May. 24, 2026, 8:22 AM EDT

U.S. Secret Service officers shot a man after he opened fire at a security checkpoint outside the White House on Saturday evening, the Secret Service said in a statement. The gunman, who had previous encounters with the Secret Service, was taken to a hospital, where he later died, the agency said.

A bystander was also shot in the incident, the Secret Service said, and it’s unclear whether the bystander was struck by the gunman or an officer.

The bystander was rushed to the hospital in serious condition and underwent surgery, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge told MS NOW. The source described the bystander as a young male but did not know if he was an adult.

No Secret Service personnel were injured in the shooting, the agency said.

President Donald Trump was at the White House during the incident but was “not impacted,” the Secret Service said.

The president, who had announced on Friday his plans to be at the White House this weekend, posted on social media after midnight early Sunday morning, thanking Secret Service and law enforcement for their work and noting the gunman had what he called a “violent history and possible obsession” with the White House. Trump also mentioned last month’s White House correspondents’ dinner shooting and said Saturday’s incident underscores his desire for “the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built” in Washington.

The suspected gunman has been identified as 21-year-old Nasire Best, two sources briefed on the matter told MS NOW. He was taken to George Washington University Hospital, where the Secret Service said he later died, according to the sources.

Best had encounters with the Secret Service last summer and had an order to stay away from the White House, the sources said. He has a history of mental health issues, the sources said.

The shooting Saturday occurred shortly after 6 p.m. ET at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, a few hundred feet from the White House, according to the Secret Service.

“A preliminary investigation indicates that as the individual approached, he removed a weapon from his bag and began firing at posted officers,” according to the Secret Service statement. The incident is under investigation.

Journalists working at the White House on Saturday reported hearing a series of gunshots and were told to seek shelter inside the press briefing room. Secret Service officers kept them from leaving. More than two dozen shots could be heard on video recorded by ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selena Wang.

In a social media postFBI Director Kash Patel said the FBI is “on the scene and supporting Secret Service responding to shots fired near White House grounds.”

The Metropolitan Police Department said it is working alongside the Secret Service to investigate the incident. Special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are also on the scene, the bureau posted on X.

The gunfire Saturday comes nearly a month after what law enforcement authorities said was an attempted assassination of the president on April 25 as he attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at a Washington hotel. Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, California, recently pleaded not guiltyto charges that he attempted to kill Trump and remains in federal custody.

A little more than a week later, Secret Service officers shot a suspect they said had fired at officers near the Washington Monument, also near the White House. Michael Marx, 45, of Midland, Texas, was charged in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in connection with the May 4 shooting. A teenage bystander was wounded in that incident.

May. 24, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

On the surface, it might appear that President Donald Trump is obsessed with being popular. He insists that his poll numbers are fantastic and rages against any poll showing otherwise. He likes to claim that his actions and statements are supported by all. (“When people hear me say it, everybody agrees.”) After a lifetime spent in endless pursuit of attention and validation, he must surely desire popularity above almost anything.

If that was once true, it no longer is the case. In fact, it’s hard to think of a president who cared as little about being popular as Donald Trump does now.

Other presidents have taken political risks, but they thought they were serving a higher cause — saving lives, solving deep-rooted problems or safeguarding America’s interests. Today, Trump is making himself less popular on an almost daily basis, for the pettiest of reasons. His approval rating has plunged into the 30s, and he doesn’t seem to care. Americans think the economy is terrible, and Trump seems indifferent. Instead, he’s putting his time and attention into a series of projects that could not be better designed to make him look corrupt and out of touch.

First among them is his gold-plated ballroom, which two-thirds of the public opposes. Then there’s the gargantuan arch he wants to build in Virginia. Now, Trump’s Justice Department has announced the creation of a $1.8 billion slush fund for supporters of his who say the government was mean to them — including those who rampaged through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

That last item was too much even for many Republicans in Congress. “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” Sen. Mitch McConnell said. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.” When Blanche met with Republican senators to talk about it, the response was “incredibly hostile,” Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio reports.

Amid an unpopular war, the unpopular gas prices, the unpopular ballroom and the unpopular slush fund, congressional Republicans are feeling that Trump is hanging them out to dry. “Our majority is melting down before our eyes,” one Republican senator told Desiderio.

Rather than saving that majority, Trump is undertaking a campaign of revenge against fellow Republicans who have crossed him. This effort has been successful, because primaries are dominated by the most intense partisans and the Republican voters with doubts about Trump are more likely to stay home. So he has purged state senators in Indiana who declined his order to redraw their congressional maps; Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to remove him after Jan. 6; and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a far-right libertarian who helped force the release of the Epstein files.

What’s so striking about this quest for vengeance is that it only hurts Trump’s own image and Republicans’ prospects in November. It doesn’t get Republicans more seats — he’s replacing one Republican with another. It makes Trump look petty and vindictive. And given his abysmal popularity, reinforcing the idea that every Republican is a Trump Republican won’t do those running in swing districts and states any favors.

In the latest move, Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn in the state’s Senate race. Cornyn has been a loyal foot soldier to Trump, but either his enthusiasm for MAGA wasn’t florid enough or Trump feels a particular affinity with Paxton’s long list of political and personal scandals. Whatever the reason, Cornyn would probably win relatively easily, while Paxton’s nomination (likely after Trump’s endorsement) gives Democrats a real chance of nabbing the seat.

That’s why multiple Republican senators expressed their dismay at Trump’s endorsement. “I don’t understand it,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. “How does that help strengthen the president’s hand when we lose a state like Texas?”

Indeed, if Trump were trying to engineer a defeat in November for his party, it’s hard to imagine what he would be doing differently. Where does this indifference to both his own standing and the political fortunes of his party come from? He may have a version of senioritis, the way students stop caring about classes as the end of high school approaches. Trump does care about his legacy, but as far as he’s concerned, that legacy isn’t written in legislation or policy victories; it’s physical and tangible. If he’s loathed by two-thirds of the public when he departs the White House, it may not matter to Trump so long as there are gigantic buildings with his name on them.

Even more, Trump may see this indifference to the public’s judgment as a kind of liberation. He spent a lifetime attempting to free himself of any and all constraints, so he can do whatever he wants. Before he was president, it was the constraints of the law, ethics, convention and civility that vexed him; in politics it’s the law and ethics (again), political norms, international alliances and agreements, the bureaucracy, Congress and the courts. The political interest of his own party, and even his own popularity? That’s just one more thing tying him down. And he’s going to cut those cords.

Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.

May. 24, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

I am a virologist. I have spent much of my career studying high-consequence microbes such as the Ebola virus, Lassa fever virus and hantaviruses, including the Andes species confirmed in the recent outbreak. My goal has always been to understand how such viruses make us sick and to use that information to develop treatments or, ideally, to prevent infections altogether.

In this type of work, governmental support for research is critical. The potential threat of outbreaks is clear in recent headlines about the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ugandaand, closer to home, one of the American cruise ship passengers potentially exposed to the hantavirus outbreak being ordered to remain in quarantine facilities in Nebraska.

In 2020, a group of colleagues and I studying hantaviruses were approved for five years of funding through the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases program. We closely collaborated with Argentine scientists on a newly emerged hantavirus closely related to the Andes virus found in rodents that had already caused disease in humans. Unfortunately, as priorities shifted at NIH, the program was not renewed last year.

Although much remains to be learned about hantaviruses, there are some things we know:

Typically, hantavirus infections are the result of direct or airborne contact with rodents or their excrement; the outbreak traced to the MV Hondius cruise ship is associated with one of the more severe species, the Andes virus. It is known to circulate in rodents found in southern South America, mainly in Argentina and Chile. It is the only hantavirus with documented person-to-person spread and has a long incubation period — up to eight weeks.

Most of my work with hantaviruses has been in the setting of a high-containment laboratory where the virus can be safely studied and tested. Hantavirus infections with a variety of strains occur all over the world and are rare — the United States averages 10 to 20 cases a year. But in Argentina, there has been a steady increase in cases, presumably from changes in rodent populations. Infections have progressed to very serious disease in some people. We do not really understand yet what mild infections look like for the Andes virus or how often they occur.

Often, colleagues and I also work with highly trained field biologists with expertise in rodent ecology who help us better understand how changes in rodent behavior can impact the risk to humans. Such research can offer information about how long a specific virus strain has been circulating and whether it has spilled over into humans — data crucial to navigating current and future outbreaks.

While situations like the MV Hondius outbreak are rare, they underscore why investment in the research necessary to understand these pathogens is critical. While there has been some financial support by government agencies to develop a few candidate drugs and vaccines for medically important hantaviruses, none are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and it is not clear if there is a large enough market to incentivize Big Pharma. That leaves no options for prevention or treatment for those living in or traveling to areas where these viruses circulate.

And in our increasingly interconnected world, more and more viruses circulate. Expanded access to previously remote areas means greater risks of encountering exotic wildlife and the microbes they carry. Debates about deforestation and wildlife habitat disruption tied to agriculture plans or infrastructure development such as roads or pipelines tend to focus on typical interactions and consequences. Outbreaks remind us that we have to consider worst-case scenarios, too, when disrupting the natural world. Some local health specialists think Argentina’s increase in Andes virus cases in recent years is tied to changes in temperature, part of climate change, that are contributing to expansion of rodent populations.

Travel, too, can result in the importation of highly pathogenic viruses. This is not a new problem but one our society is woefully unprepared to deal with. A case of Lassa fever in Iowa in 2024 resulted in 180 contacts though just one fatality. During the Ebola outbreak a decade before thatthere were two fatalities in the U.S., though rapid identification and contact tracing helped contain the spread. In 2018, another Andes virus case was imported to the U.S. by a vacationer. As with the recent casesthere were limited treatment options available for these patients or their close contacts.

Although some research has been done on the Andes virus, there is still much to learn about how it behaves in the context of an outbreak. Among my top questions as a virologist concerned about future outbreaks:

Are there other hantaviruses related to the Andes virus circulating that can cause disease in humans? Can humans carry the virus or shed it without symptoms? Can the virus adapt to become more transmissible among humans, as we have observed with SARS-COV-2? And, most important, can we develop and license drugs or vaccines to stop this and other viruses from causing more harm?

Addressing these questions and the inevitable follow-ups requires ongoing support of national governments. Programs such as the NIH/NIAID CREID program, the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Infectious Disease program, the NIH Fogarty International Center and others have offered critical support for collaborative research to scientists worldwide. This work has helped answer similar questions for a host of other emerging viruses and has generated data critical for addressing these high-priority pathogens when they emerge. That benefits people around the globe.

The French microbiologist Louis Pasteur said, “In the fields of observation, chance only favors the mind which is prepared.” Outbreaks like the one on the MV Hondius will continue to happen. The only way we will be ready when they occur is by continuing to invest in the scientific research necessary to ensure we understand the risks and have the means to respond.

Robert W. Cross, Ph.D., MPH, is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. His research is centered on the biology and pathogenesis of high priority viral agents.