Global Leaders React to Shooting Incident at White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner

Welcome to the Daily News Brief, CFR’s flagship morning newsletter summarizing the top global news and analysis of the day. 

Top of the Agenda

The gunman who attempted to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner where Trump was speaking on Saturday is due to appear in federal court today. After the shooter exchanged gunfire with security officers outside the event, U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News that preliminary investigations suggest the shooter “set out to target folks that work in the administration, likely including the president.”

Details of the incident. The Secret Service blocked the shooter from moving toward a hotel ballroom where the president was attending an event alongside thousands of guests. The man was carrying weapons and exchanged fire with the security guards; one law enforcement agent was shot but expected to recover. Trump soon after the incident gave a press conference calling for peace and bipartisanship and saying the attacker appeared to be a “lone wolf”; he also praised the efficacy of the Secret Service. Law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets the suspect is a thirty-one-year old man from California. 

If the motive is confirmed, this would be the third assassination attempt against Trump in the past two years and the first during his current presidency. The incident occurred at the same hotel where President Ronald Reagan was injured in an assassination attempt in 1981.

Domestic and international reactions. Many world leaders issued statements expressing relief that Trump was safe and condemning political violence. “Violence has no place in a democracy,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted, while United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote that attacks on democratic institutions “must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.” U.S. politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties similarly condemned the incident.

“[Political violence] drives fear in communities and among leaders who perceive themselves to be under threat and, in turn, a willingness to accept constraints on civil liberties or wield government power to suppress the danger … But the broad nature of the threat also suggests that if political leaders join forces to condemn political violence, they could push back the tide.”

—the University of Chicago’s Robert A. Pape, Foreign Affairs

Across the Globe

U.S. negotiators’ trip cancelled... Trump called off a trip by his envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal with Iran, he wrote Saturday on social media. He said that time was being wasted and there was “infighting and confusion” on the Iranian side. On Sunday, Trump told Fox that if Iran wanted to talk, “they can call us.” 

…while Iran takes a diplomatic tour. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Islamabad on Saturday and held talks with Pakistan’s prime minister. Araghchi then traveled to Oman on Saturday to discuss efforts to end the Iran war, Iran’s foreign ministry said. After returning to Pakistan yesterday, he is in Russia today for more talks. 

Sharing Iron Dome. Israel sent components of its Iron Dome missile defense system, including troops to operate it, to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the early days of the war, unnamed Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios. It was the first time Israel had done so for any other country. Israel normalized ties with the UAE in 2020. In the current war, Iran has targeted the UAE more than any other country in the region.

New scrutiny for U.S. green cards. New Trump administration guidance says permanent residency applicants can be rejected for actions including participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests, criticizing Israel on social media, or disrespecting the U.S. flag, the New York Times reported Friday. A White House spokesperson characterized the administration’s stance as unrelated to free speech and meant to protect U.S. national security and citizens’ security.  

World military spending. Global military spending rose 2.9 percent in real terms in 2025 to almost $2.9 trillion, driven mostly by increases in Europe and Asia, respectively, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a new report today. That means 2.5 percent of world GDP is being spent on defense, the highest percent since 2009. The United States is still the world’s largest military spender, but its overall spending dropped 7.5 percent last year mostly due to no new aid for Ukraine—while U.S. allies’ spending, notably for NATO countries, went up.

Mali’s defense minister killed. Defense Minister Sadio Camara died in a wave of coordinated attacks across the country by separatists and extremist groups, state television announced. A separatist movement in the country’s north teamed up with al-Qaeda–linked militants to stage the attacks, members of those groups said Saturday. Russia, an ally of Mali’s junta, condemned the attacks.

Alleged Chinese hacker extradited. Italy’s government has extradited Xu Zewei, a Chinese man that the U.S. government accused of trying to steal confidential information about COVID-19 vaccines, Xu’s lawyer told the Financial Times. China’s foreign ministry said today it was “strongly dissatisfied” with the incident and claimed the United States was “fabricating cases.” Xu was arrested last year at a Milan airport on a U.S. warrant.

North Korea-Russia ties. Russian officials pledged to sign a military cooperation plan supporting North Korean defense from 2027 to 2031 during a high-level visit to Pyongyang, Russian news agencies reported yesterday. Russia’s defense minister and legislative speaker led the delegation, which attended a memorial for North Korean troops killed fighting against Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region. 

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