SHOTS FIRED:  What happens when a gunman interrupts a black tie dinner attended by the President in a room full of journalists? They get up from their salad and cover the story.

  A gunman sprinted through security Saturday Night at the Washington Hilton Hotel where the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner was being held. Shots were fired and a Secret Service agent was hit in his protective vest but the shooter was tackled. It was amazing how quickly the lobby and ballroom were flooded with security officers, many of them armed with machine guns.

  Hundreds of people in the ballroom hit the floor but the reporters also immediately called their offices to report what was happening. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he was in the lobby when shots were fired and he was immediately flattened by security officers.

  When some of the confusion had settled, Correspondents Associate President Weijia Jiang of CBS News somewhat emotionally announced that the dinner was called off but that, “On a night when we are thinking about the freedoms and the first amendment we must also think about how fragile they are. I saw all of you reporting, and that’s what we do.”

  Attendants at the event heard noise coming from the lobby. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance were swarmed by security and quickly hustled out.

  At a press conference later in the evening Trump was unusually gracious to the press but it was only moments before he said it was events like this that made it a matter of national security to build his new White House Ballroom. “It’s drone proof, it’s got bullet proof glass, we need the ballroom,” he said.

  The gunman was identified as  Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California. Allen is believed to have been a guest at the hotel and was carrying knives, a shotgun, and a handgun, officials said.  He has said his “targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” according to a note that law enforcement attributed to him.  They said he had posted anti-Trump messages.

  Asked at the press conference why he appears to be the target of so many assassination attempts, Trump said, “The people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact are the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much.” And then he said, “We’ve taken this country. We were a laughing stock. And now we’re the hottest country in the world.”

THE WAR ROOM: President Trump on Saturday cancelled the trip to Pakistan by his negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff because Iran had handed over a “paper that should have been better,” presumably referring to a peace proposal.

  “They can call me,” Trump told reporters. “We have all the cards. We’ve won everything.” Not everything. The US has not won undisputed control of the vital Strait of Hormuz, nor has it won a surrender or even some kind of treaty with Iran.

  The President said, “They offered a lot but not enough,” and that, “We’re not going to be traveling 15, 16 hours to have a meeting with people that nobody ever heard of.” 

INFINITE SCROLL:

— Scientists on the independent board that guides the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were fired on Friday by President Trump.  Members of the National Science Board, which helps govern the National Science Foundation, were told in a memo that they were fired immediately.

 One fired board member said, it’s “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”

— The Trump administration is making it easier to deport immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA. It was created in 2012 under the Obama administration to protect people who were children, even babies, when they were brought into the US.

— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the ombudsman of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes after she objected to his takeover of editorial content of the paper. Jacqueline Smith said in a published column that, “Pete Hegseth doesn’t want you to see cartoons in this newspaper anymore.”

  Hegseth issues a decree that the paper would no longer publish syndicated material, including news from the Associated Press and cartoons. They had printed eight pages of color cartoons every Sunday. Stars and Stripes is partially funded by the Defense Department and many of its staff are DOD employees, but Congress ordered decades ago that the paper must have editorial independence from the military. 

THE SPIN RACK: A measles outbreak in South Carolina has grown to 1,000 cases. Most are unvaccinated children. — Residents of Archbald, Pennsylvania, once a busy coal mining area, are distraught over plans for the building of seven data centers that would cover about 14 percent of the town’s territory.  The Washington Post reports that those campuses would include 51 data warehouses each about the size of a Walmart Supercenter, and seven buildings of more than a million square feet. — Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla are expected to visit President Trump today. He has not scheduled a visit with his son Harry, who lives in California. The royal family is great at royal and lousy at family. — Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe yesterday became the first runner to break through the two-hour mark, doing the London Marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds on Sunday.

BELOW THE FOLD:  President Trump berated CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell last night on “60 Minutes” after she quoted Saturday night’s shooting suspect who had written in a manifesto that, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

  Trump responded, “Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people.” He said, “Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”