HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania: Police said Sunday a man was arrested and will face charges including attempted murder, terrorism and attempted arson in an early morning fire that badly damaged the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and forced Gov. Josh Shapiro, his family and guests to quickly escape.
Sunday’s announcement came after Shapiro and his family were awakened by state troopers at about 2 a.m. and were evacuated from the official governor’s residence in the state capital of Harrisburg.
Shapiro told an afternoon news conference that he, his wife, their four children, two dogs and another family that had celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover with his family at the residence on Saturday were awakened by state troopers.
No one was injured and the fire was extinguished, according to authorities.
Pennsylvania State Police Col. Christopher Paris identified the man in custody as Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg. Paris emphasized at a Sunday afternoon news conference that the investigation is continuing.
Dauphin County District Attorney Francis Chardo said that forthcoming charges will include attempted murder, terrorism, attempted arson and aggravated assault.
Authorities said the suspect hopped over a fence surrounding the property and forcibly entered the residence before setting it on fire. Police deputy commissioner George Bivens said Balmer had a homemade incendiary device and evaded police who knew there had been a breach. Bivens said Balmer was later arrested in the area.
“I’m obviously emotional,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “When we were in the state dining room last night, we told the story of Passover” and the story of the Jewish exodus from bondage, he said. “I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempted to put on me by attacking us as they did last night.”
State police gave no other details about the cause of the fire at the Susquehanna Riverfront mansion but said it caused a “significant amount of damage” to a portion of the residence. Shapiro and his family had been sleeping in a different part of the residence, police said.
Shapiro, viewed as a potential White House contender for the Democratic Party in 2028, said he had received pledges of help from the Department of Justice, the FBI and the US attorney’s office as well as numerous messages of support from fellow governors and others.
The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire was called to the residence and, while they worked to put out the fire, police evacuated Shapiro and his family from the residence safely, Shapiro said.
On Sunday, fire damage was visible on the residence’s south side, primarily to a large room often used for entertaining crowds and art displays. Large west-facing windows were completely missing their glass panes and doors stood ajar amid signs of charring.
There was a police presence Sunday as yellow tape cordoned off an alleyway, investigators observed the damage inside and an officer led a dog outside an iron security fence before investigators sawed off a section from the top of the security fence on the residence’s south side. They wrapped it in heavy black plastic and took it away in a vehicle.
Shapiro splits his time between the mansion that has housed governors since it was built in the 1960s and a home in Abington, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east. He posted a photograph on social media Saturday of the family’s Passover Seder table at the residence.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker, a Republican, called the attack a “despicable act of cowardice” and said he hoped Pennsylvanians joined he and his wife in keeping the Shapiros in their prayers.
Former Gov. Tom Ridge, also a Republican, said images of the damage to the residence where he lived for eight years with his family were “heartbreaking” and said the attack on the official residence was shocking.
“Whoever is responsible for this attack — to both the Shapiro family and our Commonwealth — must be held to account,” Ridge said.
 

ATLANTA: Trump administration officials were out in force across the television networks Sunday defending President Donald Trump’s economic policies after another week of reeling markets that saw the Republican administration reverse course on some of its steepest tariffs.
Trump, meanwhile, said on his social media platform that there ultimately will be no exemptions for his sweeping tariff agenda, disputing characterizations that he has granted tariff exceptions for certain electronics, including smart phones, whose production is concentrated in China. Rather, Trump said, “those products are subject to the existing 20 percent Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
White House advisers and Cabinet members tried to project confidence and calm amid Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on imported goods from around the world. But their explanations about the overall agenda, coupled with Trump’s latest statements, also reflected shifting narratives from a president who, as a candidate in 2024, promised an immediate economic boost and lower prices but now asks American businesses and consumers for patience.
A week ago, Trump’s team stood by his promise to leave the impending tariffs in place without exceptions. They used their latest news show appearances to defend his move to ratchet back to a 10 percent universal tariff for most nations except China (145 percent), while seeming to grant exemptions for certain electronics like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and semiconductor chips.
Here are the highlights of what Trump lieutenants said last week vs. Sunday:
There are varying answers on the purpose of the tariffs
Long before launching his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump bemoaned the offshoring of US manufacturing. His promise is to reindustrialize the United States and eliminate trade deficits with other countries.
LAST WEEK
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” played up national security. “You’ve got to realize this is a national security issue,” he said, raising the worst-case scenarios of what could happen if the US were involved in a war.
“We don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right?” he said.
SUNDAY
Lutnick stuck to that national security framing, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro focused more on the import taxes being leverage in the bigger economic puzzle.
“The world cheats us. They’ve been cheating us for decades,” Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He cited practices such as dumping products at unfairly low prices, currency manipulation and barriers to US auto and agricultural products entering foreign markets.
Navarro insisted the tariffs would yield broader bilateral trade deals to address all those issues. But he also relied on a separate justification when discussing China: the illicit drug trade.
“China has killed over a million people with their fentanyl,” he said.
Speaking before Trump’s Truth Social post disputing the notion of exemptions, Lutnick alluded to that coming policy. “They’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
The status of negotiations with other nations, including China, remains fuzzy
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With the higher rates set to be collected beginning April 9, administration officials argued that other countries would rush to the negotiating table.
“I’ve heard that there are negotiations ongoing and that there are a number of offers,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House Economic Council, told ABC. He claimed that “more than 50 countries (were) reaching out,” though he did not name any.
SUNDAY
Navarro named the United Kingdom, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Israel as among the nations in active negotiations with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Lutnick and other officials.
Greer said on CBS that his goal was “to get meaningful deals before 90 days” –- the duration of Trump’s pause -– “and I think we’re going to be there with several countries in the next few weeks.”
Talks with China have not begun, he said. “We expect to have a conversation with them,” he said, emphasizing it would be between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump took an aggressive tone himself Sunday in his social media post, saying “we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People.”
Navarro was not as specific about Beijing. “We have opened up our invitation to them,” he said. Lutnick characterized the outreach as “soft entrees … through intermediaries.”
Pressed on whether there is any meaningful back and forth, Navarro said, “The president has a very good relationship with President Xi.”
Then he proceeded to criticize several China’s polices and trade practices.
The pitches are different, but confidence is constant
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Navarro was bullish even after US and global trading markets suffered trillions of dollars in losses.
“The first rule, particularly for the smaller investors out there, you can’t lose money unless you sell. And, right now, the smart strategy is not to panic,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
SUNDAY
Navarro’s optimism did not waver despite another net-loss week for securities markets and rocky bond markets. “So, this is unfolding exactly like we thought it would in a dominant scenario,” he said.
Others confronted some of the more complex realities of trying to achieve Trump’s goal of restoring a bygone era of US manufacturing.
Lutnick suggested the focus is on returning high-tech jobs, while sidestepping questions about lower-skilled manufacturing of goods such as shoes that could mean higher prices because of higher wages for US workers. But some of that high-tech production is what Trump has, for now, exempted from the tariffs that he and his advisers frame as leverage for forcing companies to open US facilities.
Hassett did acknowledge widespread angst.
“The survey data has been showing that people are anxious about the changes a little bit,” he said, before steering his answer to employment rates. “The hard data,” he said, “has been really, really strong.”