On November 26, 2025, two members of the West Virginia National Guard were ambushed and shot just blocks from the White House while on patrol in downtown Washington, D.C., an attack that has sent shockwaves through the capital and across the country. The brazen nature of the assault — in broad daylight and within sight of the federal government’s hub — exposes a grave breakdown in the basic promise of safety for those who serve and protect us.
Authorities have identified the suspect as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who arrived in the United States in 2021 under the Operation Allies Welcome program and later lived in Washington State before allegedly traveling to the capital to carry out the attack. Reports say investigators are combing electronic devices and background material, and federal prosecutors are exploring terrorism-related charges as they piece together motive and any possible radicalization.
Video and police accounts describe a cold, ambush-style attack in which the gunman suddenly opened fire on the two guardsmen, wounding them both before other servicemembers and law enforcement subdued the shooter. First responders and nearby troops rushed to save their comrades, but the scene was chaotic, and the suspect was himself seriously wounded and taken into custody amid the scuffle.
Initial public statements were muddled, with conflicting reports about the victims’ conditions in the immediate aftermath; authorities later confirmed that one of the injured guardsmen succumbed to wounds while the other remained in critical condition, underscoring the human cost of policy failures. That confusion only highlights how unprepared our cities are to protect both civilians and deployed service members from threats that should never have been permitted to reach our streets.
Political leaders immediately seized on the tragedy, with President Trump and other conservative voices demanding a full re‑examination of whom we’ve allowed into this country under past administrations and how vetting was handled for evacuees from Afghanistan. This is not partisan grandstanding — it is commonsense insistence that when our service members are targeted, every policy that may have enabled that vulnerability must be scrutinized and corrected without delay.
Hardworking Americans should be furious but not surprised: weak borders, rushed resettlement programs, and a bureaucracy more interested in optics than outcomes have real-world consequences, and now a family is mourning while a city reels. The only honorable response from elected officials is immediate accountability, a relentless criminal prosecution of the perpetrator, and sweeping, enforceable reforms to immigration and vetting procedures so that our troops and fellow citizens are never left exposed again.
