Day: December 18, 2025
Brown U. suspected shooter’s DNA gathered; images, video of person of interest match eyewitness descriptions: Police
The DNA of the Brown University suspected shooter has been gathered, and images and video of the person of interest in Saturday’s deadly shooting at the Rhode Island Ivy League college match eyewitness descriptions, police told the Providence Journal.
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said law enforcement has DNA of the suspected shooter “from inside” that could be used to confirm his presence at the scene once officials have someone to compare it to, the Journal reported.
‘All video imagery has been turned over to law enforcement.’
The shooting took place in a first-floor classroom in the school’s Barus and Holley building, which houses the School of Engineering and the physics department. Two students were fatally shot; nine others were wounded.
Attorney General Peter Neronha added to the Journal that DNA is “powerful” evidence because it can confirm the identity of a subject or rule people in or out after it’s entered into a nationwide system.
RELATED: At least 2 killed, more wounded in shooting at Brown University
Perez also told the paper that witnesses and surviving students gave a description of the shooter that matches the person of interest as seen on video and in still images that law enforcement has distributed.
Neronha told the Journal that investigators are being protective of what witnesses have said about the shooter or the shooting so they can protect witnesses from being swayed by outside information.
“As we interview witnesses, we don’t want them to learn facts from these press conferences. We want them to relay the facts that they have in their heads, including a person of interest,” Neronha said during a news conference, according to the paper. “We don’t want a person of interest to shape what they’re telling us. … So we’re being careful about the facts that we’re sharing for that reason, so that when we talk to witnesses, what we’re getting is their factual recitation.”
More from the Journal:
Authorities have struggled to convince members of the public that, despite Brown University’s vast resources, there was no camera working in the Barus & Holley Building that captured the shooter entering the building before opening fire.
Brown Provost Francis Doyle III said the school has 1,200 cameras on campus, including some in the old section of the building where the shooting occurred. But that does not mean the cameras captured an image of the shooter.
“All video imagery has been turned over to law enforcement,” Doyle added, according to the paper.
A person of interest was initially detained over the weekend before law enforcement determined they had the wrong guy.
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Trump can fix a hidden public safety failure
During President Trump’s first term, he signed the First Step Act — the most comprehensive criminal justice reform bill in decades — into law. He now has a chance to take a “second step” by rightsizing federal supervision of people on probation — an often overlooked public safety gap — with the introduction of the Safer Supervision Act.
I worked with the president and many bipartisan leaders to pass the First Step Act. I have also been on supervision and spend time with law enforcement leaders across the country. The Safe Supervision Act will empower our federal probation officers and judges to devote previous supervision resources to the people most likely to commit more crimes.
The Safer Supervision Act is the smart, responsible way to make our communities safer — and it is a great ‘second step’ for President Trump.
Currently the federal system for supervised release — the period of monitoring that follows incarceration — is structured in a way that actively undermines this goal. By overwhelming federal probation officers with low-risk individuals, the current system diverts attention and resources away from the true threats.
Due to the sprawling, largely automatic application of supervised release, our federal system currently monitors more than 110,000 individuals. This policy forces federal probation officers to spread their time dangerously thin.
When officers must dedicate precious time and limited resources to tracking individuals who have already demonstrated a low risk of re-offending, they are left with insufficient bandwidth to provide the oversight and intervention required by high-risk, violent offenders.
The bipartisan Safer Supervision Act is a targeted piece of legislation that corrects this dangerous imbalance. It is a genuine public safety bill that has earned the strong endorsement of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the National District Attorneys Association, among others. This bill’s promise is simple: More efficient use of law enforcement resources will reduce repeat crimes.
The core mechanism of the act is the restoration of individualized assessment. Under the current system, supervision is imposed in virtually every case. The Safer Supervision Act requires courts to conduct an individualized risk assessment before imposing supervision.
By reserving supervised release for cases that genuinely warrant it, this change moves toward a gold standard of effective supervision endorsed by professional associations such as the American Probation and Parole Association.
The strongest supervision model ensures that intensive supervision and rehabilitation efforts are directed to the highest-risk areas. The bill would allow federal law enforcement to operate as true risk managers, directing resources where they can have the most effect on those who pose the greatest public threat.
RELATED: Mexico has cartel armies. Blue America has cartel politics.
Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images
The bill helps break the cycle of recidivism by providing a strong incentive for successful rehabilitation. For low-risk individuals who have served their time and demonstrated good conduct, unnecessarily prolonged supervision terms become a counterproductive barrier. They inhibit successful re-entry by making it difficult to find stable employment and housing, which paradoxically increases the likelihood that the individual will re-offend.
The Safer Supervision Act establishes a process for early termination of supervision for individuals who have served half their term (or two-thirds for violent offenses) and have maintained good behavior. By giving people a clear finish line and rewarding sustained compliance, it dramatically increases the incentive for positive life changes. A successfully terminated supervision term means one less individual returning to crime, thereby enhancing the overall safety of their neighborhood.
Finally the act shows intelligence in addressing substance-use violations, treating them as opportunities for intervention rather than instant triggers for renewed incarceration. The bill creates an extremely narrow carve-out, giving judges discretion for minor offenses.
Under current law, mandatory re-imprisonment is required for these minor violations, often derailing successful rehabilitation and costing taxpayers significantly. The Safer Supervision Act empowers judges to prioritize treatment, counseling, and swift rehabilitation over immediate, expensive, and ineffective re-incarceration.
The support for the Safer Supervision Act is the most bipartisan coalition we have seen since the First Step Act. It is endorsed by police chiefs and prosecutors who understand the operational realities of crime and by fiscal conservatives demanding accountability for federal spending.
By adopting this bill, Congress can deliver a modern, evidence-based supervision system that ensures limited resources go to our highest-risk individuals, minimizes government waste, and delivers lasting public safety improvements.
The Safer Supervision Act is the smart, responsible way to make our communities safer — and it is a great “second step” for President Trump.
DEI isn’t dead — and a ‘lost generation’ is still paying the price
While some conservatives believe we’ve won the battle against DEI, BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere thinks that couldn’t be further from the truth. And a new piece in Compact by Jacob Savage called “The Lost Generation” only echoes Burguiere’s sentiment — revealing that what has been done in the name of diversity has stolen livelihoods and ruined professional lives.
“In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48% of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9%. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53% male and 89% white in 2013 to 36% male and 66% white in 2024,” Savage writes.
“White men fell from 39% of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18% in 2023. In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life,” he continues.
“I had not really ever honestly thought about it this way, is why it’s such an interesting piece,” Burguiere comments.
“As the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to the diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus, there’s a tendency to portray DEI as a series of well-meaning but ineffectual HR modules. … This may be how Boomer and Gen X white men experienced DEI. But for white male Millennials, DEI wasn’t a gentle rebalancing — it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed,” Savage writes.
“This isn’t a story about all white men. It’s a story about white male Millennials in professional America, about those who stayed, and who (mostly) stayed quiet. The same identity, a decade apart, meant entirely different professional fates,” he continues.
“If you were 40 in 2014 — born in 1974, beginning your career in the late ’90s — you were already established. If you were 30 in 2014, you hit the wall. Because the mandates to diversify didn’t fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power: They landed on us,” he adds.
When institutions who heralded diversity lost a person of color, they would only fill that position with another person of color — white men or women need not apply.
“That’s just racism,” Burguiere comments. “OK? If you’re taking someone who is one race and replacing them with a person of the same race, you are making a decision based on skin color, that’s racism. That’s what that is.”
After George Floyd’s death in 2020, several news outlets promised to make a massive change to the color of their workforce, with NPR declaring that “diversity was nothing less than its ‘North Star.’”
“Shouldn’t the truth be your North Star if you’re a journalistic organization?” Burguiere asks. “If you’re NPR and your taxpayers are paying for your entire organization or at least a giant chunk of it, maybe your North Star should be America, right?”
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RFK Jr. moves to ban transgender procedures for children: ‘This is not medicine; it is malpractice’
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the charge to protect children across America from life-shattering transgender procedures.
Kennedy announced a new declaration on Thursday moving to ban sex-altering operations, hormone replacement therapy, and other irreversible medical procedures that target children suffering from gender dysphoria. Rather than affirming tragic delusions and relying on taxpayers to subsidize these experimental interventions, Kennedy’s health department is working to pull funding and impose enforcement actions on the medical institutions that profit off of vulnerable children.
‘We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits.’
“The Trump administration will not stand by while ideology, misinformation, and propaganda push vulnerable young people into decisions they cannot fully understand and that they can never reverse,” Kennedy said Thursday.
“There is divine worth in every person, and it shines most brightly in our children. That worth commands us to protect them.”
RELATED: ‘This is a must-win’: These 4 Republicans voted against banning trans surgeries on children
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Kennedy was flanked by numerous health officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, Republican lawmakers, and even Chloe Cole, a de-transitioner who described her own traumatic experience with the medical industry.
“It’s not too late to accept the beautiful way God has created you,” Cole said during her remarks.
Kennedy went on to describe the predatory nature of the medical institutions that convince American youth that sex is malleable and that a life-altering, irreversible medical procedure is a one-size-fits-all solution to the mental health struggles for these children.
RELATED: ‘Send in the next guy’: Nicki Minaj savages Newsom over his desire to ‘see trans kids’
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“They betray the estimated 300,000 American youth ages 13 to 17 conditioned to believe that sex can be changed,” Kennedy said. “They betrayed their Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm.’ So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine; it is malpractice.”
“We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”
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Trump administration orders more foreign-born Americans to be stripped of citizenship over fraud: NYT
The Trump administration is taking aim at some naturalized Americans who committed fraud, according to a New York Times report.
The report says new guidance was sent to the field offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday ordering them to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month.” The report says that in the last eight years, only about 120 such cases have been filed.
‘I don’t think we’re anywhere close to denaturalizing too many people.’
Legally, naturalized immigrants can have their citizenship taken away if they commit fraud, though the report suggests that the Trump administration could clamp down on other cases that include applicants making mistakes on their paperwork.
“It’s no secret that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ war on fraud includes prioritizing those who’ve unlawfully obtained U.S. citizenship — especially under the previous administration,” said USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser, according to the Times.
“We will pursue denaturalization proceedings for those individuals lying or misrepresenting themselves during the naturalization process,” he added. “We look forward to continuing to work with the Department of Justice to restore integrity to America’s immigration system.”
Amanda Baran, a former USCIS senior official in the Biden administration, criticized the order.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that citizenship and naturalization are too precious and fundamental to our democracy for the government to take it away on their whim,” she said. “Instead of wasting resources digging through Americans’ files, USCIS should do its job of processing applications, as Congress mandated.”
RELATED: AOC claims ICE targets 6-year-olds in her district during crazed speech on immigration
Others who support further restrictions on immigration say the order isn’t enough.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere close to denaturalizing too many people,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
About 800,000 people are naturalized every year, according to the report. Those who have their citizenship stripped usually become permanent legal residents.
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Harrison Ford to get lifetime achievement award
Harrison Ford is to be given a lifetime achievement award from the main union representing Hollywood actors, the organization announced Thursday.
Lucasfilm wins bid to throw out UK lawsuit over ‘resurrection’ of ‘Star Wars’ character
Disney unit Lucasfilm on Thursday won its bid to throw out a London lawsuit over the use of the likeness of a long-dead actor in a Star Wars spinoff movie.
