US Secret Service Says Threats Are At An All-Time High Ahead Of The Rescheduled Correspondents Dinner

US Secret Service Director Sean Curran told reporters Wednesday that the agency has opened approximately 10,000 protective intelligence cases in 2026, a 40 percent increase over the same period last year, and that the threat environment is the most severe he has encountered in his 24-year career.

"The numbers are numbers that this agency and certainly I have never seen in my 24-year career," Curran said. Officials also disclosed that mental health-related interventions involving people making threats against protected individuals are running at nearly 10 times last year's level.

The briefing came days before the rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association dinner, set for Friday July 24 at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington. President Trump is expected to attend.

The original dinner on April 25 was disrupted when Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old California man carrying a shotgun, a handgun and several knives, breached a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton before being stopped by law enforcement.

Allen faces charges including attempted assassination of the president.

Curran said the rescheduled dinner is being treated as an entirely new security assessment, not a redo. He cited drone technology as an evolving challenge, describing fiberoptic-controlled drones as a constant new threat the agency is working to stay ahead of.

Deputy director Matt Quinn noted that Iran has publicly stated it wants to kill President Trump, a threat that is factored into protective planning alongside domestic threats and opportunistic attacks.