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"The FBI cannot afford to have its resources further stretched by a director who views its staff and aircraft as a means to support his jet-setting lifestyle."
A whistleblower is claiming that FBI Director Kash Patel's frequent use of one of the agency's two jets has led to the delay of a high-profile murder probe.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday revealed he had received new whistleblower disclosures related to his investigations into Patel's use of FBI aircraft for personal travel, and he said they showed Patel's decisions regarding the use of FBI planes had delayed investigations not only into the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk but also the November 2025 mass shooting at Brown University.
In the case of Kirk, Durbin said that the FBI shooting reconstruction team's deployment to Utah "was delayed by at least a day because of a bureau plane and pilot shortage caused by the director's personal flights."
Durbin said that he also received information showing how Patel bungled the aftermath of the Brown shooting by putting the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) on standby to respond to the incident.
"The director’s decision caused immediate confusion," Durbin said, "because that order was not communicated to HRT; it upended the responsibility typically assigned to the local field office closest to the incident in question—in this case Boston or New York City—to provide immediate support; and it froze the aircraft’s usage by any other FBI team until the director removed the hold."
Durbin then said that the whistleblower described how his team "had to drive from Quantico, Virginia to Providence, Rhode Island overnight during a winter storm to reach the scene by 9:00 am the following morning to immediately process evidence."
Durbin noted he received this information shortly after Patel was seen chugging down a beer in the locker room of the gold medal-winning US men's Olympic hockey team on Sunday, after the director once again used an FBI plane to fly to Milan, Italy.
The Democratic senator said that Patel's trip to Italy could have seriously hampered the FBI's ability to investigate what may have been an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
"It also cannot be ignored that the director’s latest personal jaunt occurred on the same weekend an armed intruder attempted to breach President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence," Durbin explained. "The man was allegedly carrying a gas can and a shotgun, and he was killed on the scene by law enforcement."
Durbin concluded by saying that "the FBI cannot afford to have its resources further stretched by a director who views its staff and aircraft as a means to support his jet-setting lifestyle."
MS NOW reported that an FBI spokesperson has "disputed" the whistleblower's claims that Patel's decisions had caused delays to investigations, but added that they need to "check into the matter more deeply to gather information."
Rather than embrace human complexity, we choose to create enemies. But this is exactly the mindset that motivates mass shooters.
I stare blankly at the news. Little men with guns once again stir the country—the world—into a state of shock and grief and chaos. Attention: Every last one of us is vulnerable to being eliminated... randomly,
On Saturday, December 13, there’s a classroom shooting at Brown University, in Providence. Rhode Island. Two students are killed, nine others wounded. A day later, in Sydney, Australia—in the midst of a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach—two gunmen fire into the crowd of celebrants. Fifteen people are killed. The shock is global. The grief and anger flow like blood.
So do the questions: Why? How can we stop this? How can we guarantee that life is safe?
Usually, the calls for change after mass shootings focus on political action: specifically, more serious gun control. Ironically, Australia does have serious gun control. And, unlike the US, mass shootings there are extremely rare, but they still happen, which indicates that legal efforts can play a significant, but not total, role in reducing violence.
Good guy vs. bad guy—good violence vs. bad violence—is the essence of linear thinking.
But that ain’t gonna happen in the USA—not until God knows when, which seriously expands and intensifies the nature of the questions we must start asking. Yeah, there are an incredible number of guns in the United States. Some 400 million of them. And embedded into American culture along with the presence of guns is the belief that they are necessary for our safety, even as they also jeopardize it. Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. What a paradox.
And here’s where the process of change must begin. Good guy vs. bad guy—good violence vs. bad violence—is the essence of linear thinking. One person wins, one person loses. And if I draw my gun first, yeehaw, I’m the winner. This simplistic mindset is, and has long been, part of who we are—ultimately resulting, good God, in stockpiles of nuclear weapons, giving humanity the opportunity to commit mass suicide.
And while nukes may be declared to be simply deterrents for our enemies—threatening mutually assured destruction (oh, the MADness)—the global, and especially the US, non-nuclear military budget is itself almost beyond comprehension: larger by far than what we spend on healthcare, education, diplomacy, or environmental salvation, aka, human survival.
As Ivana Nikolić Hughes writes at Common Dreams: “But I think that the problem is far deeper than lack of gun control. The problem lies in having a state, a society, a world, in which violence is not only excused and sanctioned on a regular basis, but celebrated both as a matter of history, but also the present and the future.”
And this thinking isn’t sheerly political. It permeates our social and cultural infrastructure. And it gets personal. “We live in a culture of violence, where weapons are a symbol of power,” Ana Nogales writes in Psychology Today. And having power—over others—also means having the ability, and perhaps the motive, to dehumanize them. And this is the source of human violence—both the kind we hate (mass killings) and the kind we worship (war).
All of which leads me to a quote I heard the other day, in regard to the Bondi Beach shootings, which left me groping for sanity. The speaker was Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks, speaking on Fox News. “In America,” he said, “we have to do more to deport terrorists out of the United States to make sure this doesn’t happen in the homeland, and root out antisemitism around the world as well.”
Flush ’em out! All of them—you know, the ones that are different from us. Skin color, whatever. This is the essence of dehumanization, and it’s how we govern. Rather than embrace human complexity, we choose to create enemies and declare them... deportable, and if necessary, killable. This mindset is infectious. Just ask the students at Brown University or the Hanukkah celebrants at Bondi Beach.
Australia’s response to a December 14 mass shooting reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted.
Days ago, two tragedies unfolded on opposite sides of the world—each marked by gun violence and grief, yet met with starkly different national responses.
On December 14, on the first night of Hanukkah, a gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney turned into horror when a father and son opened fire during a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration, killing 15 people and wounding 40 in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terrorist attack. The carnage would have been much worse were it not for the heroic act of Ahmed al-Ahmed, an Australian citizen who migrated from Syria two decades ago.
The day before in Providence, Rhode Island, a shooter opened fire at Brown University during finals, killing two students and wounding nine. As of this writing, authorities are actively searching for a suspect—and a motive.
These shootings—one at a beloved public beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose not only shared grief but radically different understandings of responsibility. In Australia, sorrow was quickly followed by collective resolve. The US followed a familiar ritual: shock, condolences, and political paralysis. If I had a dollar for every politician’s “thoughts and prayers,” I could join the billionaire class those officials so eagerly protect.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the Bondi Beach massacre as an act of “evil beyond comprehension,” pledging solidarity with the Jewish community and signaling renewed efforts to strengthen gun laws: tougher licensing, tighter oversight, and renewed limits on gun ownership.
Australians remember what followed the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Within days, the country banned rapid-fire weapons, bought back and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, and created a national gun registry. The result? Decades with virtually no similar mass shootings.
In the US, by contrast, each new tragedy yields the same results: more guns, more shootings, more grief; this in a country with more guns than people! And once again, the gendered reality of this violence is almost entirely ignored. There's a reason we never hear the phrase, gunwoman.
The overwhelming majority of US mass shooters are male—frequently young, usually white, and commonly driven by grievance, isolation, and entitlement. This is not incidental. It’s a pattern demanding honest cultural reckoning. For decades, we’ve failed to challenge destructive norms of masculinity. No surprise that those norms keep finding their most lethal expression through guns.
Let’s be clear: This is not about demonizing men. It’s about telling the truth. We train boys to suppress vulnerability, to equate manhood with dominance, and to interpret frustration as humiliation. When that script collides with easy access to weapons designed to kill many people quickly, the outcome is predictable. Every time. Full stop.
Australia acted on that reality. After Port Arthur, it banned fully automatic weapons, semi-automatic rifles, and pump-action shotguns—and treated firearms not as sacred objects, but as regulated tools with enormous public risk. Rather than deny their grief, Australians transformed it into collective responsibility, identifying gun violence as a systemic problem requiring systemic solutions.
In the US, mass shootings are still framed as isolated incidents—acts of deranged individuals—or worse, as unavoidable features of national life: school shootings; movie theater shootings; grocery store shootings; church, mosque, and synagogue shootings. Together they form a normalized nightmare we refuse to confront honestly, ignoring the 393 mass shootings so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
At Brown University, students and families are now living with the trauma of a field of learning turned into a killing field. Final exams meant to test academic mastery became tests of life and death. The remainder of the semester was canceled, and students headed home to process a violent assault rather than celebrating the end of the semester.
And yet, even as Brown students grieve, politicians employ familiar distractions—talking about mental health or spiritual resilience—anything to avoid confronting easy access to weapons of mass destruction.
Australia’s response reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted. Their approach is not perfect; nor is their country. Their strategy reflects a fundamental belief: Government exists to protect lives, not to fetishize weapons. The US, trapped in a twisted love affair with the Second Amendment, continues to block meaningful reform.
Still, this country has a choice. We can center honest conversations about masculinity and how we raise boys. We can invest in early interventions for alienated youth. We can regulate weapons of mass killing. Or we can keep normalizing trauma and, laughably, calling it freedom.
When Brown students return to campus, many will have already spent weeks organizing for tougher gun laws. I predict students across the country will join them.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough. Action—the antidote to despair—is required. Now.
A view from the front of a college classroom amid fresh carnage both near and far.
I write this from the front of a Columbia classroom in which about 60 first-year college students are taking the final exam for Frontiers of Science. Yes, it’s a Sunday, but the class is required of all Columbia College students and so having the exam on the weekend ensures that there won’t be conflicts with the exams for other courses they are taking. The 60 students in my classroom are a fraction of the nearly 740 taking the course this semester.
The exam began at 2 pm, less than 24 hours after the shooting at Brown University, and just hours after many of us learned about the shooting in Sydney, Australia. Given these devastating events, I offered this morning that anyone who was adversely affected could take the exam later in the week or take what at Columbia is called an incomplete, which means that they would take the final exam at the start of next semester and only then be assigned a grade. Only about two dozen students took this offer, some sharing personal stories about having close friends from childhood or high school among the victims at Brown. It makes sense that the high-achieving students that Columbia attracts would have high-achieving friends at Brown. Some also hail from Providence and have had impacted family members.
It's hard to process now, as my students are going through a 30-page exam (there are lots of figures and tables in it, plus spaces for them to add their answers, but yes, it’s a long exam) the senselessness of mass shootings in general, with the one in a classroom full of primarily first-year college students going through a Saturday afternoon final exam review for Principles of Economics weighing heavily as I sit here. Many of the students in Frontiers of Science also take a course here named Principles of Economics. The parallel is heartbreaking. I cannot imagine what I would have done had a shooter walked in on the review I held just a few days ago. I don’t think any of us can, except for those who have experienced mass shootings themselves. Sadly, it seems that at Brown there are two students with such prior experiences.
As I look at my students, still busily working on the exam, and recall the joys I’ve experienced teaching them and getting to know them this semester, I feel that we owe them so much more than what’s on offer at the moment.
As is typical in American society, there will be thoughts and prayers, and arguments about gun control and how we haven’t done enough to ensure that the incomprehensible violence does not happen again. I was in my final year of college when Columbine happened in 1999. I remember seeing the news in the townhouse near the Caltech campus that I shared with three housemates. We were devastated then. More than 25 years after Columbine, the feeling of devastation is sadly familiar, but also insidious.
The fact that the second shooting of the weekend took place in Australia, a country with strict gun laws, complicates the debate somewhat, demonstrating that this is not just about gun control. Sure, more gun control in the US would help; after all, our rate of mass shootings per capita is far higher than in all of the other developed countries. But I think that the problem is far deeper than lack of gun control. The problem lies in having a state, a society, a world, in which violence is not only excused and sanctioned on a regular basis, but celebrated both as a matter of history, but also the present and the future.
We salute our troops, flaunt our deadliest weapons as a matter of pride, justify wars in the name of democracy, and applaud leaders who may have committed war crimes and belong in courtrooms rather than in polite society. Journalist Glenn Greenwald recently made this last point when discussing why so many young people are buying what Nick Fuentes is selling and not what many in the mainstream media would want them to buy.
It is a sick society that spends far more on the military than on diplomacy, education, its veterans, and infrastructure combined. In their recent book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, William Hartung and Ben Freeman demonstrate not only that most of the defense budget ends up in the pockets of the arms manufacturers, but that the funds have also been allocated to projects that have put our troops in harm’s way. Our investment in the military is costly all around, while it elevates violence here and abroad as the ultimate arbiter of disputes and disagreements. The US President John F. Kennedy once said that we will have war as long as the conscientious objectors are treated as traitors, while people who kill during times of war are treated as heroes.
The pinnacle of this sickness is the possession of nuclear weapons, a constant threat to ourselves and our so-called adversaries, but also the rest of the world. The belief that nuclear weapons keep us safe runs deep through society, and elevates the risk of ultimate annihilation at any moment. Buried deep in this narrative is the justification of the atomic bombings as the tool that brought World War II to a close, while historical analysis demonstrates that Japan would have surrendered without its citizens being incinerated, blown apart, and sickened by the power unleashed from the atom. Justifying the murder of innocent civilians can only beget more violence in the long run, whether in Gaza, or at Brown, or at Bondi Beach.
There are more forms of sanctioned violence, including torture of prisoners, the death penalty, and the killing of suspects at the hands of police. As it is now, these examples send a message that even beyond war, violence and death are the answer. As shocking and horrifying as it is, it is perhaps not surprising that there are individuals, many likely with mental illness, that take this message to heart and commit senseless violence themselves.
As I look at my students, still busily working on the exam, and recall the joys I’ve experienced teaching them and getting to know them this semester, I feel that we owe them so much more than what’s on offer at the moment. Not only do they deserve not to be thinking of mass shootings while studying for their college exams, but they definitely deserve to inherit a world in which peace is sacrosanct and sanctioned violence is not the answer.
With at least two people dead, several others in critical but stable condition at Rhode Island Hospital, and a suspect at large after a Saturday shooting at Brown University in Providence, gun violence prevention advocates and some US lawmakers renewed calls for swift action to take on what the nonprofit Brady called "a uniquely American problem" that "is completely preventable."
"Our hearts are with the victims, survivors, their families, and the entire community of Brown University and the surrounding Providence area in this horrific time," said Brady president Kris Brown in a statement. "As students prepare for finals and then head home to loved ones for the holidays, our all-too-American gun violence crisis has shattered their safety."
"Guns are the leading cause of death for youth in this nation. Only in America do we live in fear of being shot and killed in our schools, places of worship, and grocery stores," she continued. "Now, as students, faculty, and staff hide and barricade themselves in immense fear, we once again call on lawmakers in Congress and around the country to take action against this uniquely American public health crisis. We cannot continue to allow politics and special interests to take priority over our lives and safety."
Despite some early misinformation, no suspects are in custody, and authorities are searching for a man in dark clothing. The law enforcement response is ongoing and Brown remains in lockdown, according to a 9:29 pm Eastern update on the university's website. Everyone is urged to shelter in place, which "means keeping all doors locked and ensuring no movement across campus."
The Ivy League university's president, Christina H. Paxson, said in a public message that "this is a deeply tragic day for Brown, our families, and our local community. There are truly no words that can express the deep sorrow we are feeling for the victims of the shooting that took place today at the Barus & Holley engineering and physics building."
US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on social media that he was "praying for the victims and their families," and thanked the first responders who "put themselves in harm’s way to protect all of us." He also echoed the city's mayor, Brett Smiley, "in urging Rhode Islanders to heed only official updates from Brown University and the Providence Police."
In a statement, US Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) also acknowledged everyone impacted by "this horrific, active, and unfolding tragedy," and stressed the importance of everyone listening to law enforcement "as they continue working to ensure the entire campus and surrounding community is safe, and the threat is neutralized."
The state's two Democratic congressmen, Brown alumnus Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, released similar statements. Amo also said that "the scourge of mass shootings is a horrific stain on our nation. We must seek policies to ensure that these tragedies do not strike yet another community and no more lives are needlessly taken from us."
Elected officials at various levels of government across the country sent their condolences to the Brown community. Some also used the 389th US mass shooting this year and the 230th gun incident on school grounds—according to Brady's president—to argue that, as US House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) put it, "it's past time for us to act and stop senseless gun violence from happening again."
Both Democratic US senators from Massachusetts also emphasized on Saturday that, in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's words, "students should be able to learn in peace, not fear gun violence." Her colleague Sen. Ed Markey said that "we must act now to end this painful epidemic of gun violence. Our children should be safe at school."
New York City's democratic socialist mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, noted that this shooting occurred just before the anniversary of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut:
This senseless violence—once considered unfathomable—has become nauseatingly normal to all of us across our nation. Tonight, on the eve of the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, we find ourselves in mourning once again.
The epidemic of gun violence stretches across America. We reckon with it when we step into our houses of worship and out onto our streets, when we drop our children off at kindergarten and when we fear if those children, now grown, will be safe on campus. But unlike so many other epidemics, we possess the cure. We have the power to eradicate this suffering from our lives if we so choose.
I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and to the Brown and Providence communities, who are wrestling with a grief that will feel familiar to far too many others. May we never allow ourselves to grow numb to this pain, and let us rededicate ourselves to the enduring work of ending the scourge of gun violence in our nation.
Fred Guttenberg has been advocating against gun violence since his 14-year-old daughter was among those murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida nearly eight years ago. He said on social media that he knows two current students at Brown and asserted that "IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE THIS WAY!!!"
Students Demand Action similarly declared: "Make no mistake: We DO NOT have to live and die like this. Our lawmakers fail us every day that they refuse to take action on gun violence."
Gabby Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who became an activist after surviving a 2011 assassination attempt, said that "my heart breaks for Brown University. Students should only have to worry about studying for finals right now, not hiding from gunfire. Guns are the leading cause of death for young people in America—this is a five-alarm fire and our leaders in Washington have ignored it for too long. Americans are tired of waiting around for Congress to decide that protecting kids matters."
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, warned that "we either take action, or we bury more of our kids."
The Associated Press noted that "Rhode Island has some of the strictest gun laws in the US. Last spring the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed an assault weapon ban that will prohibit the sale and manufacturing of certain high-powered firearms, but not their possession, starting next July."
Gun violence prevention advocates often argue for federal restrictions, given that, as Everytown's latest analysis of state-level policies points out, "even the strongest system can't protect a state from its neighbors' weak laws."
Brown University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pennsylvania—the president's alma mater—all rejected the proposal.
Three more leading US universities have joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in rejecting President Donald Trump's compact that critics have condemned as an "extortion agreement" and "loyalty oath" for federal funding.
Brown University's Wednesday decision and Thursday announcements from the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania came ahead of the Trump administration's October 20 deadline for the nine initially invited schools to respond to the "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education."
Although the University of Texas said it was "honored" to receive the offer, it has not officially signed on to the compact to receive priority access to federal funding and other "benefits." Neither has any of the other institutions: the University of Arizona, Dartmouth College, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia.
Bloomberg reported Monday that "a few days after MIT rebuffed the proposal, the administration extended the offering to all higher education institutions," citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
Brown's president, Christina Paxson, released her full letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other Trump officials on Wednesday. She pointed out that "on July 30, Brown signed a voluntary resolution agreement with the government that advances a number of the high-level principles articulated in the compact, while maintaining core tenets of academic freedom and self-governance that have sustained the excellence of American higher education across generations."
"While a number of provisions in the compact reflect similar principles as the July agreement—as well as our own commitments to affordability and the free exchange of ideas—I am concerned that the compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown's governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission," Paxson wrote. "While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the compact."
Penn, also part of the Ivy League, rejected the compact on Thursday. In a statement, its president, Dr. J. Larry Jameson, said that "for 285 years, Penn has been anchored and guided by continuous self-improvement, using education as a ladder for opportunity, and advancing discoveries that serve our community, our nation, and the world."
"I have sought input from faculty, alumni, trustees, students, staff, and others who care deeply about Penn," with the goal of ensuring that "our response reflected our values and the perspectives of our broad community," Jameson detailed. "Penn respectfully declines to sign the proposed compact," and provided the US Department of Education with "focused feedback highlighting areas of existing alignment as well as substantive concerns."
"At Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability," he added. "The long-standing partnership between American higher education and the federal government has greatly benefited society and our nation. Shared goals and investment in talent and ideas will turn possibility into progress."
As The Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper, noted:
At a Wednesday meeting, Penn's Faculty Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the University to reject the agreement.
"The 'compact’ erodes the foundation on which higher education in the United States is built," the October 15 resolution read. "The University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate urges President Jameson and the Board of Trustees to reject it and any other proposal that similarly threatens our mission and values."
Penn is the alma mater of Trump and Marc Rowan, a billionaire private equity financier who helped craft the compact.
The Trump White House told the student newspaper that "any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers' support."
Despite the risk of funding loss, the University of Southern California also rejected the proposal on Thursday. In a statement to the campus paper, the Daily Trojan, interim president Beong-Soo Kim said that "although USC has declined to join the proposed compact, we look forward to contributing our perspectives, insights, and Trojan values to an important national conversation about the future of higher education."
Critics of the compact have called on educational leaders to oppose it. In a joint statement earlier this month, American Association of University Professors president Todd Wolfson and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten urged "all college and university governing boards, campus administrations, academic disciplinary organizations, and higher education trade groups to reject such collusion with the Trump administration and to stand firmly on the side of free expression and higher education as the anchor of opportunity for all."
Acquiescing, they argued, "would be a profound betrayal of your students, staff, faculty, the public, higher education, and our shared democracy—one that would irretrievably tarnish your personal reputation and compromise your institution's legacy. We urge you not to capitulate and not to negotiate but to unite now in defense of democracy and higher education."