(Substack)—On July 13, 2024, a shocking event unfolded at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Then-candidate Donald Trump was speaking to a crowd of supporters when shots rang out. A young man named Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear with a bullet. This act of violence not only targeted Trump but also claimed the life of one rally-goer and injured two others.
Today, July 13, 2025, marks the one-year anniversary of that day, a moment that shook the nation and changed the course of American politics. As we look back, people across the country are reflecting on what happened, the lessons learned, and how it has affected Trump and the United States.
What Happened That Day
The rally was like many others Trump had held—full of energy, cheers, and political talk. Trump was on stage discussing immigration when the gunfire started. Witnesses described chaos as people ducked for cover and screamed. Secret Service agents quickly rushed the stage, shielding Trump and getting him to safety. In a now-famous moment, Trump stood up with blood on his face, pumped his fist, and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to the crowd. This image became a symbol of his toughness and determination.
The shooter, 20-year-old Crooks, was on the roof of a building about 130 yards away. He used an AR-15-style rifle and fired eight shots before being killed by a Secret Service sniper. Sadly, the bullets hit more than just Trump. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter and father, was killed while protecting his family. Two other men, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were seriously injured but survived. The FBI later said Crooks acted alone, with no clear ties to any group, but questions about how he got so close lingered.
The Immediate Aftermath
In the hours and days after the shooting, the country was stunned. Trump was treated at a local hospital for his ear wound and released that same night. He went on to accept the Republican nomination for president at the party’s convention just days later, wearing a bandage on his ear. The event boosted his campaign, with polls showing a surge in support. Many saw it as a turning point that helped him win the 2024 election against Kamala Harris.
Investigations started right away. The Secret Service, the agency responsible for protecting presidents and candidates, faced heavy criticism. How did Crooks climb onto the roof without being stopped? Why wasn’t that building secured? A congressional task force and independent reviews looked into these failures. One year later, a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted “critical security lapses,” including poor communication and planning. As a result, six Secret Service agents were suspended for their roles in the incident.
Ongoing Questions and Accountability
Even now, not all questions have been answered. Comperatore’s family has called for more transparency and changes to prevent future attacks. The Secret Service released a one-year update, promising better training and technology to protect leaders. Rep. Mike Kelly, whose district includes Butler, issued a statement urging unity and healing for the community.
Some people still wonder about deeper conspiracies, but official reports stick to the official “facts”: Crooks was a lone gunman with unclear motives. The incident also highlighted broader issues, like political division and the rise of violence in America. Just weeks after Butler, Trump faced a second assassination attempt while golfing in Florida, leading to more scrutiny of security.
How It Changed Trump and Politics
Friends and allies say the near-death experience changed Trump. In interviews, he has reflected on the “miracle” of surviving, saying the bullet missed by just a quarter-inch because he turned his head at the right moment. He told his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in a recent sit-down that “mistakes were made” by security but praised the Secret Service overall. Trump has spoken about feeling more determined to lead, focusing on unity and strength.
Politically, the attempt galvanized his supporters. It became a rallying cry, with images of Trump raising his fist turning into memes, art, and even campaign symbols. The event also deepened divides, with some critics questioning if it was staged—though evidence shows it was real.
As we remember the fateful day, we should praise God for preventing a national catastrophe that would have changed the course of human history. Today, we have President Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office. A quarter-inch difference and we’d be living in a very different world.
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.