School shootings dropped in 2025 - but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention

US owns almost half of all the guns in the world, around 500 million

James Densley, Metropolitan State University

Wrong questions. Wrong answers

Active shootings represent a very small percentage of on-campus university violence.

But among those that do happen, there are patterns. And as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Dec. 13, 2025, Brown University shooting, similarities can be seen with other active shooter cases on college campuses that scholar James Densley has studied. “They tend to happen inside a classroom, and there tends to be multiple victims,” Densley explains.

The Brown University tragedy, in which a shooter killed two students and injured nine more, marks the fourth deadly shooting at a U.S. university in 2025.

The Department of Education in Rhode Island, where Brown University is located, said on Dec. 16 that it is urging local elementary and secondary schools to review safety protocols.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Densley about how schools have been given what he describes as an “impossible mandate” to try to prevent shootings.

What is the overall trajectory of school shootings over the past few years?

K-12 school shootings appear to be trending downward, at least in the past two years. But we actually saw the largest jumps in this type of violence in the three to five years leading up to 2024, which trends closely with the broader rise in homicide and violent crime we saw in the pandemic era.

In 2025, there have been 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. – still a staggeringly high number. This compares with 336 school shootings in 2024, 352 in 2023, 308 in 2022, and 257 in 2021.

How this relates to an increase in schools trying to institute security measures to prevent shootings is an open question. But it’s true that many schools are experimenting with certain solutions, like cameras, drones, AI threat detection, weapons scanners, panic apps and facial recognition, even if there is only weak or emerging evidence about how well they work.

Schools are treated as the front line, because the larger, structural solutions are too difficult to confront. It is much easier to blame schools after a tragedy than to actually address firearm access, grievance pathways – meaning how a person becomes a school shooter – and the other societal problems that are creating these tragedies.

Incentives

An example of truth being stranger than fiction, here is an actual Homeland Security recruitment ad

How To Have a Plastic-Free Holiday Season

Some suggestions

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Our world is awash in plastic. From single-use water bottles and food packaging to synthetic clothes, shoes, and even nail polish, our overreliance on plastic is spreading a toxic, chemical-laden material all over the planet — including in our own bodies.

Most Americans are sick of plastic use, but manufacturers continue to push the product on us. This holiday season, is it possible to have a plastic-free celebration?

There’s no substitute for systemic policy change to regulate plastic use, but individual actions on a mass scale can have an impact. They can also be a dinner table conversation, potentially spurring cultural shifts and inspiring local activism.

“None of us voted for more plastic,” says Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics. Enck, who served as regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, adds that “the reason we have so much plastic is because there is a glut of fracked gas on the market.”

Enck says it’s entirely possible to have a plastic-free holiday season. She suggests forgoing disposable dinnerware for your Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa meal. “You can rent glassware and plates and beautiful reusable tablecloths and napkins from local vendors,” she says.

Trump Administration asking universities to provide lists of Jews.

This is never a good thing.

Beth Kissileff

(RNS) — Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust and Eastern European tyranny, has a tip for dealing with authoritarianism: “Don’t obey in advance.” 

So, when the university that granted me my doctorate and educated four generations of my family was asked by the Trump administration in July for lists of Jewish faculty members, I held my breath. Would I be able to continue to be proud of the University of Pennsylvania, the place I learned so much from?

In the past year, universities have varied widely in their responses to demands from the Trump administration to fall into line on ridding their campuses of wokeness and antisemitism. Columbia University (my undergraduate alma mater) settled with the administration, paying $21 million in return for restoring its federal research grants. 

It’s hard to see how cutting basic science research will help reduce antisemitism. It will likely only cause Jews’ presence at a university to be seen as somehow disruptive. (See the recent arguments that women ruined the workplace.)

Other universities have variously complied with administration demands or resisted, but a few, such as Barnard College of Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, acquiesced and shared personal cellphone numbers of Jewish faculty. (Penn refused, and is now being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) Nara Milanich, a Barnard history professor, said it reminded her of 1930s Italy, when lists of Jews were put together by the local government. “We’ve seen this movie before, and it ends with yellow stars,” she said.

It also troubled Milanich that the government appeared to be “fishing” for reports of antisemitism: According to the Forward, the University of California, Berkeley said it had provided the names of 160 individuals involved in cases of antisemitism. “Evidently, they don’t have sufficient people to file lawsuits, so they have to go shake the trees to find people?” said Milanich.

Lists of Jews are never a good thing. Amanda Shanor, a professor at the Wharton School and Penn’s law school, told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper: “The history of government demands for lists of Jewish people is one of the most terrifying in world history. I hope that students, faculty, and staff — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — will tell their family and friends about the government’s demand for a list of Penn’s Jews.”

Five big moments when your brain dramatically changes

Here are the five biggies

University of Cambridge 

Neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge report that the human brain moves through five "major epochs" as it rewires itself from early development to late old age. 

Each stage reflects a different way the brain supports thinking, learning, and behavior as we grow, mature, and eventually experience age-related decline.

A team from Cambridge's MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit analyzed MRI diffusion scans from 3,802 individuals ranging from newborns to 90 years old. These scans track the movement of water through brain tissue, which helps researchers map the networks that link one region to another.

Their findings, published in Nature Communications, show that the brain's structure progresses through five broad phases. Four key "turning points" divide these phases, marking ages when the brain undergoes meaningful reorganization.

White House Abruptly Cancels Meeting on FEMA’s Future After Leaked Report Revealed Plan to Gut the Agency

Trump continues baffling attack on FEMA. Is it another distraction?

By Carl David Goette-Luciak

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A meeting that was supposed to chart the future of America’s disaster-response agency ended on Thursday before it could even begin. 

The final report of a committee tasked by Donald Trump with reviewing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was scheduled to be presented and put to a vote Thursday afternoon. But shortly before 1 p.m., when the FEMA Review Council was scheduled to convene in Washington, a draft of the report was leaked to news outlets and the White House abruptly canceled the session. 

The shakeup appeared to surprise even some of the review council’s own members, several of whom were still awaiting instructions outside the meeting’s planned location less than an hour before it was supposed to start, The Washington Post reported. Registered attendees only received notice of the meeting’s postponement after the event was scheduled to conclude. That announcement, a two-sentence email from the council’s designated federal officer, Patrick Ryan Powers, did not provide an explanation for the cancellation or a date for a rescheduled meeting. 

The draft of the report signaled the review council’s plan to dramatically cut the agency even as climate change-fueled disasters increase, provoking swift condemnation from advocacy groups and emergency management experts. Critics panned the draft as a blueprint for weakening the nation’s primary emergency-response agency and shifting responsibility onto states unequipped and unprepared to manage crises alone. 

Human Rights and Democracy Replaced by Profit

Trump’s Distorted World View

By Terry H. Schwadron

Events, reports and analysis have converged this week to underscore Donald Trump’s unique view of how the world should spin.

Beyond the fallout of defending U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats, increasing threats of an undeclared war on Venezuela, the excesses of a mass deportation campaign spiraling out of control, unending tariffs, and flailing attempts to force Ukraine into a bad deal with Russia, we got a new National Security Strategy document that lays out Trump’s values as if they are ours.

Together, they reflect the clear vision of an autocratic, power-minded Trump who wants to dictate to Americans and the rest of the world that they should forego human rights and democracy, recognize a U.S. hemispheric dominance, and kowtow to us because of our national wealth, not our ideals.

As The New York Times concluded in an analysis of the strategic document, “The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money” at the expense of support for dictators and caring about those without wealth.

“Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash,” The Times analysis said.

He had to do it

King Donald's new scheme to bring in more rich people. What's his cut?

This is a real thing. Not a joke. Not a meme. 

FBI posts images of new "person of interest" and offers reward

Tariffs 101: What they are, who pays them, and why they matter now

Understanding Trump's new national sales tax

Kent Jones, Babson College

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case to determine whether Donald Trump’s global tariffs are legal.

Until recently, tariffs rarely made headlines. Yet today, they play a major role in U.S. economic policy, affecting the prices of everything from groceries to autos to holiday gifts, as well as the outlook for unemployment, inflation and even recession.

I’m an economist who studies trade policy, and I’ve found that many people have questions about tariffs. This primer explains what they are, what effects they have, and why governments impose them.

What are tariffs, and who pays them?

Tariffs are taxes on imports of goods, usually for purposes of protecting particular domestic industries from import competition. When an American business imports goods, U.S. Customs and Border Protection sends it a tariff bill that the company must pay before the merchandise can enter the country.

Because tariffs raise costs for U.S. importers, those companies usually pass the expense on to their customers by raising prices. Sometimes, importers choose to absorb part of the tariff’s cost so consumers don’t switch to more affordable competing products. However, firms with low profit margins may risk going out of business if they do that for very long. In general, the longer tariffs are in place, the more likely companies are to pass the costs on to customers.

Trump’s Draconian Border Policies Are Menacing the 2026 World Cup

Trump is banning travel from more than 30 countries 

Maybe this is why FIFA gave Trump his phony "peace prize"

By Nora Loreto

This article was originally published by Truthout

On Saturday, December 6, soccer fans around the world found out where their favorite teams will be playing in the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Players and staff from 48 countries and territories will play 104 games across North America — and for the first time in history, Canada is hosting some of the games. Together, Toronto and Vancouver will host 13 matches.

In addition to the matches, 84 training sites and 178 practice fields will be spread across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Plus, tens of thousands of broadcasters from around the world will cover the games for their home countries.

Holding the games in three countries means that ease of crossing borders is a fundamental part of the World Cup going smoothly. Hundreds of thousands of players, staff, and fans will need to move across the U.S.-Mexico border and the Canada-U.S. border multiple times in order to attend the matches over the course of six weeks in June and July 2026. But already, months before the games begin, concerns are mounting over whether attendees will be able to enter the host countries at all.

Russia’s Most Dangerous Weapon is Donald Trump’s Mind

How did the United States Come to Back a Vicious Dictator against All Its Allies?

Dr. Bandy X. Lee

The disintegration of Donald Trump’s mind—now obvious for everyone to see—is metaphorical of the disintegration of our society. Unfitness means that there is no one in charge of the government; there is no one home. Rather, the appearance of someone being home makes him a prime target for nefarious forces to do their mischief.

I warned in The Psychology of Trump Contagion, published before the 2024 presidential election:

Sometimes the greatest threat to national security is someone who can be leveraged and compromised—so as to parrot our enemies’ propaganda, to destroy American democracy from within, and to assist their rise in global dominance.

One of these enemies is Vladimir Putin. Russian forces launched 704 total missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight on December 5 to 6, 2025, heavily targeting railway and energy infrastructure in this proxy U.S.-Russia war. The goal is to freeze our fellow pro-democracy Europeans, so as to force them into submission as winter approaches.

So, how did the U.S. come to aid and comfort a hostile opponent bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union? Astute political commentator Thom Hartmann makes a critical observation from the Epstein emails:

The child victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are apparently not the only ones who’ve paid the price for Donald Trump’s long relationship with that notorious pedophile.

Epstein’s “partying” with Trump has apparently also led to thousands of civilian deaths abroad, the collapse of America’s credibility around the world, and a serious threat to the future of democracy in Europe….

In Epstein’s emails, he boasts of offering to advise Russia’s senior-most officials about how to manipulate Trump: “I think you might suggest to putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] lavrov can get insight on [Trump by] talking to me…”

Consider Trump’s secretive and beta-submissive behavior toward Vladimir Putin, especially in Helsinki when he trashed our intelligence agencies and sucked up to Putin, and more recently with his red carpet in Alaska, and it’s impossible to ignore what this newest Epstein revelation implies.

If Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is a direct or indirect result of things Trump did with Epstein, it’s naked treachery. Consider the pattern:… the Russian military targets … are not accidents of war. They’re the deliberate targeting of civilians, children, doctors, classrooms, apartment buildings, homes, and hospitals….

And all of this—the horror of what’s happening in plain sight that’s the clear result of Trump’s repeated and pathetic kowtowing to Putin—appears, from the Epstein emails, that it may be getting so much worse over the past 10 months because Putin took Epstein’s advice and threatened Donald Trump with exposure.

We still don’t know what was said in that room in Helsinki because Trump covered it up, making sure we’d never know. He ordered his American interpreter to move away from his private conversation with Putin, and afterward seized and destroyed her notes.

Similarly and more recently, in Alaska, Trump dismissed his aides and rode with Putin privately in his car where they engaged in another lengthy, secretive conversation.

That’s the behavior of a man with something to hide, who’s terrified by some horrible secret….

No meaningful value

Donald Trump's bonkers social media post about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife.

If his people won't invoke the 25th Amendment, they should at least take away his cell phone