Two Marine veterans killed seven people and wounded 13 others in separate mass shootings just hours apart in Michigan and North Carolina over the weekend.
A possible motive still eludes investigators in Grand Blanc, Michigan, where at about 10:30 a.m. ET Sunday an attacker drove his pickup truck—with two American flags raised in the bed—into a Mormon church before opening fire with an assault rifle and setting a portion of the building on fire, Police Chief William Renye told reporters Sunday.
The shooter was a 40-year-old former Marine sergeant who served from 2004 to 2008, with a year spent deployed to Iraq, according to the Detroit News. Police quickly responded, eventually shooting and killing the attacker in the church parking lot, but not before he had killed four people and wounded eight others.
Notable: The Michigan shooter can be seen wearing a camouflage Trump 2020 campaign shirt that says “Make liberals cry again” in a 2019 photograph posted to Facebook USA Today reports. He’d also allegedly “signed two political petitions, one to repeal Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID mandates and one to outlaw abortion in the state,” local outlet Bridge Michigan reported Sunday.
The North Carolina attacker was also a 40-year-old former Marine sergeant who lived nearby and had been wounded while serving in Iraq. Using an assault rifle from his boat, he opened fire at a dockside bar in Southport, south of Wilmington, at about 9:30 p.m. local, killing three people and wounding at least five others. Whereas the Michigan shooter reportedly had no known police record and was awarded a Good Conduct medal while a Marine, the North Carolina shooter was known to police after filing several lawsuits this year against the Department of Veterans Affairs and the local county sheriff’s office.
Coast Guard officials arrested him while attempting to retrieve his boat from the water roughly 12 miles from the where the shooting occurred. He’s been charged with three counts of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first-degree murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, the New York Times reports.
A motive eludes investigators in Southport as well. However: “Injured in the line of duty is what he’s saying. He suffers from PTSD. We want to point those facts out,” Police Chief Todd Coring told reporters Sunday. Marine Corps officials say the shooter served from 2003 to 2009, including two deployments to Iraq.
The North Carolina shooting appears to have been indiscriminate, and “Sadly, a lot of the victims in this case appear to be not members of our community, but people who are here on vacation,” district attorney Jon David told the Times.
Panning out: The U.S. has experienced at least 324 mass shootings in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The country experienced 503 mass shootings last year.
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1941, the Nazis killed more than 33,000 Jewish people in Kyiv, modern-day Ukraine.
More troops on American streets
After sending U.S. troops to Los Angeles, Washington, and Memphis, President Donald Trump ordered 200 more National Guard troops to “war ravaged Portland,” according to a Saturday post on his own social media platform and confirmed Sunday by officials in Oregon. “At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” the president wrote.
The order instructs the National Guard “to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. Government personnel,” in what sounds similar to Trump’s order to send troops to Los Angeles.
“I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” Trump noted in an unclear detail that raised additional alarm bells regarding rules of engagement, e.g., for civil-military observers in the U.S.
Trump’s order is set to last for 60 days, and came less than 20 hours after the Supreme Court let Trump to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid. NPR has more.
His announcement also prompted hundreds to protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building Sunday afternoon. “Chants and bucket drumming rang in the air during an afternoon demonstration that was raucous but largely free of confrontation,” Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on location. However, “More than a dozen counterprotesters attended the event, an increase from previous nights, and many clashed verbally with demonstrators.”
Portland is not ravaged by war. Your D Brief-er visited the city and walked the streets with his children just a few weeks ago. There were occasional tents from encampments beneath a highway overpass here and there on the approach to downtown, but there was no “war” except those waged by self-published authors hawking their sci-fi and fantasy books to occasional unwitting pedestrians in the vicinity of Pioneer Courthouse Square—where protests flared five years ago amid nationwide protests against police brutality.
Trump: “They are attacking our ICE and federal buildings all the time,” the president told NBC News in a phone interview Sunday. “You know, this has been going on for a long time. This has been going on for years in Portland. It’s like a hotbed of insurrection,” he claimed.
Notable: ICE agents in Portland have been documented by the city’s police “instigating” confrontations with protesters, as the local Oregonian newspaper reported Thursday and updated after Trump’s announcement Saturday.
“This is not a military target,” Portland Mayor Keity Wilson said at a Saturday press conference. “This is an American city, we do not need any intervention.”
Portland city councilman: “To speak the language of federal agents, let me say this, here’s your sit rep: Situation normal in Portland. We do not need assistance. We are OK,” said Councilor Eric Zimmerman after Trump’s announcement.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek: “Contrary to President Trump’s social media posts, Portland is not war-ravaged,” the Democratic governor said in a video posted to social media Sunday. “There is no insurrection. There is no threat to national security, and there is no need for military troops.”
“Military service members should be dedicated to real emergencies,” she said. “And that’s exactly what I said to the president when I asked him to stand down from sending federal troops into our city. But just in case that phone call wasn’t enough, I thought I’d take to the streets myself right here in downtown Portland.” The rest of her video is a dispatch on location, which you can view here.
Other Portland residents have been posting photos showing how “war-ravaged” their city is. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has been drawing attention to some of these posts on his own social media account, here.
New: Like California before it, the state of Oregon has sued the Trump administration for this troop deployment to Portland. As a judge ultimately decided for Los Angeles, Oregon alleges the National Guard order “violates the Posse Comitatus Act,” calls the “stated basis for federalizing…patently pretextual,” and claims Trump’s order “violate[s] the Tenth Amendment’s guarantee that the police power … resides with the states.”
Related reading:
- “Trump questioned perception of Portland before approving military plan: ‘Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?’” Portland’s own KGW8 news reported Sunday;
- “Trump Again Focuses on Portland as an Avatar of the Left,” the New York Times reported Sunday from Portland;
- “Trump falsely suggests FBI agents to blame for igniting Jan. 6 violence,” Politico reported Saturday;
- “ICE says they’re hunting down people based on “how they look’,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports off an interview with Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander who said arrests were being made based on “agent experience” and “intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location. Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” he said to the reporter, a tall, middle-aged man of Anglo descent.
- Earlier this month: “Gregory Bovino is breaking norms while leading immigration enforcement in Los Angeles,” AP reported.
- And ICYMI, “I Filmed the ICE Officer Who Shoved a Woman to the Floor Inside a New York Courthouse,” Till Eckert reported for ProPublica on Friday.
Around the Pentagon
The president has decided to join Hegseth’s surprise gathering of brass tomorrow at Quantico, the Washington Post reported Sunday: “Trump’s appearance at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia not only overshadows Hegseth’s planned address but adds new security concerns to the massive and nearly unprecedented military event, which has required some generals and admirals to travel thousands of miles. Trump cast the discussion largely as a pep talk.”
Three sources familiar with the planning told CNN that Hegseth intends to underscore the “warrior ethos,” outline a new vision for the US military, and “discuss new readiness, fitness and grooming standards.” One defense official familiar with the planning said, “This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.” More from CNN, here.
The short-notice, unprecedented confab has drawn urgent questions from Capitol Hill: In a Saturday letter, Senate Armed Services Committee members Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii, asked Hegseth 19 questions, including:
- What is the estimated total cost of this gathering?
- What accounts are being used to fund these costs?
- Why was a secure virtual alternative not considered sufficient?
- Has the Department conducted a risk assessment of concentrating much of the operational chain of command in one location?
- Has this gathering disrupted any other scheduled operations, training or interagency coordination?
- Has any previous Secretary of Defense convened a similar gathering under comparable circumstances?
The letter ends: “We require a briefing or written response to answer these questions no later than Monday September 29, 2025.” Read over the rest of the queries (PDF) here.
Commentary from Mark Cancian, who posted at CSIS, and UCMJ expert Eugene Fidell, writing at Just Security.
Around the world
Trump’s $20B bailout for Argentina stirs anger in ‘America First’ camp. WaPo on Sunday: “The president’s customary allergy to using taxpayer money to help other nations makes the Argentine rescue especially noteworthy. Since taking office in January, Trump has slashed U.S. foreign aid programs, slow-walked military assistance for Ukraine and demanded that close allies like South Korea and Japan pay for a greater share of their defense.”
And Politico on Thursday: “The fast-moving deal to help [Argentine President Javier] Milei, which is still being negotiated, underscores the extent to which the Trump administration is willing to go to help a political ally who has cultivated strong ties with the president and American conservatives in recent years.”
And lastly today: South Korea to honor 11 military members who disobeyed illegal orders during last year’s attempted coup. Officials with the Ministry of National Defense announced last week that it will award government commendations to soldiers who “did not carry out illegal or unjust orders and upheld their duties as military personnel” when the country’s president attempted a coup last December. “We will do our best to become a military trusted by the public by continuously identifying and commending genuine soldiers who can resolutely reject illegal or unjust orders according to constitutional values and reject injustice,” the ministry said in a statement. The Chosun Daily has details, here.
Read the full article here