(The Daily Signal)—The Secret Service missed several opportunities to stop the first attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in July, according to a Senate report released a day after the second such attempt on Trump’s life at his golf club in Florida.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a 22-page report Monday that says the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the FBI all failed to answer the public’s questions about the first attempted assassination of Trump on July13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“In response, Senator Hawley personally visited the Butler, Pennsylvania rally site to interview whistleblowers, opened up a whistleblower tip line, and encouraged those with relevant information to tell their stories,” the Hawley report says. “Since then, many individuals have come forward with information regarding the events of July 13—from the Secret Service, DHS, and local law enforcement, as well as private citizens.”
The Secret Service contends that it is working with members of Congress on oversight of the July 13 shooting, which clipped Trump’s right ear, killed one rallygoer, and wounded two others.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the senator’s report and will continue to work with congressional oversight committees in both the House and the Senate,” Secret Service spokesperson Nate Herring told The Daily Signal in an email responding to an inquiry about the Hawley report.
Here are top takeaways from the new report on the attempt to kill Trump in Pennsylvania.
1. ‘Gunman Would Have Been Handcuffed in the Parking Lot’
The Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division didn’t perform a normal evaluation of the Butler site, the whistleblower alleged. The division performs threat assessments of event sites involving protectees.
“The whistleblower stated that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder,” the report says.
The whistleblower said the Secret Service had ordered significant cuts to the division that could include reducing manpower by up to 20%.
Secret Service personnel also expressed alarm that individuals were admitted to the Pennsylvania rally without vetting. The whistleblower alleged that those who raised such concerns faced retaliation.
2. ‘Former President, and Not the Incumbent’
The Hawley report notes that during a Senate hearing July 30, Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the Secret Service, testified: “If you’re talking about Butler, Pennsylvania, all assets requested were approved.”
However, the whistleblower told Hawley’s office that countersniper teams and countersurveillance resources were not included in the request because Secret Service officials told the requesting agents that such requests would be denied.
The Secret Service denied the requests for additional security in part because Trump was “not the incumbent” president.
“The whistleblower alleged that officials within this office preemptively informed the Pittsburgh field office that the Butler rally was not going to receive additional security resources because Trump is a former president, and not the incumbent president or vice president,” the report says.
The whistleblower said the manpower request didn’t include extra security resources because agents on the ground were told not to ask for them in the first place, according to the report.
“Importantly, these resources included countersniper teams and CSD personnel,” the report says.
Members of Congress have questioned why Trump didn’t have more protection after the first assassination attempt July 13.
On Sunday, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters that since Trump isn’t a sitting president, Secret Service coverage was limited.
“If he was [the sitting president], we would have had this entire golf course surrounded,” Bradshaw said.
During a Monday afternoon press conference, Rowe talked about both the July and September attempts on Trump’s life.
“Coming out of Butler, I have ordered a paradigm shift,” Rowe said during a press conference Monday. “The Secret Service’s protective methodologies work. And they are sound. And we saw that yesterday. But the way we are positioned right now in this dynamic threat environment, it has given me guidance to say, ‘you know what, we need to look at what our protective methodology is.’ We need to get out of a reactive model and get to a preparedness model.”
3. ‘Known to Be Incompetent’
One whistleblower asserted that the Secret Service agent in charge of the Butler rally was responsible for mitigating line-of-sight concerns at the site.
Another whistleblower alleged the same lead agent at the rally made decisions that “likely compromised the overall security of the event.”
“The Secret Service’s lead site agent on July 13—the agent with specific responsibility for the security of the rally site, including line-of-sight concerns—was known to be incompetent,” the report says. “That incompetence led to the placement of items like flags around the Butler stage and catwalk, impairing visibility.”
The report continues:
For example, campaign material such as flags were permitted to be placed around the stage and catwalk used by the former president, despite the fact that these items were typically prohibited because of how they affected the line-of-sight of those agents responsible for identifying threats.
The Secret Service also did not check IDs when issuing credentials that authorize access to restricted areas of the site, contrary to typical practice.
4. ‘Loose’ Security for Trump
The government whistleblower informed Hawley’s office that the Secret Service considered Trump’s July 13 rally a “loose” security event.
Among other things, this meant that “detection canines were not deployed to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner for outdoor campaign rallies,” the Hawley report says.
The report also says that individuals “without proper designations” could access backstage areas at the Pennsylvania rally.
“DHS personnel failed to properly police the 5-foot security buffer near the stage and allowed people to move barricades around the buffer,” the report says, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of the Secret Service. Further, the whistleblower said, DHS personnel were not familiar with security protocols for campaign events.
“The whistleblower further alleged that the majority of DHS personnel working the rally were agents with the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) team,” the report continues.
5. ‘Abandoned the Roof’
The whistleblower told Hawley’s office that there was supposed to be a security presence on the roof of what is called AGR Building 6, where the would-be assassin aimed and fired shots at Trump, killing one man, striking two other men, and grazing the right ear of the former president as he spoke onstage.
That rooftop was supposed to be covered by personnel, the whistleblower said, “but the post was abandoned because of the hot weather.”
During the Senate hearing July 30, Hawley questioned Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director, about this point.
Rowe replied that law enforcement was “posted up inside” Building 6. He said “we’re going to ensure that state and local countersnipers are on roofs.”
Hawley pressed whether law enforcement officers had abandoned their post on the roof. Rowe replied that he did not “know that to be a fact.”
6. No Drone Coverage
On July 25, Hawley wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about a whistleblower allegation that drone coverage for the Trump rally had been denied by Secret Service supervisors.
The report provides more information on the matter.
“The whistleblower alleged that the night before the rally, Secret Service personnel repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” the report says. “According to the whistleblower, the drones that were offered to the Secret Service could not only identify active shooters but also help neutralize them.”
After the shooting, Secret Service personnel asked local law enforcement to deploy the drone technology to survey the site, the whistleblower told Hawley’s office.
The 20-year-old would-be assassin used his own drone to survey the rally area up to two hours before Trump took the stage.
7. ‘Poorly Secured’ Hospital
After the July 13 shooting, Secret Service agents rushed the stage to shield Trump before taking him to Butler Memorial Hospital for medical treatment.
Although the campaign rally wasn’t adequately secured, neither was the hospital, the whistleblower told Hawley’s office.
“The hospital site where former President Trump received treatment after the shooting was poorly secured, and the hospital site agent could not answer basic questions about site security,” the report says.
The report later adds: “The Secret Service site agent responsible for hospital security did not know what was going on and could not answer basic questions about site security.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
