WHCA President Weijia Jiang's April 26-27 board statement said the association "will be meeting to assess what happened" after Saturday's shooting at the dinner. [1] Three days later there is still no press-specific credential rule, no Secret Service press-protocol document, and no association lawsuit. The paper reported on Tuesday's affidavit that the criminal complaint reframes the breach as an assassination case; the WHCA's own response remains a meeting agenda.

The boundary the paper has watched is the gap between what 250 journalists asked for on April 20 and what the dinner produced. The Society of Professional Journalists' coalition letter named "press freedom" as the dinner's purpose; [2] The Wrap's coverage of that letter quoted the request that the association "use the dinner to defend press freedom against the Trump administration's escalating attacks." [3] The dinner instead became a security event. Three days on, the assessment has produced no defended boundary in writing.

The artifacts the paper watched for — a credential rule changed in response, a lawsuit filed against any executive-branch action, a Secret Service press-protocol revision shared with member organizations — have not appeared. The WHCA's own site carries the statement and the previous letters; nothing else. [1] In the gap, the criminal docket continues; Tuesday's federal filings supplied the assassination charge but said nothing about whether the press function will get any institutional remedy.

What this leaves Wednesday is a missed deadline rather than a defeated request. The board has not foreclosed an artifact; it has not produced one. The paper reads boundary by mechanism. Until a rule, lawsuit, or protocol surfaces, the boundary remains soft.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin