donald Trump’s long-running campaign of incitement, including his message that he is supposedly the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by his political opponents. That core Trump narrative has now been supercharged by the assassination attempt, in which three attendees also were shot, one fatally.

As Melania mentions in her video, questions do remain about the catastrophic security failures that allowed the shooter to scale a roof without law enforcement intervening sooner. But those questions are the subjects of ongoing federal investigations—which will not be led or solved by Melania or anyone else in MAGA-world.

Enlarge / A man helps a boy look at a handgun during the National Rifle Association's Annual Meetings & Exhibits at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis on April 16, 2023. (credit: Getty | Jeremy Hogan)

Gun-owning parents who teach their kids how to responsibly handle and shoot a gun are less likely to store those deadly weapons safely, according to a survey-based study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

The study, conducted by gun violence researchers at Rutgers University, analyzed survey responses from 870 gun-owning parents. Of those, the parents who responded that they demonstrated proper handling to their child or teen, had their kid practice safe handling under supervision, and/or taught their kid how to shoot a firearm were more likely than other gun-owning parents to keep at least one gun unsecured—that is, unlocked and loaded. In fact, each of the three responses carried at least double the odds of the parent having an unlocked, loaded gun around, the study found.

The survey responses may seem like a paradox for parents who value safe and responsible gun handling. Previous studies have suggested that safe storage of firearms can reduce the risk of injuries and deaths among children and teens. A 2005 JAMA study, for instance, found lower risks of firearm injuries among children and teens when parents securely store their firearms—meaning they kept them locked, unloaded, and stored separately from locked ammunition. And as of 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the US.

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In the aftermath of the bloodshed on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, state authorities arrested Colin Gray, whose 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot four people to death and injured nine others before surrendering to police. The father is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, eight counts of cruelty to children—and, most significantly, two counts of second-degree murder.

The murder charges are unprecedented, the most severe ever filed against the parent of a school shooter. Late Thursday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference that the charges against Colin Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son” and that the father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”

Authorities have not provided further details about evidence they may have, but according to news reports, Colin Gray owned the type of AR-15 that his son allegedly used in the attack. And Colt Gray had been “begging for months” for mental health help but had received none, according to an aunt of his who spoke to the Washington Post. (Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said.)

For more than a decade, I’ve studied and reported on the American epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past several years, and particularly since early 2024, a dramatic shift has taken shape: a reckoning for the parents of school shooters. Today, with more than 400 million guns and a lack of political will to regulate them more effectively nationwide, it may be that America has begun to find another route—a legal end-run of sorts—to bring accountability for these events of catastrophic gun violence.

The arrest of the school shooter’s father in Georgia comes just seven months after James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old school shooter in Michigan, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter—also a first. What is publicly alleged so far about the role of Colin Gray appears to echo the case of the Crumbleys, who were found to have ignored their son’s mental health crisis and supplied him with the gun he used to commit his attack at Oxford High School, where four died and seven were injured.

It is a near certainty that in the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about warning signs given off by the school shooter in Georgia, one of 20 states now requiring plans for violence prevention in public schools. School shootings are almost always preceded by such warning signs. Significant questions also loom about what may have been done regarding concerns about Colt Gray by law enforcement or the school district, after anonymous tips about threats posted online put him on the radar of the FBI and local authorities in 2023.

Another parental role—starkly different—came into public view this spring, when we published my two-year investigation, “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” in Mother Jones and aired a companion audio investigation on our radio show Reveal. These chronicle the experience of Chin Rodger, whose son Elliot Rodger committed mass murder in the California college town of Isla Vista in 2014. Chin Rodger hadn’t been able to recognize her deeply troubled son’s suicidal and homicidal warning behaviors, but she had gone to great lengths to get him help and care before his attack. Years later she began working with violence prevention experts at the FBI and beyond, sharing myriad details about her son’s life with them—and eventually with the public—in hopes of raising awareness about warning signs and helping avert future violence.

As I wrote in the story: “The public rarely hears from parents of mass shooters apart from brief statements of sorrow in the aftermath. The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds, especially in light of a recent tragedy that could remake the legal landscape.”

There I was referring to the new criminal precedent established with the Crumbleys—one with the potential to expand, it now appears, with the case in Georgia. The recurring mass murder of school kids and their teachers drives intense public calls for finding culpability among parents (and others), which may well be warranted in some cases. But this nascent trend of criminalizing parents is not without possible pitfalls, including, legal experts have said, for mothers and fathers of minority children exposed disproportionately to gun violence.

Another notable development in the past several years has been a trend of civil liability for gun manufacturers who market their AR-15s and other firearms aggressively to America’s youth. In early 2022, Remington, the company that made the AR-15 used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, agreed to a landmark $73 million civil settlement with victims’ families. In late 2022, the family of a 10-year-old victim in Uvalde, Texas, filed suit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15 used in the massacre at Robb Elementary School, accusing the company of using militaristic marketing appeals to target “young male consumers.”

The devastation in Georgia this week is far from the first to involve a shockingly young perpetrator. The shooter at Oxford High School in 2021 was only one year older, just 15 at the time. Other cases going back in time, documented in our mass shootings database and in my book on prevention, Trigger Points, have involved shooters as young as 13 and 11 years old.

In January 2023, a 6-year-old child brought a pistol to school in Virginia and shot his first grade teacher—a case in which the mother was later imprisoned for gun-related federal crimes. (The child used the mother’s unsecured firearm; her prosecution involved drug use and lying related to the gun purchase.)

What happened in Georgia this week serves as a particularly stark reminder: In America, a teenager can easily get his hands on a military-grade rifle and use it to gun down his classmates and teachers. Why we have this problem—and tens of millions of AR-15s in civilian hands—is complicated and arises from a recent history that many Americans know relatively little about.

Another reminder about this problem worth repeating is that, despite popular opinion, it is not an unsolvable one. Now, deterrence for gun-owning parents may be a growing part of a broader solution.

Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.

On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.

“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”

“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.

Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.

Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”

“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.

“It raises big suspicions,” Crowley agreed.

“Well they didn’t want to talk about the election of 2020 either,” Trump said. “They just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’re guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it—it’s amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.”

Three days prior, on Aug. 26, the Heritage Foundation—home of Project 2025—hosted the “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing on the assassination attempt. Billed as an “independent” investigation, it was led by Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona and framed as a necessary circumvention of ongoing federal investigations, including a bipartisan congressional task force on the shooting convened by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. In his opening remarks, Mills stated that he and his MAGA colleagues from the House were certain to uncover not just “criminal gross negligence” but “purposeful intent” attributable to the Biden administration.

Participants in the testimony-style interviews included former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Attacks on DEI policy and its alleged role in the catastrophic security failure on July 13 were a focal point, also teed up by Mills from the outset. The hearing at Heritage, he said, “is a message to all of Congress, that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward.”

Project 2025 includes detailed plans to purge the US government of DEI policies. Midway through the hearing, Bongino went off on DEI as having supposedly led to unqualified agents working for the Secret Service. Citing unnamed whistleblower sources, he claimed that deficient personnel included trainees who had failed shooting tests and had filed “nuisance” employment complaints—and who were then given high-stakes jobs. “Many are out on protective assignments now,” Bongino said, without providing any evidence to support his claims.

“So what you’re saying is that DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy with regards to the current culture,” Mills said.

“No, the major role,” Bongino emphasized. “The Secret Service right now is dominated by DEI.”

Mills replied: “I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Project 2025 also calls for the mission of the Secret Service to be narrowed to protective operations only, and to have all of its criminal financial investigations moved under other law enforcement agencies—an argument Bongino also made in his remarks. Agents should be able to focus on protective work, Bongino said, “without running out cheap $20 counterfeit notes at Seven Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

At the closing, Mills reiterated his takeaways, including on federal hiring policy. “Again, I think that we’re understanding that we’ve investigated the culture of the Secret Service and what needs to change, and why DEI is not healthy for our military, for our security services or otherwise.”

In his own closing remarks, Rep. Crane thanked the “witnesses” for participating, including a SWAT operator who had offered what he described as “secondhand” information about some of the tactical failures on July 13. “Any time you’re in law enforcement and you take the risk to come and testify before Congress,” Crane said to the small audience in the Heritage Foundation conference room, “it takes a lot of courage.”

Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.

On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.

“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”

“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.

Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.

Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”

“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.

“It raises big suspicions,” Crowley agreed.

“Well they didn’t want to talk about the election of 2020 either,” Trump said. “They just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’re guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it—it’s amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.”

Three days prior, on Aug. 26, the Heritage Foundation—home of Project 2025—hosted the “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing on the assassination attempt. Billed as an “independent” investigation, it was led by Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona and framed as a necessary circumvention of ongoing federal investigations, including a bipartisan congressional task force on the shooting convened by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. In his opening remarks, Mills stated that he and his MAGA colleagues from the House were certain to uncover not just “criminal gross negligence” but “purposeful intent” attributable to the Biden administration.

Participants in the testimony-style interviews included former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Attacks on DEI policy and its alleged role in the catastrophic security failure on July 13 were a focal point, also teed up by Mills from the outset. The hearing at Heritage, he said, “is a message to all of Congress, that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward.”

Project 2025 includes detailed plans to purge the US government of DEI policies. Midway through the hearing, Bongino went off on DEI as having supposedly led to unqualified agents working for the Secret Service. Citing unnamed whistleblower sources, he claimed that deficient personnel included trainees who had failed shooting tests and had filed “nuisance” employment complaints—and who were then given high-stakes jobs. “Many are out on protective assignments now,” Bongino said, without providing any evidence to support his claims.

“So what you’re saying is that DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy with regards to the current culture,” Mills said.

“No, the major role,” Bongino emphasized. “The Secret Service right now is dominated by DEI.”

Mills replied: “I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Project 2025 also calls for the mission of the Secret Service to be narrowed to protective operations only, and to have all of its criminal financial investigations moved under other law enforcement agencies—an argument Bongino also made in his remarks. Agents should be able to focus on protective work, Bongino said, “without running out cheap $20 counterfeit notes at Seven Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

At the closing, Mills reiterated his takeaways, including on federal hiring policy. “Again, I think that we’re understanding that we’ve investigated the culture of the Secret Service and what needs to change, and why DEI is not healthy for our military, for our security services or otherwise.”

In his own closing remarks, Rep. Crane thanked the “witnesses” for participating, including a SWAT operator who had offered what he described as “secondhand” information about some of the tactical failures on July 13. “Any time you’re in law enforcement and you take the risk to come and testify before Congress,” Crane said to the small audience in the Heritage Foundation conference room, “it takes a lot of courage.”

Ever since the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the former president and his allies have promoted unfounded conspiracy theories and blamed Democrats directly for the violence. The effort appears highly coordinated: From JD Vance to Trump’s sons and MAGA Republicans in Congress, many have used the same rhetoric to declare that Trump’s political opponents sought to have him murdered at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. No one has furnished any evidence to support that claim. And while Trump himself was relatively quiet in this regard during the initial aftermath, he has since been pouring fuel on the fire, starting with a campaign speech on Aug. 5 in Atlanta, where Vance introduced him by emphasizing that Trump’s opponents had “even tried to kill him.”

Trump took the narrative to the next level in a softball interview with TV host Dr. Phil that aired this week. The first quarter of the hour-long conversation focused on Trump’s brush with death as a divine miracle, which was a major theme of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee just days after the attack. “It has to be God,” Trump said to Dr. Phil about surviving the shooting. He went on to claim that the assassination attempt could’ve ended up like the 2017 massacre on the Las Vegas Strip, where hundreds of people were gunned down.

Later in the interview, Trump returned to the shooting unprompted, focusing blame on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety,” he claimed without evidence. He further suggested that they played a role in undermining his security: “They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”

“I’m not saying they wanted you to get shot,” Dr. Phil said, “but do you think it was OK with them if you did?”

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of hatred.” (Biden, Harris, and other Democratic leaders condemned the shooting in the aftermath and Biden phoned Trump to offer prayers and support—a call Trump said was “very nice” in a leaked conversation with RFK Jr.)

Trump then reiterated the same claim he made in his Aug. 5 speech: “They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he told Dr. Phil. “They would say that, that was [a] standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going…Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

The deceased 20-year-old gunman was a registered Republican voter, as noted throughout national media coverage—and as I reported in the days and weeks after the attack, there appears to be no solid evidence that he was driven by partisanship or ideology. A sweeping FBI investigation, including analysis of his digital devices and interviews with more than 450 people, has found no clear motive, according to congressional testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI officials reiterated those findings on Wednesday in a call with reporters. They suggested that the gunman, who also considered attacking a Biden event, was seeking infamy and selected the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.” (I reported five days after the attack about the emerging indicators of this behavioral profile—a common one among political assassins, as I documented in my book, Trigger Points.)

The provocative rhetoric from Trump and his allies isn’t just unfounded but also carries a disturbing risk: Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me that the messaging is fueling the danger of political violence headed into the election. Sources also told me that Trump’s political incitement more broadly—increasingly focused on a supposed grand conspiracy to steal the election from him—has made potential violence from MAGA extremists a top concern. As one source put it, “they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified.” Another described how conspiracy theories about the Trump shooting give extremist groups “a really big plot point” for retaliatory violence.

The blame narrative from Trump and his allies also expanded this week when Republican Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona convened an “independent” hearing they called the “J 13 Forum” at the Heritage Foundation (home of Project 2025). They and several colleagues conducted congressional testimony-style interviews with participants including former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Many key questions indeed still loom about the catastrophic security failure that occurred in Pennsylvania; ongoing investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and a bipartisan congressional task force will last many months, if not years. Nonetheless, the “J 13 Forum” leaned into speculation and innuendo about what could explain the disaster, with Mills suggesting from the outset that a nefarious plot would inevitably be uncovered.

“You will see at this stage, where I think that criminal gross negligence and purposeful intent will be indistinguishable,” he said.

The faux congressional hearing included various unsubstantiated claims about the tactical response to the gunman in Butler and heated rhetoric from Bongino about the alleged role of DEI policy at the Secret Service. At one point, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida prompted Prince to highlight the risk of a foreign terrorist team carrying out such an assassination attempt on US soil. “I’m very concerned,” Prince responded. “I don’t think they have any idea what’s coming at them.”

Notably, Mills has been involved in the blame narrative from the start—he was among the Trump allies using the same attack lines in the initial aftermath. “What about the rhetoric said by President Biden, when he said it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye?” Mills asked on Fox’s Varney & Co. five days after the shooting. (Biden went on to apologize for that previous word choice, despite the fact that it clearly was taken out of context by Mills and others in the aftermath.) With that setup, Mills landed his allegation: “They tried to silence him. They tried to imprison him. And now they’ve tried to kill him.”