Good morning,
Welcome to MS NOW’s Sunday Spotlight, where you can find a selection of the week’s most interesting and important stories.
First, some breaking news: President Donald Trump and other top U.S. leaders were evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last night after gunfire erupted near the main magnetometer screening area of the event. One officer wearing a bullet-resistant vest was shot, but is expected to be OK, a law enforcement official said. The Secret Service confirmed in a post on X that one person is in custody and that Trump and the first lady were safe. Follow MS NOW for the latest updates.
Meanwhile, this week, Trump also complicated his own negotiations with Iran, Virginia Democrats scored a win this week despite an ongoing battle and Tennessee faces a turning point on free speech. Plus, Louisiana lawmakers target a Black elected official.
Don’t forget to check out more top columns and videos from the week below.
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Inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Hundreds of prominent journalists, celebrities and national leaders were awaiting a speech from Trump when an armed suspect attempted to breach a security checkpoint at the annual gathering in Washington, D.C. Videos captured chaotic scenes in and around the banquet hall at the Washington Hilton as guests ducked under tables. MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart was at the event, and after hearing a series of pops, suddenly found himself diving for the ground. “This nation has endured hundreds of mass shootings just in the 20-plus years I’ve been attending this dinner,” Capehart writes. “But I had never personally experienced a shooting event like this. Yet I intuitively knew what to do. Drop to the floor. Get under the table.” Thankfully Capehart, and everyone else in the ballroom, was OK. But those few, terrifying minutes remind us that nobody — not even the president — is immune from gun violence in America. Read more here and check MS NOW for updates.
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Talking heads: Peace talks between the United States and Iran are not going smoothly. But a major factor is dysfunction among Iranian leadership largely caused by the Trump administration’s decision to decimate the top ranks of Iran’s government early in the war, Zeeshan Aleem argues. This has led to different power centers in Tehran turning into “warring factions” that cannot settle on a coherent strategy. Iranians were already known for being exceptionally slow negotiators, but the problem has become more acute and the Trump administration has only itself — and its pursuit of regime change in Iran — to blame. Read more.
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Gerrymander-mania: Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that allows the Democratic-controlled state legislature to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats in the state argued this was necessary to counter the gerrymanders ordered up by Trump in Republican-led states, but the real work is yet to come, Paul Waldman says. If the Democrats’ goal is to force Republicans to come to the table and negotiate a truce, then the counter-gerrymanders will work. IfRepublicans refuse to back down, however, Democrats will have to make a tough decision on whether to continue their own. Read more.
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Turning point: Tennessee state lawmakers advanced a bill they are calling the “Charlie Kirk Act,” named after the Turning Point USA co-founder who was assassinated while speaking on a Utah campus in September. The bill mandates suspensions for coordinated walkouts by students and banners displayed in protest to a campus speaker. The law “does nothing to promote dialogue,” Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones argues, and instead “weaponizes state authority” to silence people with an alternative point of view. The bill is especially ironic given professors in the state were expelled or suspended for not mourning Kirk after his death, Jones argues. Read more.
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Anti-democratic: In November, more than two-thirds of New Orleans voters chose Calvin Duncan, a jailhouse lawyer who was imprisoned for 28 years for a murder he did not commit, as clerk of the criminal district court. But the Louisiana legislature is now racing to pass a bill that would eliminate the office, in a move clearly aimed at reducing Black political strength, Jarvis DeBerry argues. The bill would eliminate his office, which maintains the records in a busy criminal court, handing over those duties to the civil court clerk. Knowing the future of his office was in doubt, Duncan defiantly took the oath of office Tuesday ahead of his May 4 start. Read more.
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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson apologized on his podcast for supporting Trump, criticizing the war on Iran and calling the president “out of control.” But his apology “feels false” after decades of profiting from sexist and violent rhetoric, argues Lyz Lenz, who wrote the definitive profile of the right-wing pundit in 2018. Lenz writes that she tried talking to Carlson about how his rhetoric led to her divorce, as her husband mimicked his talking points. “I wanted Carlson to see, just for a moment, what his show was doing to average people in red states. How this wasn’t just a rhetorical game,” Lenz writes. But Carlson deflected. “He didn’t want to listen to anyone but himself.” Until he learns to truly accept the consequences of his actions, no apology should be accepted, she argues. Read the column here.
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This week on “The Best People,” Nicolle Wallace is joined by civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill to discuss the uneven neutrality in the media, America’s obsession with wealth and how the threats to democracy go beyond Donald Trump — they are everywhere in our culture. Listen now and subscribe to MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening and bonus content.
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In the latest episode of “Main Justice,” MS NOW Legal Analysts Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord speak with former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sunita Doddamani, one of the prosecutors fired by the Justice Department without warning. Plus, they discuss the Trump administration’s move to vacate convictions of four Proud Boys connected to the Jan. 6 attack and the civil finding that the president’s Jan. 6 speech was political rather than official in nature. Listen now, and subscribe to MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for ad-free listening and bonus content.
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