📊 Colombian Violence, Cole Allen, and Musk-Altman

Explosive election, shooter charged, and courtroom showdown.

Apr 28, 2026

Greetings! Happy Prime Rib Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to PM Daily below:

SPONSORED SECTION

Sponsor PM Daily! Unlike other free daily newsletters, PM’s ad model works differently: 1. one single sponsor slot per issue; 2. 100% share of voice (SOV) guaranteed; 3. higher return on ad spend (ROAS) from your first placement.

No-brainer, little risk, high upside. Q2 slots are filling up quickly! Reach our rapidly scaling, high-intent, vetted premium audience by replying to this email right now.

🌎 GLOBAL NEWS

Soldiers stand next to a truck carrying chickens that was set on fire by dissident factions of the former FARC rebels in Jamundi, Colombia, Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga) — Source: Associated Press (AP)

🇨🇴 Colombia’s election season turns explosive. Colombia is heading toward a presidential vote with violence back in the foreground. A wave of attacks hit the country’s southwest over the weekend. Rebel groups staged 26 attacks with explosives and drones since Friday. The defense ministry blamed dissident factions of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A deadly highway blast between Cali and Popayán killed 21 people by Monday. The region has long been fought over by illegal armed groups. The prize is geography. The area is useful for illegal mining, cocaine routes, and coca cultivation. That means election violence is also economic violence. It is not only about intimidating voters. It is about protecting criminal revenue under political cover. Crime is expected to be one of the campaign’s defining issues. The attacks now give that issue blood and urgency. Peace deals reduce one war and leave splinters behind. Those splinters then learn to govern through fear.

A guard walks through a war-damaged section of Al Shaabi Hospital in Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) — Source: Associated Press (AP)

🇸🇩 Sudan’s hospital survives on one surgeon’s refusal. Dr. Jamal Eltaeb has spent three years practicing medicine inside an impossible equation. He works at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum. The war in Sudan has turned the hospital into a frontline institution. Eltaeb has had to decide who might live and who might die. He has had to operate without the right medicine. He has had to search for fuel to keep the lights on. The hospital has treated patients injured by unexploded ordnance. Its corridors carry the exhaustion of a health system asked to function after the state around it breaks. Eltaeb’s one easy decision was to keep working. That may sound heroic, but it is also an indictment, as a country at war has converted ordinary surgery into wartime triage. Doctors now make military-grade choices with civilian tools. Patients arrive from a conflict that will not stay outside the hospital walls. Omdurman’s hospital is not just treating wounds. It is keeping civic life alive by scalpel, generator, makeshift aseptic technique, and sheer stubbornness.

🇺🇸 LOCAL NEWS

This courtroom sketch depicts Cole Tomas Allen, left, the California man arrested in the shooting incident at the correspondents dinner in Washington, seen appearing before Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh, in federal court, Monday, April 27, 2026 in Washington. (Dana Verkouteren via AP) — Source: Associated Press (AP)

🔫 Allen faces assassination charge after dinner shooting. Cole Tomas Allen is now charged with attempted assassination of President Trump. Authorities say Allen tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with guns and knives. The 31-year-old from Torrance, California, allegedly opened fire while charging toward the ballroom. President Trump was unharmed. Senior White House officials were evacuated. Allen appeared Monday in federal court before Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh. A motive was not immediately known. That caveat matters. Biography is not motive, and ideology has not yet been established. Still, the case lands inside a larger American pattern of political violence anxiety. Recent extremism data are not ideologically symmetrical. Anti-Defamation League data tied all extremist-related murders in 2024 to right-wing extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,371 hate and antigovernment extremist groups across America in 2024. None of that proves Allen’s politics. It does explain why any attack near a president now enters a country already conditioned for ideological suspicion.

Work continues on the construction of the ballroom at the White House, Thursday, April 9, 2026, in Washington, where the East Wing once stood. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.) — Source: Associated Press (AP)

🏛️ The ballroom fight survives the shooting. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is not dropping its lawsuit against President Trump’s planned $400M White House ballroom. The Department of Justice asked the group to withdraw the complaint after Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Preservationists said no. That turns a security argument back into a preservation fight. Trump and conservative allies say the shooting shows why large presidential events outside the White House are harder to secure. They argue the ballroom would bring those events back onto White House grounds. The National Trust argues the project still raises serious historical and procedural concerns. Construction is already underway where the East Wing once stood. The government said it would ask a court to dismiss the lawsuit if the Trust did not back down. That threat did not work. The dispute now sits at the intersection of architecture, security, and executive will; a ballroom sounds ceremonial, but this one has become constitutional theater in formalwear. Washington can turn a floor plan into a separation-of-powers fight.

🗂️ MISC

The U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., is photographed Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) — Source: Associated Press (AP)

🧠 Musk and Altman take AI’s origin myth to court. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are heading to trial over OpenAI’s beginnings. The case is less about one company than the founding myth of modern artificial intelligence (AI). Musk alleges that Altman and Greg Brockman betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit mission. He says the company shifted into moneymaking mode behind his back. OpenAI calls the case unfounded sour grapes meant to weaken a rival while boosting Musk’s xAI. Musk invested about $38M in OpenAI between December 2015 and May 2017. He once sought more than $100B in damages. Pretrial rulings have narrowed that path. Musk is now seeking money for OpenAI’s charitable arm instead of damages for himself. The lawsuit also seeks Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board. Microsoft Corp. ($MSFT) became OpenAI’s biggest investor after Musk stopped funding it. The trial could expose the early compromises that shaped the AI race. It may also show that the industry’s loftiest ideals were never far from control, capital, and ego.

📈 Big Tech earnings become Wall Street’s main event. Wall Street entered the week already near records. Now the market gets the earnings reports that could justify the rally or embarrass it. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500) inched up 0.1% Monday to another all-time high. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2% to its own record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 62 points. Oil prices rose as uncertainty over the Iran war lingered. Still, investors are focused on profit reports. Alphabet Inc. ($GOOGL), Amazon.com Inc. ($AMZN), Meta Platforms ($META), and Microsoft Corp. ($MSFT) all report Wednesday. Apple ($AAPL) reports Thursday. That is not a normal earnings calendar. It is a market referendum compressed into two days. These companies are now treated as artificial intelligence infrastructure proxies, advertising engines, cloud giants, hardware platforms, and macro sentiment machines at once. If they beat expectations, the rally gets oxygen. If they disappoint, the record highs start looking overfed. Big Tech is not just reporting earnings this week. It is reporting whether the market’s optimism still deserves its valuation.