The suspect in the Brown University shooting who also allegedly killed an MIT professor two days later is found dead, the Trump administration rolls out new rules to defund hospitals that perform transgender procedures on minors, and a positive economic report shows cooling inflation. It’s Friday, December 19, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start yourday. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire:   Brown And MIT Shooter Found Dead, Authorities Say On Thursday, police found the body of the man who they said was responsible for the deaths of two students at Brown University and a professor at MIT. Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, died by suicide in a storage locker he had rented in New Hampshire. His last known address was in Miami, Florida, but he originally came from Portugal. Authorities said he attended Brown in the early 2000s as a PhD student, but he never completed the program. New Hampshire authorities said Neves Valente also attended the same academic program in Portugal as MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was found dead in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, earlier this week. According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.” Noem said Thursday night she had paused the DV1 program at President Donald Trump’s direction. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Trump Cuts Funds To Hospitals Performing Trans Treatments The Trump administration has moved to cut off federal funding for hospitals performing transgender procedures and surgeries on minors, a fulfillment of a major Trump campaign promise. A number of new rules are being applied to cut off federal funding to any facility that performs trans procedures on children, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgical operations. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will bar hospitals from performing any of these procedures on children under 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs. New rules will also block funding of Medicaid’s Children’s Health Insurance Program for trans procedures on anyone under 19. That program, known as CHIP, covers millions of kids nationwide. Inflation Cools November’s Consumer Price Index report shows that inflation cooled last month, defying expert predictions and providing political relief for President Trump. The report was especially important, as it was the first since September. The October report was lost to the federal shutdown. Economists had originally predicted a month-over-month rise of 3.1%, but inflation actually came in at 2.7%. That is down from a peak 9% in 2022 under President Joe Biden. Looking at core inflation, which strips out prices on volatile goods such as food and gas, the numbers appear even better. In November, CPI was 2.6%, the lowest since March 2021. The Trump administration took a victory lap on Thursday, and investors were also thrilled by the news, as the DOW, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 all climbed significantly.

President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered a pause on the United States green card diversity lottery immigrant visa program, which authorities say allowed the man who killed two Brown University students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor to enter the country. Police identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown University student who immigrated to the United States in 2017. Authorities found Valente dead in a New Hampshire storage unit on Thursday night, from what investigators believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X. “In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.” Trump called on Congress to eliminate the visa lottery after that attack, but the effort failed. “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem added.  The “diversity visa” program allows up to 55,000 immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States into the country every year, according to the State Department.  Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Valente, a lawful permanent resident, attended Brown University as a physics student in 2001 and re-entered the United States 16 years later under the diversity visa program as a green card holder. Authorities believe he acted alone and have not revealed a motive. Investigators say Valente remained at large for six days after the Brown shootings, during which he allegedly entered an engineering building and opened fire, leaving two people dead and injuring nine more. While on the run, authorities believe he fatally shot MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home. Police traced Valente to the New Hampshire storage facility after receiving a tip based on a Reddit post from someone who said they had seen the vehicle used by the gunman. “I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the post said, according to a police affidavit.  That person later came forward to the police and provided a description of Valente. He said that he asked Valente why he was circling the block near the university, to which he replied, “I don’t know you from nobody,” and “Why are you harassing me?”  Brown University officials and police have faced scrutiny over their handling of the investigation, including questions about why more surveillance footage was not available from the campus building where the shooting occurred. “I know this has been hard on all of us over the past five days,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at a Thursday night press conference. “Minutes have felt like hours, but the people of Providence have done what we’re best at – we’ve leaned on one another, come together and supported one another, and showed the nation what a tight-knit community looks like.”

A Utah state employee accused Republican Governor Spencer Cox of engaging in “reprehensible censorship” for ordering a review that included flagging content related to radical gender and racial ideology in state documents, according to emails viewed by The Daily Wire.  An employee with the Utah Department of Health attacked Cox, accusing him of “dehumanizing” minorities and saying more should be done to “push back” against the review, emails obtained by Do No Harm show. The employee made the comment amid a sensitive content review that directed officials at Utah’s Department of Health to go through content and watch for words like “anti-racism,” “environmental justice,” “gender identity,” “LGBTQ(IA+),” “Racism,” “transgender,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” abortion, and more.  The call to “push back” was apparently made during a staff meeting and passed along by public information officer Charla Haley, whose job is to communicate with the public about what’s happening at the health department, to other employees in the Utah Department of Health in an email on January 10, 2024. “Why isn’t more being done to push back against the Sensitive Content Assignment issued by the governor’s office?” the quote shared by Haley read. “This effort to remove references to health equity, race, gender identity, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is reprehensible censorship that invisibilizes communities who have already experienced disproportionate negative health outcomes from systemic oppression. It is dehumanizing and will further marginalize diverse people in Utah, including employees and Partners.”  Utah Department of Health and Human Services Director Mike Grass said in an email to The Daily Wire that Haley passed the message along to other employees “who had some questions.” It was not clear what the questions were. “With respect to the comment sent by Charla Haley, this was simply a direct quote written by an employee made during a staff meeting. She passed it along to three staff members who had some questions,” the Utah Department of Health told The Daily Wire.  Kurt Miceli, the medical Director of Do No Harm, said the comment showed that there were political ideologues embedded in Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services.   “What Do No Harm has uncovered makes it clear that there are political ideologues in Utah’s DHHS who are interested in pushing an agenda, not science,” he said. “These activists within Utah’s DHHS should stop pushing their political agenda and spend more time helping the people of their state.” A few hours after passing along the quote attacking the governor, Haley sent an email to another health department employee telling them to pull “concerning” handouts “for the time being.”  “So, you might want to go through some of your handouts that might be concerning and pull them for the time being. Your disease reports should be fine for now and we can review them and rebrand them after the 15th,” she wrote.  Grass told The Daily Wire that the reference to rebranding had to do with a merger, and the department was not trying to hide DEI-focused materials. “DHHS is compliant with the governor’s directive. DHHS materials were not rebranded to hide references to DEI activities; however, materials were revised to comply with the governor’s directive and the department’s internal policies,” he said. “Additionally, the department’s efforts to rebrand and the references to rebranding were necessary due to the merger between the Utah Department of Health and the Utah Department of Human Services in July 2022. After the merger, the department’s website continued to contain documents with old logos. The rebranding comments simply referred to making sure they all had the new logo.” Grass said those conducting the review were “instructed to watch for certain words” and “the context in which those words were used during the review process.” “The use of those words alone did not necessarily result in revisions to particular materials,” he said.  In another email sent to a health department employee in February 2024, Haley shared a rant from someone named “Mikey” who she said was “definitely in touch with his emotions.” In the rant, “Mikey” said that parents should allow their kids to identify as transgender.  “The LGBTQIA+ community does not want your children. They want to give a safe space for your child when you decide they are no longer your child because they came out as gay or trans. YOU, as a parent, are a failure if you feel that is the only acceptable response to your child telling you what has been plaguing their minds the most,” the person wrote.  In another email from April 16, 2024, obtained by Do No Harm, a then-health department employee, Andrea Hood, discussed editing an LGBT-focused resource to get it through the content review process.  “I was wondering if we want to edit this resource for parents and submit it through the DHHS ‘sensitive topics’ review process,” she wrote. “What are your thoughts? I created it to go with Inclusive Spaces training but I think it could be useful on its own. I’m open to making adjustments to it if there are pieces that might be particularly scrutinized we can brainstorm how to do that.” The resource pushed parents to get involved in politics and embrace their kids’ gender expression. The resource said that using “chosen name & pronouns,” supporting “gender expression,” encouraging “inclusive practices,” and being “active in the legislative process,” would “increase the likelihood of your LGBTQ+ child having a healthy and happy future.” The resource also said to “speak up when you hear stereotypes about LGBTQ+ people,” and “talk with your religious leaders to help your congregation become more supportive of LGBTQ+ people.” The inclusive practices the resource said to support included “including pronouns on enrollment forms,” “name and pronoun change procedures,” “LGBTQ+ professional development for staff,” “sports participation for transgender and gender non-binary youth,” “inclusive curricula,” and “affirming clubs (Gender & Sexuality Alliances).” The resource told parents to use their children’s chosen pronouns, not their biological ones, and to “correct” themselves when they “make a mistake.”  “Listen to your child to understand what being transgender or gender nonbinary means to them, and what it feels like,” the resource said, adding, “Try to use their chosen name and pronouns, and correct yourself in the moment when you make a mistake.” The resource also claimed that studies “found that youth who have parental and school support to transition socially have significantly better mental health outcomes than youth without that support.” Cox’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the emails.  Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Utah’s Department of Health has been criticized for producing a “terribly flawed” report on the science behind transgender procedures for kids. The report, which was sent from the department to the Utah legislature, significantly misrepresents the scientific record and glosses over the danger of transgender procedures, Do No Harm said in a memo last week.  The report also came alongside recommendations from the Utah Department of Health, which Miceli said silently supported undoing protections for kids from transgender procedures.  The recommendations are all contingent on the moratorium being lifted, Miceli said. These included things like setting up a board to oversee the moratorium, creating specific standards of care, and limiting those who prescribe transgender procedures to “demonstrated experts.” Utah’s Department of Health also maintains a “self-paced” training page on the topics of “advancing health equity,” “an anti-racist imperative for public health data,” and “How to be Anti-Racist in the Everyday Practice of Public Health.” “Each day, we have opportunities to fight racism and bias in our work in public health. From our hiring practices to microaggressions that occur in internal meetings to the data we collect to the policies we influence, enact, and enforce — racism and bias impact all facets of public health. Studies show that this ultimately causes a negative impact on health outcomes and hinders our efforts to reduce racial inequities in health,” the course description says.  In January 2023, Cox signed legislation placing a moratorium on doctors giving kids cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers and banning transgender surgeries. That came after he previously vetoed a bill keeping males out of female sports.

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles defended the idea of Americans as a distinct people with a “real historical lineage and a real historical destiny” on Thursday night. Knowles spoke on the main stage during the first night of Turning Point USA’s America Fest conference in Phoenix, Arizona. In a speech largely about uniting the American political Right, Knowles described the American people as having a heritage that sets them apart from others. “To be on the team, you have to acknowledge that there is such a thing as the American people. We’re not just an idea floating in outer space. We are a real people with a real historical lineage and a real historical destiny,” said Knowles. What defines Americanism became a point of debate online this week after Vivek Ramaswamy, a former 2024 GOP presidential candidate and current candidate for Ohio governor, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times arguing that the “American identity is based on ideals.” Knowles appeared to push back against that idea in his speech at AmFest. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships “We have a real historical experience and character that is not magically imbued through a few lines of philosophy or a naturalization pop quiz,” he said. “At different times, we’ve taken in foreigners. When it’s worked, those foreigners have come to act and talk and even look like us. When it hasn’t worked, they haven’t.” “If you prefer the flag of some other nation, the customs and habits of some other people, you are not on my team. If you are and want to be a member of the American people, you are on my team,” he added. Follow along with The Daily Wire’s live coverage here and live blog here.

When Democrats want to slam their political opponents, they resort to a kind of linguistic reductionism. Everyone to their right is a neocon, or alt right, or MAGA, or a Christian nationalist, or whatever the popular term of art is at the moment. Republicans have the opposite problem. For years, they’ve used “liberal,” “leftist,” and progressive” interchangeably. Today things are even further obfuscated by more specific but still somewhat vague concepts like “DEI,” and of course, the ever-evocative but incredibly diffuse “woke.” This isn’t a good rhetorical strategy. Liberal hasn’t meant what it really means in a century, and it’s such a useless term that even the liberals don’t want to claim it. Leftist is probably the most accurate, but it’s still so dripping with the blood of 1968 that Democrats will sooner call themselves socialists before they proclaim themselves leftists. That leaves progressive, which has more or less been the go-to epithet for partisan Democrats since Barack Obama. But what is progressivism, and why is it bad? Progress in and of itself seems like a good thing: we like that our cars are safer and our phones are faster, and that we no longer have lead in our paint or children in our factories. Those on the Right, of course, know that “progress” as a political concept is something altogether more sinister, a Hegelian tidal wave that if left unchecked will wipe out the nuclear family and Judeo-Christian values in one fell swoop. What relevance does any of this have, though, for contemporary politics? If ever there were a man who could answer this question, it’s Ronald J. Pestritto. A graduate dean and professor of politics at Hillsdale College, Pestritto has been writing, researching, and teaching about progressivism throughout his career, which began at Claremont McKenna College in 1990 and continued through his graduate work at Claremont Graduate University, where he earned his Ph.D in 1996. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Pestritto lecture on the progressives, by which he means the early 20th-century American political movement defined by presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and thinkers like John Dewey and Herbert Croly. Unlike some of his colleagues at both Hillsdale and Claremont, who — due respect — love to sound off on contemporary political debates, Pestritto is a thinker and teacher through and through. This is reflected not just in his engaging classroom demeanor and professorial aesthetic, but in his body of work. His first book, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, is a sustained engagement with the controversial progressive president. He has edited a fine collection of Wilson’s political writings as well as American Progressivism: A Reader, both indispensable volumes for anyone interested in progressivism or turn-of-the-century American political history. It is precisely these academic bona fides that make it all the more exciting when Pestritto starts talking about contemporary politics — which he did in a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Wire. The occasion of our conversation was the publication of Pestritto’s latest offering, “Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed.” The ninth installment in the Claremont Institute’s “Provocations” series, Pestritto describes it alternately as a long essay or a small book. It is, according to the précis, “a comprehensive, historically-grounded account of how America moved from the founders’ vision of republican self-government to a regime governed by a permanent, unaccountable class of administrators.” But the book’s goal is less lofty than that makes it sound. Pestritto says he wrote it with the 2026 midterm elections firmly in view, and in the hopes of providing Americans with a deeper understanding of precisely what is at stake when they go to the polls. “The point is to help people understand the current controversies, because the way that they’re explained in the press is often not useful,” he says. “These are things that have been boiling for 80, 90 years, and we’re now finally at a point where there’s going be a fight over it. So, that background is necessary to hopefully help explain what’s been going on legally to bring us to this point.” By this, Pestritto means the administrative state and its discontents. Better known as the bureaucracy or the “deep state,” this unelected leviathan is both the outgrowth and steward of American progressivism. Now a popular conservative bugaboo, the administrative state, as Pestritto admits, “something that most folks did not pay much attention to until probably Obama.” If Mr. “Pen and Phone” raised hackles about the deep state, it was his onetime vice president who really laid bare what was at stake. From mandating coronavirus vaccines to banning gas-powered stoves, Joe Biden’s administration made clear to Americans what happened when elected officials ceded all authority to government bureaucrats. A quick refresher for anyone who fell asleep in Deep State 101: federal agencies like the EPA, CDC, FCC — pretty much anything with a three-letter acronym — aren’t in the Constitution. They were largely created by congressional action, and the idea was that Congress would fund them, the president would control them (as part of the Executive Branch), and the courts would intervene when necessary. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the system of checks and balances most of us had drilled into our heads in school. But things changed in 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The result of the case was, in short, that administrative agencies were allowed to interpret and enforce federal guidance about themselves however they saw fit. In other words: screw the branches, we can do whatever we want. The result of that case, which came to be called “Chevron Deference,” led to a bloated and powerful administrative apparatus with no fear of legislative or executive oversight. It also fueled the neutering of Congress, and, until the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, made it seem like the rule of unelected bureaucrats over the United States was simply a forgone conclusion. That, to Pestritto, is unacceptable. “Government by bureaucracy contradict our principles of law and constitutionalism,” he says, in addition to violating “the basic democratic idea, that the people are supposed to govern themselves.” “We have guards against majority tyranny, but basically you have people making rules, you have people governing who aren’t accountable to voters, and that’s not kosher in a republic.” This is not merely a partisan gripe. It’s not that the federal bureaucracy is often staffed with liberals because liberals tend to gravitate toward government work. No, the liberal bias is built into the machinery — a machinery that seeks to shred the foundations of the country. The original progressive idea, he notes, was that “the circumstances are different today than they were at the Founding. Progress means new circumstances, and requires a new kind of government.” In other words, “our constitution’s outdated.” This, more than anything, Pestritto sees as the progressives’ lasting legacy. “I would say the main way in which, uh, you see the Progressive legacy today is in the deference to the administrative state,” he says. “I am not naive enough to think that contemporary Democrats who call themselves progressives are true believers in the way that the original progressives were.” While the original progressives at least had some kind of political program — workplace safety protections, things like that — “the contemporary Left is all about power.” But that doesn’t mean that the bureaucracy the progressives built isn’t a useful tool for the Left. “The bureaucracy, given the nature of what it does, is inherently Left ideologically,” Pestritto tells The Daily Wire. “It’s not conducive to conservative priorities.” Here, Pestritto sounds increasingly like the odd man out among conservatives. It’s popular on the Right these days to say that the problem with the federal bureaucracy is simply that the wrong people are running it. Put patriots in charge, the argument goes, and things will turn around. Pestritto isn’t buying it. “You’re never gonna get an entity like the Federal Trade Commission but conservative, or the EPA but conservative,” he says. “That’s where I get off the bus.” But this hardly means Pestritto is the kind of conservative intellectual who waxes poetic about Congress reasserting itself as a coequal branch of government — quite the contrary. “Congress has basically ceased to become a legislative body,” he says. “It’s not a legislative institution anymore. It’s a kind of public media company.” Asked how he would rate congressional efforts to rein in the administrative state, he pulls no punches. “I’d give the congressional Republicans an F,” he says, noting that lawmakers are “failing to take advantage of a historic opportunity.” That opportunity, of course, is the re-election of Trump, who has made “draining the swamp” one of his top priorities. On this front, the president is succeeding, Pestritto says. “Trump’s really trying to go after the kind of inherent ideological bias in the federal government that’s sort of seated there in the bureaucracy, and that’s why they’re fighting like hell right now,” he says. While Congress gets an F, “The current Trump administration I would give almost an A+,” Pestritto says, “because they are peddle to the floor trying to take advantage of every opening to rein in the bureaucracy, with the agency firings, with DOGE, and with a lot of the executive orders pertaining to rescinding regulations pertaining to bringing the independent agencies under the control of the president.” Pestritto is quick to distinguish between his kind of robust executive authority and an effort to make the bureaucracy conservative. “I’m much more an advocate of making the agencies directly accountable to the president by a total removal of power that he has, and then by paring back their authority and returning governing to actual elected officials, not so much in the federal government but probably in the state governments.” Trump isn’t the only reason Pestritto is optimistic about the future of representative government. The Supreme Court, he says, has over the past decade begun “to try to turn the tables on the bureaucracy.” The Court took a major step in this direction earlier this month during oral arguments for Trump v. Slaughter, which deals with the president’s ability to remove independent agency heads. The Court’s conservative majority appeared to side with President Trump, who contends he had the ability to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. In January, the Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Cook, a similar case that hinges on Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. “This stuff is kind of filtering up to the grownups in the judicial system,” Pestritto says. Though Pestritto is optimistic about all of these developments, he is clear that we never should have gotten to this point. The best way to dismantle the administrative state, he says, “would be for Congress to reverse all of the discretionary authority it has delegated to bureaucratic executive agencies.” But of course, “they’re not going to do that — that ship has sailed.” “Congress is never going to be what it should be,” he says. That’s a pity, because in the not-so-distant past, congressional appropriators from both parties (he names Democrat John Dingell as one example) were so bullish about protecting their own power that they would fight the bureaucracy if only for territory. “Nowadays, ideology has transcended all of that,” he says. “So the Democrats in Congress essentially know that the bureaucrats are their proxy.” “And so, they are perfectly happy to let the bureaucrats disparage and ignore and resist congressional efforts for oversight,” he adds. “Because they understand that the bureaucracy will do the hard legislative work of legislating for the Left.”