Inside The Sad 27th Birthday Meal Luigi Mangione Was Served Behind Bars
Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, served his 27th birthday behind bars, and his meal was far from a celebratory feast.
Based on a new report, Luigi Mangione's birthday meal included a sad array of bland dishes, specifically a makeshift special called "breakfast cake."
According to TMZ, Mangione, who was arrested in December 2024 after the death of Thompson went viral, spent his 27th birthday behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
However, it was far from a joyous occasion, especially considering the food he was served was as unappetizing as could be.
For breakfast, the alleged shooter was served fruit, cereal, sugar substitute packets, skim milk, and a piece of breakfast cake. The latter is described as a "cake-like" dish usually comprised of crushed items from the prison's commissary.
Come lunch time, Mangione was offered pasta with meat sauce and chickpea marinara, spinach, whole wheat bread, fruit, and a beverage.
For dinner, he was served a chicken patty sandwich, a chickpea burger, steamed rice, pinto beans, lettuce, tomato, mayo, a hamburger bun, and a drink.
Mangione's birthday meal comes days after the 27-year-old pleaded not guilty to a series of serious charges, including murder through the use of a firearm.
The judge presiding over his case mandated that all discovery materials be provided to the defense by May 27th.
The discovery materials aren't all that Mangione and his legal team have to worry about, though. In early April 2025, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced her plans to seek corporate punishment for Mangione if he is found guilty of his charges.
She said, "Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America."
Bondi added, "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again."
Mangione's legal team is fighting back against the request and called it "political, arbitrary, capricious" and a "breach of established death penalty protocol."
They also wrote in their filing, "The stakes could not be higher. The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt."
Bondi's move to seek the death penalty came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order, instructing the attorney general to "pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use."
President Trump has also spoken candidly about the praise he's seen Mangione receive across social media, calling his supporters "terrible" people with a "sickness."
"I think it's really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him," Trump said. "I was happy to see that it wasn't specific to this gentleman that was killed. It's just an overall sickness as opposed to a specific sickness ... That was a terrible thing. It was cold-blooded. Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing."
"And how people can like this guy is a ... that's a sickness, actually," he added.
"Maybe it's fake news," Trump continued. "It seems that there's a certain appetite for him. I don't get it."
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch agreed, saying, "We don't celebrate murders, and we don't lionize the killing of anyone."
In March 2025, reports surfaced that Mangione allegedly filmed over 20 videos of himself having sex with different people throughout his adult years.
"It wasn't just some grainy, late-night mistake," a source close to Mangione shared. "It was perfect lighting, everything."
They continued, "He wanted to be watched. He got off on it."
Many of Mangione's supporters, who have rallied behind him since his arrest last year, reacted to the rumors with glee.
"Streets are saying [that] Luigi Mangione filmed 20+ sex tapes," one user wrote. "Send it to me, Rachel," they finished, referencing a viral TikTok in which a lady begs her family member named "Rachel" to send her something on her cellphone.
"Luigi s*x tapes and [Lady Gaga's seventh studio album] Mayhem about to drop," another user commented. "What a week to be Italian American."
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Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. At a recent protest in Midtown Manhattan—one of many against Donald Trump's administration—a pair of masked women stood quietly outside the stone lions that loom over the New York Public Library, a life-sized cutout of Luigi Mangione propped between them. No one seemed to mind. As chants against authoritarianism echoed down Fifth Avenue and homemade signs called for due process and migrant rights, Mangione's effigy stood unchallenged—just another figure in one particular demonstration's crowded landscape. Mangione, 26, who is charged with shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a targeted attack last December, remains something of an enigma more than six months since he was arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with Thompson's murder. His political views — or what are known of them — are contradictory if not incoherent. He was the highly educated scion of a well-off Baltimore family who had no obvious beef with the capitalist system of which he benefited. Mangione wrote about his chronic back injury, but he was never insured by UnitedHealth. None of that has stopped a left-wing activist movement from embracing him and coopting his image as a vigilante fighting against the perceived wrongs of the American healthcare system. In today's fractured political climate, such selective silence is becoming increasingly common. The cutout of Luigi Mangione spotted at a recent anti-ICE protest in Manhattan. The cutout of Luigi Mangione spotted at a recent anti-ICE protest in Manhattan. Newsweek 'Assassination Culture' While right-wing extremism is regularly dissected and denounced in mainstream media, conservatives have long complained that political violence from the left regularly receives less scrutiny—or is reframed entirely to dismiss the perpetrators' progressive views. This perceived imbalance has fueled a growing belief, often discussed on conservative subreddits, in right-leaning Substacks, and on X, that left-wing violence is minimized or rationalized, while right-wing violence is amplified and condemned. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a nonpartisan organization that studies the spread of hate, manipulation, and extremism across digital platforms, has raised these concerns recently. Based at Rutgers University, the group uses machine learning and data analytics to identify emerging threats and ideological patterns online. "We're witnessing the alarming rise of what the NCRI calls an 'assassination culture,'" said Max Horder of the NCRI, in an interview with Newsweek. "Violence targeting figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk has gone beyond normalization—it's being sanctified as resistance by parts of the political left." New Yorkers gathered outside the Tesla dealership in the Meat Packing district in Manhattan to protest against Elon Musk and his actions with DOGE, 3/29/25. New Yorkers gathered outside the Tesla dealership in the Meat Packing district in Manhattan to protest against Elon Musk and his actions with DOGE, 3/29/25. Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx That once-theoretical threat turned very real last July in Butler, Penn., when Donald Trump was nearly killed in the middle of a campaign rally by a lone gunman perched on a nearby rooftop. The near miss shocked the country, but polling showed sharp partisan divides even in the case of the near assassination of a presidential candidate. A YouGov survey conducted shortly after found that 54 percent of U.S. adults said Trump deserved sympathy. Among Democrats, only 31 percent agreed, while 60 percent said he did not. In contrast, 83 percent of Republicans expressed sympathy for the then-candidate, reflecting how politics shapes responses to violence. Two months later, another attempt on Trump's life took place at his Florida golf club. A poll of 1,000 registered voters by Scott Rasmussen's Napolitan News Institute found that 17 percent said it would have been better for the country if Trump had died. Among Democrats, the number was 28 percent. "For decades, we've assumed that calls for political violence come from the far right—and often, they have. What we never expected was the enormous growth in similar calls coming from the mainstream left," Horder said. Both of the men who police say came close to killing Trump last summer also shared something in common with Mangione: political worldviews that ranged from almost completely unclear to contradictory. Thomas Crooks, 20, who was shot dead by Secret Service snipers moments after his bullet grazed Trump's ear in Butler, left virtually no online footprint. He was a registered Republican who donated to Democrats on the day of Joe Biden's inauguration. Ryan Routh, 59, who is accused of lying in wait for Trump in the bushes as he played a round of golf, was a self-proclaimed Trump voter who had grown disillusioned over the war in Ukraine. He also expressed support for Bernie Sanders. Ryan Wesley Routh (left), the gunman involved in the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club, and Thomas Matthew Crooks (right), the gunman in the July 2024... Ryan Wesley Routh (left), the gunman involved in the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club, and Thomas Matthew Crooks (right), the gunman in the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania shooting during a Trump rally. More Getty Images / X 'Corridor to Violence' The NCRI rose to prominence in recent years due to its prescient early warnings about far-right radicalization, including the growth of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the risk of political violence leading up to the certification of the election on January 6, 2021. Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the NCRI, recalled in an interview with Newsweek: "They weren't an accident. They didn't come out of nowhere. They were inevitable." Now, the group is raising similar concerns—this time about rhetoric emerging from the opposite end of the political spectrum. "These aren't fringe beliefs anymore," the group warns. "They're creeping into the mainstream of activist discourse." A recent survey conducted by the NCRI found that nearly one-third of respondents expressed some level of justification for acts of lethal political violence, with significantly higher support among those identifying as left-of-center. Fixty-six percent of those respondents said murdering Donald Trump would be at least somewhat justified, while 50 percent said the same about Elon Musk. The poll also found that 40 percent of all respondents believed it was at least somewhat acceptable to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest of Musk's partnership with Trump, with support rising to nearly 60 percent among those who identified as left-of-center. NCRI's analysis, based on troves of social media data, reveals how fringe internet culture has helped build what the group calls "permission structures" for violence. These are social environments—online or offline—where violent acts are no longer condemned but tacitly accepted, if not outright encouraged. "It's not just about who pulls the trigger," said Finkelstein. "It's about who stays silent, who reposts a meme, who says nothing when someone jokes about killing a billionaire. That's how the corridor to violence gets built." The imagery and meme-ification of Luigi Mangione is one such example. Mangione, currently jailed pending his capital murder trial, has become an anti-hero in niche online communities. His likeness is shared alongside memes depicting Nintendo's Luigi character as a stylized assassin—ironic, cartoonish, but deadly serious. "It looks like a joke," Horder said, linking Mangione's online fame to a pattern of other real-world incidents, including the recent firebombing of elderly Jewish protesters in Boulder, Colo., allegedly by an Egyptian national angry about the war in Gaza. "But it's not. It's a method of radicalization wrapped in humor." A member of the Seattle Fire Department inspects a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, Monday, March 10, 2025. A member of the Seattle Fire Department inspects a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, Monday, March 10, 2025. Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo "They were acting within a worldview that told them these killings would be celebrated. And online, they were." Gaza Conflict and Domestic Spillover Just days before the antisemitic attack in Boulder, two Israeli embassy staffers were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., in a targeted attack that resembled the style of the ambush on Thompson. According to law enforcement, the suspected gunman, Elias Rodriguez, stalked the two young diplomats after they departed an event. Upon arrest, told officers, "I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza." "This targeting and outright murder of two people is very much an escalation from traditional left-aligned protest tactics," said Katherine Keneally, director of threat analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that monitors extremism and terrorism, to NPR. "Trends are changing." An FBI team is investigating an attack on demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, at the scene on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, 2025. An FBI team is investigating an attack on demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, at the scene on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, 2025. ELI IMADALI/AFP via Getty Images Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds more captive, at least five deaths in the U.S. have been linked to the Palestine conflict. Experts told NPR that the war between Israel and Hamas has changed the tone of some left-wing protests, making the red lines less clear. On college campuses across the U.S., protests against Israel have waxed and waned. Some activists have been criticized for spreading messages seen as antisemitic or outright supportive of militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. "Left-wing extremism is often overlooked, in part because the worst state abuses and non-state violence associated with proponents of communist and socialist ideologies happened several decades ago," said Jakob Guhl, director of policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. "Some actors on the broader far left continue to carry out or support acts of political violence and terrorism," he added. Rodriguez, who is accused of killing the young Israeli diplomats, shared social media posts praising Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah—evidence, researchers say, of a growing wave of pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist sentiment among a small but outspoken group of Gaza-focused activists. According to reports, Rodriguez also spoke admiringly of Mangione in posts unearthed by law enforcement. Seth Jones, director of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the execution of the diplomats "an anomaly"—a rare instance of deadly far-left violence tied to antisemitism. "Typically, attacks against synagogues or Jewish individuals have come from the violent far right," he told NPR. "The escalation is striking," said Colin Clarke of the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy. "Since October 7th, we've seen an uptick in far-left extremism surrounding Gaza. It's not just pro-Palestinian rhetoric anymore—some of it is explicitly pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah." Pro-Palestinian activist protest outside Columbia University in New York City on April 20, 2024. A rabbi associated with Columbia University sent a message out Sunday morning recommending that Jewish students go home amid rise in... Pro-Palestinian activist protest outside Columbia University in New York City on April 20, 2024. A rabbi associated with Columbia University sent a message out Sunday morning recommending that Jewish students go home amid rise in "extreme antisemitism." More LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images However, Keneally, the extremism monitor, said that even as left-wing violence rises, far-right violence—especially from white supremacists—remains the deadliest and most consistent domestic threat, according to federal assessments. "What the research has shown is that when it comes to – and I don't think there's any other more direct way to say it than the death count – incidents that are typically affiliated with issues or ideologies that might fit in a more far-right bucket have been more lethal," she told NPR. Guhl also said he would not to conflate radical but peaceful protest movements on university campuses or civil disobedience tactics with far-left groups that promote political violence. "The term 'left-wing extremism' should not be overused to delegitimize social movements that aim to fundamentally challenge the status quo while still believing in universal human rights rather than the abolition of democracy," he said. An Asymmetry Amplified The trends flagged by researchers—online radicalization, meme culture, and the normalization of violence as a means to justify a political end—are increasingly shaping public discourse well beyond the digital sphere. Peter Turchin, a University of Connecticut professor and leading theorist of structural-demographic cycles, sees the current moment as part of a predictable historical pattern. "In 2010, I predicted a period of political instability beginning in the 2020s," Turchin told Newsweek. "And nearly every warning sign—popular immiseration, elite overproduction, eroding state capacity—has only intensified." While political violence has increased across ideological lines, Turchin said that public perception and media coverage remain uneven. A protester holds a Mexican flag and mask of Donald Trump while standing in front of vandalized a Waymo car during a protest against immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. A protester holds a Mexican flag and mask of Donald Trump while standing in front of vandalized a Waymo car during a protest against immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California."Right-wing violence is emphasized by mainstream media because it's perceived as an existential threat to the ruling regime," he said. "Whereas left-wing violence is often seen as less threatening—sometimes even as a counterweight to the right." According to Turchin, this perception gap is no accident. "Narratives around political violence are shaped not just by the acts themselves, but by the stories that elites—and counter-elites—build around them," he said. Both he and Horder agreed that instances of political violence, wherever they come from, perpetuate a cycle in which each side accuses the other of hypocrisy while excusing the bad actors on their own extremes. Recent events have borne this out. The unrest and riots that have spread across parts of Los Angeles this week—triggered by federal immigration raids—has reignited debate about protest tactics and when and how the federal government should involve itself when its presence is not requested by local officials. Meanwhile, videos of self-driving cars aflame and masked rioters throwing rocks at federal agents ricocheted across social media. "If we didn't do the job, that place would be burning down," Trump said about his decision to activate the Guard. "I feel we had no choice. I don't want to see what's happened so many times in this country." Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California's highest-profile elected officials who are both progressive Democrats, condemned the president for inflaming the simmering unrest, though they were more muted about calling out some of the acts of violence caught on camera. "People talk about radicalization like it's something that happens in dark corners of the internet," said Horder from NCIR. "But it's happening on the streets now too, in broad daylight, sometimes behind banners of justice."
