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WASHINGTON — Directly outside the Washington Hilton ballroom, as the yearly White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner got underway Saturday, a Times reporter had just entered the men’s room when he heard a handful of loud pops ring out.

“Shooter!” someone shouted. “Get down! Shots fired!”

Inside the ballroom, thousands of journalists and politicians began to duck for cover as the event devolved from a celebration of free speech to a scene of fear.

The Times had six reporters at the dinner, seated at a table near the right side of the stage.

The Times reporter in the restroom, Gavin Quinton, heard the gunfire around 8:30 p.m. He had left The Times’ table minutes earlier, moving past the TV cameras and up toward the raised terrace near the ballroom’s security entrance. He crossed paths with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

Outside the restroom, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, had broken into a sprint through the metal detectors, security footage would later show, getting within feet of the ballroom entrance.

Five or six shots fired by Secret Service agents missed Allen before agents brought him down near a staircase leading to the main floor, where Trump sat prominently in view.

A federal agent was hit in the chest in the exchange of gunfire but was wearing a bullet-proof vest and not seriously injured.

Inside the restroom, Quinton crouched near a corner. Others rushed into the room, including three hotel security guards who flung themselves in so quickly their backs slammed against the tiled wall. Within moments, a Secret Service agent positioned himself at the bathroom entrance, his pistol drawn.

“Head count?” he asked.

“A dozen — no, 15!” someone shouted back.

People stayed locked in bathroom stalls. Some tried to overcome the poor cellphone service to call loved ones. Confused, the mix of tuxedo-clad attendees, uniformed hotel guards and waitstaff tried to piece together what had happened.

“He had a gun,” one of the hotel guards said.

Another witness told Quinton that he initially thought Blitzer had been the shooter’s target.

“I look around and I hear shots as I’m opening the door. And I turn and I see him,” the man said of the gunman. “I look again and I’m like, ‘Oh, they just shot someone.’ ”

Blitzer, who was tackled to the floor by officers during the incident, would later say that “the first thing that went through my mind was whether he was going to shoot me.”

As the group speculated over whether the shooter had died in the volley, one man wondered aloud whether the event would continue. Initially thinking the gunman must have been killed, Quinton replied no.

“Why not?” the man asked. “It’s a bad guy who’s dead. It was a good f— ending. Seriously.”

The Washington Hilton has hosted the annual correspondents’ dinner for decades. The event, referred to locally as “Nerd Prom,” now comes with a slate of pre-parties and after-parties.

This was the president’s first appearance at the dinner since 2015; he had skipped it during his entire first term.

Questions now surround the security protocols. Guests faced little screening to enter the hotel on Saturday — a quick flash of a paper ticket — before heading down escalators to the only area with magnetometers, where bags were also searched.

Trump had entered the ballroom at 8:15 p.m. as the Marine band played “Hail to the Chief.”

Twenty minutes later, videos show, Secret Service officers with ballistic vests and long guns barked instructions to clear a path as they rushed into the ballroom and onto the stage.

One agent pulled Vice President JD Vance away. Another escorted Trump, who appeared to trip, but later explained he had been urged to drop to the floor.

Other officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller — were quickly whisked away too.

At The Times’ table in the ballroom, nothing appeared amiss at first.

Waiters had just begun to clear plates of spring pea and burrata salad. The reporters did not hear the gunshots, but watched as the room fell silent and others began to drop from their seats and duck under the floor-length white tablecloths.

One reporter lost a shoe in the process and then feared a gunman would spot it. She dragged it under the table.

They stayed in place for several minutes, texting loved ones and waiting for an all-clear, but none came.

From under the tablecloth, reporters heard someone yell out, “God bless America! USA!” They feared that was the shooter.

It turned out to be Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff. The chant did not catch on.

Eventually, others could be heard speaking loudly and dishes clanking. Guests began to peek out from under their tables and warily stand up. Uneasy laughter flickered about the ballroom.

Cellphone service inside the ballroom was spotty. There was confusion at first about whether a shooting had occurred or whether plates dropping to the floor had been mistaken for gunshots.

“I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump said later.

Just before 9 p.m., Weijia Jiang, a senior White House correspondent for CBS News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Assn., told guests the program would “resume momentarily.”

A half hour later, Jiang returned to the stage and announced that law enforcement had requested guests leave the premises. She said Trump had told her no one was hurt and that he, the first lady and members of the Cabinet were safe.

In closing remarks, Jiang said journalism is a public service “because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis — not away from it.”

“And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms of the 1st Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are,” she said. “I saw all of you reporting, and that’s what we do.”

Law enforcement and media leaders offered conflicting guidance. Quinton was among the first to evacuate the building, though the vast majority of guests waited inside for longer.

On his way out, he noticed a metal detector had already partially been dismantled when the shooter ran through.

Quinton passed the grounded shooter, restrained on his stomach, near the staircase just 20 or so feet from the bathroom entrance. He lifted his phone and recorded a brief, shaky video of the scene before security forced him out of the hotel and onto the street.

The entire spectrum of emotion was on display when security finally ordered everyone to evacuate. Women in gowns ran in fear. One man sobbed into the sleeves of his evening jacket.

Photos on social media showed others stopping to take selfies. Some drank wine straight form the bottle.

Quinton spotted the presidential motorcade outside of the hotel lobby at about 8:45 p.m. Around the same time, an ambulance arrived as about 100 event attendees were escorted out of the secured event perimeter.

More law enforcement was inside the hotel as guests exited the building, including agents from the Secret Service, ATF, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. National Guard soldiers replaced celebrities and politicians at the red carpet entrance.

Outside, Metropolitan police ushered people north on Columbia Road NW. Hungry guests in tuxedos filed into a nearby 7-Eleven. The dinner’s main course — prime beef and Maine lobster — had not been served.

At the White House afterward, Trump said the event would be rescheduled.

“We’re not going to let anybody take over our society,” he told reporters who had rushed to the news conference still dressed in gowns and black tie. “We’re not going to cancel things out because we can’t do that.”

Meanwhile, the night’s after-parties continued, though organizers attempted a more somber tone. MS NOW, for instance, told those who had RSVP’d that their “Democracy After Hours” party would be a “space for friends and colleagues to be together.”

Independent journalist Tara Palmeri posted a photo on the social media site X of a full party with blue mood lighting.

“People were still partying, still hitting WHCD afterparties last night,” she wrote. “Epstein corruption, an escalating Iran conflict, and an active shooter— and Washington just… kept going. The cognitive dissonance is the system.”

On Sunday morning, the Washington Hilton appeared back to normal, except for the presence of journalists using the hotel as a backdrop for their live shots.

WASHINGTON — An attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner by a gunman who came within feet of the ballroom where President Trump sat raised immediate questions about the night’s security protocol — and the future of large, high-profile events in a country with easy access to firearms and increasingly high political tensions.

The man breached metal detectors in front of the Washington Hilton ballroom and sprinted dozens of feet ahead before exchanging fire with federal agents. Shots were fired in an anteroom that had not an hour before seen thousands of guests, including senior government officials, streaming through.

A manifesto allegedly written by the suspect described his targets as members of the Trump administration, ranking from the highest to the lowest — but said he was willing to “go through” any guest standing in his way in order to kill the president’s aides.

The attempted attack on a room full of dignitaries underscored domestic unrest in Trump’s second term and deepened questions about how to effectively create security in a modern era of lone actors, online radicalization and mass shootings. It was the third known time an attempted assassin has come close to Trump since his 2024 presidential campaign began.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday called the U.S. Secret Service response a “massive security success story.” But within hours of the incident, bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee demanded a hearing on the agency’s security plans for the dinner.

In the manifesto sent to his family, the alleged gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, marveled at a lack of security.

“No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”

The Hilton, in a ritzy Washington neighborhood, has long hosted the White House correspondents’ dinner. It is the same hotel where President Reagan and three others were shot in 1981.

The shooting caused terror among guests, some of whom noted they had expected more security to enter the event and Trump was whisked offstage within the first minute of shots being fired. While the event has traditionally hosted sitting presidents in the past, Trump’s decision this year to appear for the first time since taking office made the event particularly high profile.

His presence, alongside Vice President JD Vance and much of the Cabinet and line of succession, brought with it added security protocols and personnel — raising questions over whether the storied dinner and its guests of congressional members, diplomats and mid-level officials would have been even more susceptible to attack without Trump in attendance.

Trump on Sunday said it is “tough” to secure a hotel in the middle of a city with “buildings all around and hotel rooms on top,” but praised the Secret Service and law enforcement officers. One officer was shot, not fatally.

Talking to reporters after the incident Saturday night, Trump swiftly likened it to the attempt on his life by a gunman in Butler, Pa., during the 2024 presidential campaign, and suggested that it justified his controversial plans to construct a fortified ballroom on the White House grounds. He called the hotel “not a particularly secure building,” though he later said the room was “very, very secure.”

Plans to reschedule the dinner are under review. White House Correspondents’ Assn. President Wiejia Jiang of CBS News said the organization’s board would meet to assess what had happened.

Blanche said Sunday an investigation into what had happened was ongoing. He had attended a reception before the dinner on the first floor of the hotel hosted by CBS News, one of many that did not require any security check by law enforcement authorities.

“The first takeaway, or the takeaway that should be obvious, is that the system worked. And that we stopped the suspect, and we stopped him as soon as he tried to do what he was trying to do,” Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the attack raises a question about whether presidential security protocols are effective for modern tactics, or whether the country is “in a new domain” in which those procedures no longer meet the nature of the possible threats, said Neil Shortland, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Federal investigators should examine what the security policies were, what type of attacks they were designed to prevent, and whether that protocol was out of date, Shortland said.

“Did you follow the policy is a great question,” he said. “Was the policy correct in this modern day and for this modern situation is a separate question.”

The country is facing “the most complex threat environment in our nation’s history,” particularly from lone actors who are often radicalized online, Sam Vinograd, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“It can be true that law enforcement and intelligence professionals prepared exhaustively for last night,” she said Sunday. “But it can also be true that in this moment, in this security environment, the paradigms of the past may not be sufficient to meet the moment.”

That raises the “need to rethink what it is going to take to actually secure these mass gatherings,” she said.

Trump appeared to voice the same idea Saturday evening, telling reporters, “Today, we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.” He went on to say that “this is why we have to have” the East Wing ballroom, which he described as drone-proof and having bulletproof glass.

Kris Brown, president of the gun control organization Brady — which is named after Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was shot in the 1981 attack — said lawmakers should instead consider passing legislation to help prevent gun violence.

“Not every public event can take place in the ballroom, in that kind of protection — nor can we afford to live in a society where our solution to gun violence is to barricade our public officials, our children, away in fortresses,” Brown said.

About 2,000 journalists, dignitaries and other guests attended the event, rushing through rain to enter using multiple hotel entrances. They were asked to show their tickets as they walked past security guards, but there was no check-in procedure or ID check. A Times reporter was waved toward the entrance without showing a ticket as she tried to get it out of her purse.

Inside, guests milled about on multiple levels where pre-dinner receptions were occurring. Hotel guests mingled with the crowd, granted full access to the hotel’s amenities, including its boutiques and restaurants.

Two protesters briefly took over a small red carpet where guests were lined up to take professional photos; Times reporters saw a third woman dressed in a formal gown and shouting protest slogans being escorted out by security guards after apparently having entered the event.

Guests were required to flash their tickets to go down an escalator to the ballroom level, then present the ticket before walking through metal detectors and having bags searched ahead of the ballroom entrance.

Allen, who had reserved a room as a hotel guest, said in his manifesto obtained by the New York Post that security was far less stringent than he had expected. Two U.S. officials told The Times that the contents of the manifesto are authentic.

“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,” he wrote.

He noted that security guards appeared to be focused on protesters and arrivals outside, writing, “apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”

It is possible that steps to further restrict access to the ballroom level, keep guests away from the event location and check attendees’ identities outside could have provided additional security, said Erin Kearns, director of law enforcement partnerships at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center.

“The lesson that can be taken away is just thinking about how to harden and strengthen security at future events when you have so many high-profile people,” she said.

The hotel was a “soft target” with a makeshift perimeter, and there were “almost zero intervention points” where the shooter could have been apprehended before arriving, Shortland said. That was partly because he traveled by train, which does not have security screenings.

Authorities should also examine whether Allen was known to authorities and, if so, whether intelligence operatives could have pieced together his train travel and arrival in the president’s orbit, Shortland said.

The attempted shooting added to a growing list of instances of political violence in the United States. Last year, one Minnesota state legislator and her spouse were killed by a gunman while another lawmaker and his wife survived; the conservative activist Charlie Kirk — whose wife, Erika, was in attendance Saturday — was shot and killed at a speaking event; an arsonist attacked the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Some of that violence has been directed toward Trump, something he frequently talks about. He was injured in the Butler incident, but has used his survival to argue that God saved him so he could become president. Two months later, a Secret Service agent shot at a gunman pointing a rifle on Trump’s golf course as the president golfed.

On Feb. 22, an armed man was shot and killed after entering the secure perimeter around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, when the president was in Washington.

“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit,” Trump said Saturday.

Don’t worry if your Hogwarts acceptance letter got lost in the mail — a new “Harry Potter” experience will soon let you hop aboard the Hogwarts Express anyway.

Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure will open at the Southern California Railway Museum this summer for guests to experience the Wizarding World rite of passage aboard a real moving train in the Inland Empire. The experience will run from July 24 through Sept. 27. Yes, that includes Back to Hogwarts Day on Sept. 1.

A Hogwarts Express Adventure will include a Platform 9¾-themed preboarding experience as well as House competitions and chants, spell-casting challenges and other interactive activities aboard the train. Guests will also be able to grab some themed treats from the trolley. The train ride will end at a Hogsmeade-inspired village where more food, beverages and merchandise will be available.

The Rail Events Inc. press release also teases a possible encounter with “a dark and mysterious force.” The company, also known for the Polar Express Train Ride, developed A Hogwarts Express Adventure along with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences.

This is a big year for “Harry Potter” fans. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” a new television series based on author J.K. Rowling’s popular book series, is set to debut on HBO Max on Christmas Day. The show will introduce audiences to a new Golden Trio, portrayed by Dominic McLaughlin (Harry Potter), Alastair Stout (Ron Weasley) and Arabella Stanton (Hermione Granger), as they embark on their Hogwarts journey. (Rowling remains controversial for her views on trans women.)

Ticket sales for A Hogwarts Express Adventure will begin April 28, with prices starting at $77 for adults and $67 for children ages 2 to 11, depending on departure time.