Secret Service Director Resigns

Happy Wednesday! It’s been a rough few weeks for America, but as proof that there are still good things in the world, college football “Week Zero” is now only one month away. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will address the country from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. ET, making his first official public remarks since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race over the weekend. Biden returned to Washington on Tuesday after recovering from COVID-19 at his residence in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—among the last high-ranking Democratic holdouts—endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday for the Democratic nomination for president. “Vice President Harris has done a truly impressive job securing the majority of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination,” Schumer said. “So now that the process has played out, from the grass roots, bottom up, we are here today to throw our support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.” Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is willing to debate Harris, and more than once, if she becomes the Democratic nominee. 
• Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, 10 days after the failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and just one day after she faced a grilling from members of the House Oversight Committee. Cheatle had rejected calls for her resignation during the hearing. “The scrutiny over the last week has been intense and will continue to remain as our operational tempo increases,” she wrote in her resignation letter on Tuesday. “As your Director, I take full responsibility for the security lapse.” President Biden said Tuesday an independent review continues and that he will appoint a new director. House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also announced the creation of a bipartisan task force—seven Republicans and six Democrats, with subpoena authority—to investigate the attempted assassination.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress today, though many Democratic lawmakers are expected to boycott the event. Thousands of protesters are also expected outside the U.S. Capitol, prompting tight security. Netanyahu is set to meet with President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House on Thursday, and with former President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday. 
• Leaders of rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah signed a joint statement in Beijing on Tuesday, agreeing to form a unity government. The statement endorses a temporary government for a Palestinian state that includes Gaza and the West Bank, though neither the statement nor Hamas and Fatah officials offered a timetable or plan for how to implement the regime. The statement would be difficult to implement, given the two factions’ history of tense relations—including a civil war in 2007—as well as Israel’s intention to eliminate Hamas’ operations in Gaza.
• The government of Moscow announced on Tuesday it would offer a bonus of 1.9 million rubles—equivalent to about $22,000—to city residents if they joined Russia’s military. In its announcement, Moscow officials also mentioned new military recruits will receive over 5.2 million rubles—$59,000—for their first year of service. The move is one of several recent ones by Russia to boost its military forces. The country has allowed some male prisoners to enlist and, as of last month, permits some female prison inmates to do the same.
• Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez reportedly told his staff on Tuesday that he will resign from Congress on August 20. Menendez was convicted earlier this month on 16 federal counts—including bribery, fraud, and acting as a foreign agent—connected to a yearslong bribery scheme that saw him take payoffs from Egyptian businessmen. Several Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Schumer and his fellow senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker, called for his resignation following the conviction and Menendez was facing the threat of expulsion. 
• Delta suspended travel for unaccompanied minors and canceled more than 400 additional flights on Tuesday, as the airline continued to struggle in the wake of Friday’s worldwide IT outage. Commenting on the decision, the Department of Transportation (DOT) told the New York Times it was “extremely concerned” about reports of unaccompanied minors being stranded at airports. The federal agency announced an investigation into the airline, potentially to look into concerns it is not complying with federal passenger protection requirements. “[DOT] has opened an investigation into Delta Air Lines to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted on Tuesday. “All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld.”
• Attorneys representing Donald Trump on Monday appealed a $454 million judgment handed down in February in his New York civil fraud trial, arguing the case stems from a “power-grab” by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James. “[The New York Court]’s erroneous decisions, if upheld, would bestow upon [James] limitless power to target anyone she desires, including her self-described political opponents,” Trump’s lawyers argued in the appeal. “Based on the ruling in this case, no company will want to come to New York to do business, and many businesses are fleeing.” In April, Trump was required to post a $175 million bond in order to appeal the decision further. 
• Two landslides in southern Ethiopia on Sunday and Monday left at least 229 people dead as of Tuesday, and local authorities predicted the death toll could continue to rise in the remote, mountainous region in the southern part of the country. The landslides followed days of heavy rains in the region.

Cheatle Calls it Quits

Ten days after what Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle called “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades,” the embattled director—who faced a grilling from members of Congress this week—resigned on Tuesday.

Hours-long congressional testimony on Monday did little to add to the sum of public knowledge about how the would-be assassin got so close to killing former President Donald Trump earlier this month. The heated hearing prompted rare bipartisan cooperation among members of the House Oversight Committee, and though Cheatle on Tuesday heeded calls for her to resign, there are still more questions than answers about the events in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. 

In an email to all Secret Service staff on Tuesday that was leaked to the Washington Post, Cheatle announced that she will resign as director. “The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders and financial infrastructure. On July 13th, we fell short on that mission,” Cheatle wrote in her email to agency employees. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director.”

Prior to Monday’s hearing, there had been a slow drip of new information about the gunman. In the run-up to his attempt on Trump’s life, he apparently looked up news stories about the mass shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan, the phrase “major depressive disorder,” and a list of political figures in both parties including both Trump and President Joe Biden. According to a briefing provided to lawmakers last week, the gunman was first identified by law enforcement as a “person of interest” more than an hour before the shooting took place, and Secret Service snipers first spotted him on a rooftop at 5:52 p.m. ET, a full 20 minutes before he shot at the former president. A New York Times analysis published yesterday found that Secret Service counter-snipers were positioned in a manner that their view of the would-be assassin was likely obscured by trees.

By the end of Monday’s hearing, Cheatle’s resignation appeared to be a fait accompli, as she proved unable—or unwilling—to confirm many more details about the shooting than had already been reported publicly, leaving lawmakers exasperated. But the information she did let slip painted a damning picture.

In an exchange with Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Cheatle said that the Secret Service received communications from local law enforcement about the shooter “somewhere between two and five times” during the hour between him first being identified as a suspicious individual and when he fired at Trump and other rally-goers. However, Cheatle also clarified multiple times that the Secret Service distinguishes between “suspicious” individuals—including those, like the shooter, who bring rangefinders to rallies—and those they perceive to be an imminent threat. After the shooter had been flagged as suspicious, Cheatle said “there were teams that were sent to identify and interview” him, but didn’t go into more detail about the specifics of that activity. In a separate exchange, Cheatle said that the Secret Service changed their assessment of the gunman from “suspicious” to someone who posed an imminent threat only “seconds before the gunfire started.”

Republican lawmakers also pressed Cheatle about the Secret Service’s decision to turn down requests in recent years by the Trump campaign and security detail for additional resources and protection, which a spokesman for the agency had previously denied. In an exchange with Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Cheatle said “there were no requests that were denied” specifically for Trump’s event in Butler, but did not go into specifics about the number of requests from Trump’s detail or his campaign that the Secret Service had previously rejected. 

Cheatle also refuted a number of conspiracy theories that have emerged since the shooting in an exchange with Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois. She denied viral claims that the assassination attempt was staged, or that it was ordered by high-ranking officials inside the federal government. She also said that there was no evidence to support the claim that a foreign state or other entity was involved in the July 13 attack—though there were reportedly separate and unrelated Iranian threats against the former president.

But much more common than new details or substantive answers were evasions and obfuscations that angered committee members on both sides of the aisle. Cheatle would not answer questions from GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona about whether the shooter acted alone, what the Secret Service determined to be the event perimeter, or when law enforcement conducted the last sweep of the roof from which the gunman fired. 

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also asked Cheatle why the secure perimeter was smaller than the range of an AR-15-style rifle, the weapon the would-be assassin used and one of the most common guns in the country. Cheatle avoided answering directly. She also dodged repeated questions from Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida about whether she would fire the agents who failed on July 13.

Though several members had called on Cheatle to resign before the testimony—including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania—those calls grew more strenuous, and more bipartisan, on Monday. Both Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Moskowitz called on Cheatle to resign during the hearing, alongside Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Pat Fallon of Texas, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

In a rare bipartisan move for the Oversight Committee—which, during this Congress, was previously most well-known for its investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings—both the Republican Chair James Comer of Kentucky and Democratic Ranking Member Jamie Raskin of Maryland released a joint letter after the hearing calling on Cheatle to step down. “Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders,” Comer and Raskin wrote. “In the middle of a presidential election, the Committee and the American people demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing. We call on you to resign as Director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis.”

On Tuesday, they got their wish, with Cheatle taking accountability for the catastrophic failure. But institutional problems at the Secret Service likely go much deeper than Cheatle, who had only been director of the agency since September 2022. In 2011, for example, the Secret Service was unaware that a gunman shot at the White House while the Obamas were in the residence just 650 yards away. Likewise, in 2014, the Secret Service allowed an attacker with a knife to jump over the fence and make his way inside the building before he was eventually subdued inside of the executive mansion. In 2019, the Secret Service permitted a Chinese woman to enter Mar-a-Lago with a thumb drive infected with malware. Most recently, in 2023, an intoxicated man evaded Secret Service agents and broke into the home of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Congress isn’t dropping the matter just because Cheatle resigned. On Tuesday, Johnson and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced the creation of a bipartisan House taskforce of seven Republicans and six Democrats to investigate the security failures that led up to the assassination attempt and propose solutions to those issues. Biden vowed to name Cheatle’s successor “soon.” Meanwhile, according to a Washington Post report Tuesday evening, the Secret Service has asked the Trump campaign to refrain from holding large rallies outdoors.

Despite the obfuscations and vague responses, what is clear from the hearing is that the country narrowly averted disaster two weeks ago. “I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 6:30 at night. You know what the result was? Fifteen out of 16 kill shots,” Rep. Fallon of Texas said of his attempt to recreate the events of July 13. “The one I missed would have hit the president’s ear. That’s a 94 percent success rate, and that shooter was a better shot than me.”

Worth Your Time

• Writer and commentator Anne Applebaum joined Tim Mak of the Counteroffensive Substack to discuss her new book, Autocracy, Inc. “The reason why the book has that title is that I spent a long time searching for a metaphor,” she told Mak. “The relationship between modern autocracies: they are not an alliance, they are not a bloc. I don’t even think they’re an axis because axis implies some kind of coordinated activity. What they are more like is a huge international conglomerate within which there are separate companies that cooperate when it suits them, but otherwise do their own thing. And I think that’s the best way to describe a group of countries who have nothing in common ideologically. You have communist China, nationalist Russia, theocratic Iran, Bolivarian socialist Venezuela. … Unlike the most famous dictators of the 20th century, most of the leaders of these countries are very interested in money, and in hiding money, and in enriching people around them.”
• In Law & Liberty, Titus Techera reflected on the life and legacy of comedian Bob Newhart, who passed away last week at the age of 94. “Bob suffered the absurdities of modern life and made the middle-class man into a dignified figure, not despite but because he was put upon,” Techera wrote. Newhart unleashed his deadpan demeanor and keen cultural observations onto legions of fans through his hit comedy albums and equally successful sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart. “I think the great affection for and the lasting fame of Bob Newhart owes to the fact that he was something modern Americans especially need, an avuncular figure who is not in the grip of foolish passion. Perhaps people are looking at some level for guidance, not just reassurance. It’s perhaps the best way to remember Bob—a rare mix of wit, the artistic mischief-making required for good storytelling, and a mild temper. Something for everyone to like, and therefore something to bring everyone together.”

Presented Without Comment

The Hill: [Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki] Haley Sends Cease-and-Desist to ‘Haley Voters for Harris’ Group

“Kamala Harris and I are total opposites on every issue. Any attempt to use my name to support her or her agenda is deceptive and wrong,” Haley said. “I support Donald Trump because he understands we need to make America strong, safe, and prosperous.”

Also Presented Without Comment

Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2024: Elon Musk Has Said He is Committing Around $45 Million a Month to a New Pro-Trump Super PAC

Fortune, July 23, 2024: Elon Musk Denies Reported $45 Million a Month Pledge to Trump, Says He Doesn’t ‘Subscribe to Cult of Personality’

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Flips Onto its Side After Crash Along Suburban Chicago Highway

In the Zeitgeist

The one and only Snoop Dogg will carry the Olympic torch on the last leg before it reaches the Eiffel Tower on Friday to light the Olympic Cauldron at the opening ceremonies. The rapper confirmed the news in a tweet on Tuesday: “U gots to do it!! 👊🏿🇺🇸🔥🔥🏃🏿🥇🇫🇷 Will u be watchin?? #FollowTheDogg #ParisOlympics” 

We hope that means we will get to experience some of his sparkling sports commentary in the coming weeks, too:

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick argued (🔒) that the burgeoning right-wing theory that Biden’s decision to step down was actually a “coup” is malarkey. 
• On the podcasts: A.B. Stoddard joins Jonah on The Remnant to take a victory lap for having sounded the bell early on Biden’s age. 
• On the site: Charlotte reports on Israel’s reaction to the recent drone attack on Tel Aviv, Kevin files his final reflection from the National Conservatism conference after it was bumped twice by breaking news, Jonathan Ruhe dives into the failures of the Biden administration’s Iran policy given Antony Blinken’s recent comments about the country’s nuclear program, and Jonah argues that Democrats shouldn’t get too worked up about ignoring “the will of the voters” because primaries are bad anyway.

Let Us Know

What reforms would you like to see the Secret Service make to better secure its protectees and regain the confidence of lawmakers and the American people?