Two National Guard members are shot near the White House by a man the CIA once trained.

The shooting occurred at approximately 2:15 in the afternoon, on the sidewalk outside the Farragut West Metro station, two blocks northwest of the White House. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, twenty years old, of West Virginia, was shot first. Specialist Andrew Wolfe, twenty-four, of West Virginia, was shot second, attempting to take cover behind a bus shelter. Both were members of the District of Columbia National Guard, on assignment to the federal city under the President’s executive order. Both were in critical condition by 4 p.m. Specialist Beckstrom did not survive.

The shooter is a thirty-one-year-old Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Mr. Lakanwal entered the United States in October 2021, on an Operation Allies Welcome flight, after working for several years alongside American military and intelligence personnel in Kandahar. He had been vetted three times before his arrival: once by the Central Intelligence Agency, which contracted his services in country; once by the Department of Defense, in connection with that contract; and once by the Department of Homeland Security, on his entry to the United States. He filed for asylum in December 2024. His asylum was granted on April 23, 2025, three months into the President’s second term.

The President addressed the nation Wednesday evening. He called the shooting “an act of evil.” He thanked law enforcement. He named the soldiers. The address was, by the standards of the moment, restrained.

The framing that followed was not. By Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security had instructed Citizenship and Immigration Services to halt all asylum decisions, full stop, for every applicant from every country, until “every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.” By Friday, the State Department had paused all visa adjudications for Afghan nationals.

There is a question worth asking, slowly. Mr. Lakanwal was vetted three separate times by the U.S. government. The vetting did not produce a flag. The radicalization, by the apparent timeline, occurred years after the vetting, in this country. A categorical halt on asylum decisions for everyone from every country does not address that timeline. It addresses a different timeline, which is the political one.

Two soldiers were shot. One died. The Afghan partner who served beside Americans in Kandahar shot them. The administrative response is to close the program that brought him here. The program also brought thousands of others who did not shoot anyone. The collective remedy is being applied in place of the specific one.

A serious country mourns its soldiers and reviews its processes. We have done one of those things this week.

Calmly documenting the decline.