No Violence. No Demagoguery. No Kings.

Trump hasn’t given the order to resume bombing yet, but the ceasefire with Iran seems to be dying a death of a thousand cuts. Hezbollah announced today, per the New York Times, that it will not “relinquish its weapons,” and Israel and the group continue to trade attacks despite the reported terms of the U.S.–Iran ceasefire.

Some quick bookkeeping: Sam and Will Sommer will be going live on YouTube and Substack at 10 a.m. EDT for MAGA Mondays—albeit a bleaker one than usual in the wake of Saturday’s attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Happy Monday.

How Trump Intends to Exploit the Moment

by William Kristol

I should begin with the obvious: I condemn Saturday night’s act of violence at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and I am grateful that no one, including President Trump, was killed.

Last Wednesday, after the vote here in Virginia on redistricting, I wrote that I was proud to be part of “a movement that does what it has to do—peacefully and legally and democratically—in defense of fair elections and liberal democracy.” I repeat: “peacefully and legally and democratically.”

We should be proud to be part of a civic and political movement that unequivocally rejects violence. Which this pro-democracy movement does. To take one example, the No Kings homepage states that “A core principle behind all No Kings events is commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events.”

So when MAGA propagandists try tar eight million Americans who peacefully and lawfully exercised their right of assembly last month at No Kings protests, using a report that shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen may have attended one of those protests, we should dismiss the smear with scorn.

We should also be proud to be part of a movement that doesn’t make light of violent attacks on political opponents, as President Trump and his supporters did after the 2022 assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul. We should be proud to be part of a movement that doesn’t celebrate the death of public servants, as President Trump did a month ago: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people.”

And we should be proud to be part of a movement that will not be cowed by attempts at intimidation. The pro-democracy movement will resist efforts by this administration and its MAGA minions to use Saturday night as an excuse to criminalize political dissent, silence legitimate criticism, and curtail our civil liberties.

Such efforts got underway within hours of the shooting at the Washington Hilton.

On Sunday morning, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said, “I don’t think this should be lost on anyone . . . that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump—in that same week we learn that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate.”

I’d say in response that I don’t think it should be lost on anyone that this is mere demagoguery in defense of the baseless indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and in defense of using Congress’s investigative powers, as Jordan intends to do, to abet DOJ. Of course Jordan doesn’t quite say that there is any connection between the shooter and the SPLC. But he implies one that should not “be lost on anyone.” This is pretty classic McCarthyism—or, for that matter, Trumpism.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) tried to use Saturday night’s incident as an excuse not just to get new funding for the Department of Homeland Security but to increase the power of the Senate Republican majority: “At a moment of national danger, if Democrats refuse to fund DHS, I would say this would be the time to nuke the filibuster for good.”

In fact, Democrats are refusing to provide new funds not for the whole of DHS but merely for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, neither of which has anything to do with Saturday’s shooting, but which have a lot to do with the administration intimidating opponents. But Trump wants more money for those agencies, and he wants to get rid of the filibuster. This fake “moment of national emergency” is the excuse.

And Speaker Mike Johnson intends to try once again this week to move legislation in the House reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without any real civil liberties safeguards.¹ Expect to see him and his lieutenants use this “moment of national danger” to try to overcome opposition to the bill, even though there’s no connection between Section 702 and the events of Saturday night.

More broadly, we should expect a sustained effort in the days and weeks