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The federal grant, titled Evaluating how BipA contributes to Yersinia pestis pathogenesis during pneumonic plague, explicitly identifies bacterial mutants as part of the experimental research.
The proposed work includes laboratory testing, examination of biological samples, and mouse infection experiments.
The experiments concern BipA, a bacterial protein associated with resistance to immune defenses, attachment to mammalian cells, and virulence.
The award establishes federal funding for experiments using mutant plague bacteria.
Whether researchers will generate additional mutants or use previously constructed ones is a question for the underlying experimental records.
The physical activity being financed involves experimentally altered bacteria identified as the cause of plague, tested for biological characteristics relevant to infection and disease.
The federal grant identifies BipA as a bacterial virulence factor involved in:
“subverting host defense strategies during pneumonic plague.”
NIH reports preliminary findings connecting BipA to bacterial resistance against neutrophils and bactericidal permeability-increasing protein (BPI).
Neutrophils are immune cells involved in eliminating bacterial threats.
BPI is a host-defense protein that recognizes bacterial lipopolysaccharide, commonly called endotoxin.
According to the grant, BipA also influences bacterial attachment to mammalian cells and regulates additional proteins following BPI exposure.
The funded experiments therefore target a biological system NIH already associates with the plague bacterium’s ability to withstand immune defenses.
The grant identifies proteins regulated by BipA as potential contributors to virulence, the organism’s capacity to cause disease.
Researchers propose using bacterial mutants and experimental infection models to investigate how BipA affects resistance to host defenses and interactions with mammalian cells.
The experimental objectives include determining whether the resistance observed in preliminary research also operates during infection in living animals.
NIH is financing experiments that connect mutant plague bacteria, immune resistance, and the biological mechanisms underlying disease severity.
The $223,957 award began September 2, 2026, and extends through August 31, 2028.
The grant identifies the proposed experimental activities and reports preliminary findings involving immune resistance and bacterial virulence.
The public award summary does not provide the complete experimental protocol, mutant inventory, independent biosafety evaluation, or containment procedures.
Those records are consequential because the biological characteristics of the mutants determine the risks associated with laboratory handling, experimental infection, and accidental exposure.
The central oversight issue is who independently evaluates the biological consequences of the experimental modifications and verifies safeguards before the research proceeds.
NIH awarded East Carolina University $223,957 for experiments using mutant plague bacteria, acknowledging in the same grant that the organism is among the deadliest pathogens known to man.
The government’s own project description identifies bacterial resistance to immune defenses, mammalian-cell attachment, and virulence as central research subjects.
The award establishes plans to use bacterial mutants and experimental infections.
The outcomes of experiments conducted under this new funding remain to be determined from subsequent records.
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Composite image showing the National Institutes of Health’s September 2, 2026, plague-research grant R21AI192340, its description of Yersinia pestis as “one of the deadliest pathogens known to man,” and microscopy imagery of bacteria identified as Y. pestis alongside immune cells.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded East Carolina University $223,957 on September 2, 2026, for experiments using mutant plague bacteria to investigate mechanisms of immune resistance and virulence, according to federal grant R21AI192340, administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The agency explicitly acknowledges:
“Yersinia pestis is one of the deadliest pathogens known to man.”
Yet the same federal award declares:
“we will use bacterial mutants”
The grant authorizes research through August 31, 2028, involving laboratory experiments and experimental infections in mice to investigate how plague bacteria resist immune defenses and contribute to disease.
The federal government is financing experiments involving mutant plague bacteria while acknowledging that its research subject is among the deadliest pathogens known to humanity.
The award raises urgent questions:
The findings come after JonFleetwood.com reported on October 16 that NIH awarded Stanford University $782,082 to develop experimental influenza vaccine formulations that activate TLR4, the immune receptor stimulated by bacterial endotoxin (LPS), including a formulation containing a synthetic compound modeled on the inflammatory component of endotoxin.
You can contact NIH here.
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Screenshot of NIH grant R21AI192340, awarded September 2, 2026, to East Carolina University for $223,957, showing the federal agency’s description of Yersinia pestis as “one of the deadliest pathogens known to man” and its proposal to use bacterial mutants in experiments investigating immune resistance and virulence.
Investigative graphic combining San Diego County’s helicopter mosquito-control program with VectoMax FG’s EPA-registered label, a 2010 study documenting persistent lung inflammation in mice exposed to related bacterial pesticide aerosols, and a 2020 European Food Safety Authority finding that the bacterial strain AM65-52 can produce enterotoxins. The manufacturer also warns that VectoMax FG is harmful if inhaled.
San Diego County’s 2026 aerial mosquito-control schedule identifies an October 29 helicopter operation involving biological pesticides containing bacterial spores and insecticidal toxins, despite manufacturer inhalation warnings, experimental findings of persistent lung inflammation, and a documented 2019 incident in which beachgoers reportedly witnessed an unexpected helicopter release of the same commercial pesticide near Camp Pendleton.
The county lists up to 54 potential treatment locations covering approximately 1,400 acres, including parks, lagoons, rivers, and other waterways.
Yet officials assure the public that the bacterial pesticides:
“don’t harm people, pets, plants, or wildlife.”
The manufacturer’s labeling warns that VectoMax FG is harmful if inhaled, while European regulators could not complete an inhalation risk assessment for residents and bystanders involving one of its bacterial strains.
These questions are particularly consequential because an earlier helicopter release of VectoMax FG reportedly caught beachgoers unaware, prompting concerns about notification and a commitment to publicize future schedules.
San Diego County Vector Control Program webpage detailing recurring helicopter applications of mosquito larvicides into standing water across the county. The agency confirms aerial treatments occur every three to four weeks during mosquito season, with posted signs and optional email notifications for the public. Source: San Diego County, “Aerial Mosquito Larvicide Treatments.”
San Diego County’s official 2026 aerial pesticide treatment schedule lists 11 rounds of helicopter operations from March 24 through October 29, including multiple two-day operations. The county says treatment dates may change depending on conditions. Source: San Diego County Vector Control Program.
A 2019 San Clemente Times investigation, titled Mosquito Battleground: Camp Pendleton to Post Schedule Following Midday Larvicide Drop at Lower Trestles, documented public concerns after a helicopter released VectoMax FG near Lower Trestles and San Onofre.
According to the report, people on the beach and nearby trail were unaware that the operation would occur.
Witnesses described seeing brown material released from the aircraft “without warning.”
They questioned why people using the surrounding public areas had not received advance notice.
Camp Pendleton officials described the material as non-toxic, and the incident prompted a commitment to post future application schedules.
The account documents an actual release, public surprise, and a notification dispute. It does not report confirmed adverse health effects.
The central revelation is that people reportedly encountered an intentional biological-pesticide dispersal operation without knowing it was coming.
The 2019 operation involved Camp Pendleton, whereas the October 29, 2026, schedule belongs to San Diego County’s separate Vector Control Program.
Nevertheless, both records concern helicopter distribution of VectoMax FG in the San Diego region.
May 2, 2019, San Clemente Times investigation reporting on an April 19 helicopter larvicide drop at Lower Trestles near Camp Pendleton that caught beachgoers unaware. Former professional surfer Yadin Nicol said the helicopter was “just dumping without any warning,” raising concerns about public notification before aerial pesticide releases.
San Diego County identifies VectoMax FG, manufactured by Valent BioSciences, among its aerial mosquito-control products.
The manufacturer’s EPA-registered label states:
“Harmful if absorbed through the skin or inhaled.”
It also warns:
“Avoid breathing dust.”
And:
“Repeated exposure to high concentrations of microbial proteins can cause allergic sensitization.”
The formulation contains:
Certain workers handling or applying the product must wear respiratory protection.
The manufacturer acknowledges inhalation hazards from the formulated material while San Diego County assures residents the bacterial pesticides are harmless.
VectoMax FG manufacturer’s EPA-registered product label identifies bacterial fermentation solids, spores, and insecticidal toxins as active ingredients, with 92.8% listed as other ingredients. The label warns that the product is “harmful if absorbed through the skin or inhaled,” instructs users to avoid breathing dust, and requires respiratory protection for certain applicators.
VectoMax FG manufacturer’s EPA-registered label, Section 2, “Precautionary Statements,” warns that the bacterial pesticide is “harmful if absorbed through the skin or inhaled,” instructs users to avoid breathing dust, and requires N95-equivalent or stronger respiratory protection for certain workers. It also warns that repeated exposure to concentrated microbial proteins can cause allergic sensitization and prohibits application directly to finished drinking-water reservoirs intended for human consumption.
A 2010 study published in BMC Microbiology exposed mice to commercial Bacillus thuringiensis pesticide aerosols, including a Bti product.
Researchers found interstitial lung inflammation in three of 17 mice examined 70 days after exposure.
They concluded:
“Repeated low dose aerosol exposures to commercial Bt based biopesticides can induce sub-chronic lung inflammation in mice”
The researchers also reported that exposure produced no apparent immediate airway irritation despite the later findings.
Their experiment involved aerosolized pesticide preparations, whereas San Diego describes helicopter deployment of granules into standing water.
That difference creates an important empirical question.
2010 peer-reviewed study in BMC Microbiology documenting persistent lung inflammation in mice exposed to commercial Bacillus thuringiensis biopesticides. Researchers observed interstitial lung inflammation 70 days after exposure and reported that inhalation produced no immediate airway irritation despite subsequent inflammatory findings.
2010 [http://2010 BMC Microbiology study conclusion warns that repeated inhalation of Bacillus thuringiensis pesticide aerosols may contribute to severe lung disease, while producing no immediate airway irritation to warn exposed individuals. Researchers described the potentially unnoticed exposure as “insidious” and called for further studies of long-term respiratory effects.]BMC Microbiology study conclusion warns that repeated inhalation of Bacillus thuringiensis pesticide aerosols may contribute to severe lung disease, while producing no immediate airway irritation to warn exposed individuals. Researchers described the potentially unnoticed exposure as “insidious” and called for further studies of long-term respiratory effects.
Figure 5, 2010 BMC Microbiology study: Microscopic images of mouse lung tissue 70 days after exposure to commercial Bacillus thuringiensis biopesticides. Arrows identify areas of interstitial inflammation, including findings in three of 17 mice repeatedly exposed to VectoBac aerosols. The study documents persistent inflammatory changes in lung tissue following experimental pesticide exposure.
The European Food Safety Authority’s 2020 peer review examined Bti strain AM65-52, the same strain identified in VectoMax FG.
EFSA stated:
“The potential concern for serious health effects after repeated exposure by inhalation could not be excluded”
It also identified unresolved questions concerning potential genotoxicity from bacterial Cry proteins through non-dietary exposure.
Its finding concerning public exposure was explicit:
“the risk assessment by inhalation for residents and bystanders cannot be concluded”
The review confirms:
“Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis (serotype H-14) strain AM65-52 has been shown to be able to produce enterotoxins”
The assessment concerned greenhouse applications rather than San Diego’s helicopter operations.
What studies of the complete finished formulation and actual aerial-distribution conditions resolve these toxicological questions for people near the treatment sites?
November 12, 2020, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) peer review of Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis strain AM65-52, used in VectoMax FG. Regulators identified the strain’s ability to produce enterotoxins, unresolved potential genotoxicity, and repeated-inhalation concerns, concluding that the inhalation risk assessment for residents and bystanders could not be completed.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Bti mosquito-control guidance states:
“Bti has no toxicity to people”
EPA says registered Bti products do not pose a human health risk when used as directed and that residents need not leave treated areas.
Yet the EPA-registered VectoMax FG label identifies inhalation hazards, while EFSA’s assessment identified unresolved repeated-inhalation concerns for its Bti strain.
The issue is the scientific foundation of the competing regulatory statements.
Residents seeking answers about helicopter distribution of bacterial spores and insecticidal toxins can contact the San Diego County Vector Control Program at 858-694-2888 or vector@sdcounty.ca.gov, and the County Board of Supervisors at 619-531-5600 or PublicComment@sdcounty.ca.gov.
Pesticide safety or application complaints can be directed to the San Diego County Pesticide Regulation Program at 858-694-8980 or PRP.AWM@sdcounty.ca.gov, or the California Department of Pesticide Regulation at 1-877-378-5463.
Residents can request the identities and quantities of materials scheduled for release, independent airborne-exposure measurements, the evidence supporting public safety assurances, and an explanation of notification and consent procedures.
San Diego County is preparing another helicopter operation involving bacterial spores and insecticidal toxins without obtaining individual residents’ consent.
Despite documented inhalation warnings and a 2019 release near Camp Pendleton that reportedly caught beachgoers unaware.
The manufacturer warns that VectoMax FG is harmful if inhaled.
Experimental researchers documented persistent lung inflammation following exposure to related pesticide aerosols.
European regulators identified the bacterial strain’s ability to produce enterotoxins and unresolved inhalation and genotoxicity concerns.
Yet EPA and county officials assure the public that these biological pesticides are safe, while San Diego relies on posted signs and optional email notifications rather than individual consent.
A May 20, 2026, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) disclosure reveals that the hospital administered 2,054 influenza vaccine doses to children under sedation or anesthesia during the 2025–2026 flu season through a program called “Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize” and is now exploring COVID-19 and other injections during medical procedures.
The hospital admits that approximately one-third of participating families said their children otherwise would have gone unvaccinated.
It also cites limited time before surgery as an obstacle to discussing parental concerns about vaccination.
Which raises questions:
The hospital’s own disclosures establish a disturbing arrangement.
Children are brought in for medical procedures, their unconsciousness becomes an opportunity for additional injections, and the institution measures success by how many vaccines it administers.
You can contact CHOP here.
Technically Speaking “close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize” — A Chop Initiative To Improve Influenza Vaccines!
AI_woke_watchdogs
We are starting to come around to the idea that artificial intelligence, or A.I., isn’t the problem, it’s the humans allegedly in charge of it that should concern us.
OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed six new instances in which artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data and moved files onto the open internet without permission, amid an ongoing industrywide debate about A.I. safety.
According to reporting by the New York Times, the San Francisco company revealed what it said was the “unexpected or concerning” behavior of its A.I. models as part of a new framework for reporting “misalignment,” which is when the goals or actions of A.I. systems diverge from human intentions and values.
The disclosures land amid intensifying scrutiny over whether A.I. development needs to be slowed to address the technology’s potential dangers. The escalating debate was driven partly by OpenAI’s systems going rogue earlier this year and attacking the A.I. start-up Hugging Face. OpenAI was not aware of the hack until it was informed by Hugging Face weeks later, reported Emmy Martin, writing for the New York Times.
Since then, there seems to be a new movement afoot to create some kind of government supervision of the development of artificial intelligence.
A.I. leaders such as Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, have called for a pause in the technology’s development to provide more time to build proper guardrails. His call has been echoed by Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, as well as Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, and Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind. Other A.I. executives have said no slowdown is needed, reported Ms. Martin.
A lengthy report recently published by Anthropic discusses in some detail some of the more dangerous examples of A.I. systems being used for malign purposes. You can read the report through this link https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 .
The threat actors covered in that report include suspected state-sponsored groups, financially motivated criminals, commercial spyware vendors, state propaganda institutions, and politically motivated individuals. The cases range from a network of fake dating apps designed to defraud users to surveillance systems built to identify and monitor dissidents.
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei’s answer to these problems is to install a nonprofit called Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, to provide the guardrails.
However, from our perspective METR is just another group of globalists who believe in open borders, genderless pronouns, with the added caution that they promote “Effective Altruism.”
Clearly, they are unfit to be the watchdogs of American artificial intelligence.
Effective Altruism, or EA, is a philosophy that’s become popular with Silicon Valley masters of the universe, advocates for using reason — and fortunes amassed by tech’s best and brightest — to do the most good for humanity over the long term, observed Thomas Barrabi in an article for the New York Post.
Mr. Barrabi’s research revealed that the overlap between METR and Anthropic is rife with potential conflicts of interest.
METR spun off from an Effective Altruism-aligned tech incubator called Alignment Research Center (ARC), which is headed by A.I. researcher Paul Christiano. He was Amodei’s housemate, coworker and research collaborator in the 2010s when they were both at OpenAI — Anthropic’s biggest rival.
According to Thomas Barrabi’s reporting, Christiano also served as one of the first five trustees of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.
One staffer on METR is Ajeya Cotra, who is married to Christiano and has been a major organizer in the EA world.
The founder and CEO of the group is Beth Barnes, who was hired by Christiano and was involved in the EA movement at college.
Chief scientist Hjalmar Wijk and staffers Megan Kinniment and Pip Arnott all came from the same research cluster at the University of Oxford — a major feeder for EA.
There’s more, but you get the picture.
METR is every bit as incestuous as the Washington, DC, Democratic Party – Deep State – Media ecosystem, and even less likely to be responsible to the public because not one of its tentacles is elected or accountable to We the People.
It is undoubtedly true that winning or at least keeping ahead in the data center race, and the accompanying artificial intelligence race, are indeed essential to our present and future national security.
And, as is often the case, that is because our enemies – in this case the Communist Chinese – are weaponizing the technology against us at a frightening pace.
So how does slowing, putting guardrails on A.I. or having a woke globalist A.I. safety board help us win the race with the Red Chinese?
The answer is it doesn’t.
From our perspective the biggest problem with artificial intelligence is not the A.I., but who trains it and the materials they use.
A.I. models reflect the values and biases of the trainers, and right now A.I. is being trained by exactly the same kind of people that Dario Amodei wants to put in charge of watching it – woke globalists who will be unlikely to see any A.I. that goes off the rails, but acts according to their values and biases, as a threat.
We would be a lot less skeptical of the current headlong rush to develop artificial intelligence, and not view it as a threat, if there was an A.I. model that had as its highest values the Ten Commandments, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the American Bill of Rights and the Constitution, along with Washington’s Farewell Speech, Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech, and other documents and traditions that are foundational to American political, economic and cultural values.
Absent that, we prefer A.I. be watchdogged by an elected Congress, or 11 people selected at random from our hometown voter list, rather than Mr. Amodei’s unelected globalist technocrats.
It’s amazing how angry everyone gets about Trump building things. Take the big new arch, for example. The massive new monument has drawn the ire of preservationists, but the National Park Service is planning to go ahead with it anyway. The New York Times makes no bones about their dislike of the project, saying that Parks is “brushing aside outside objections—and its own assessment—that the towering monument would alter the views and symbolism at dozens of historic sites around it.”
But the truly obtuse part of the Times’ critique is how they address the alleged harm the Arch’s existence will do to other memorials and historical sites in Washington, DC. It’s not just the sites that they mention, but the views from those sites, which suddenly are so sacred they cannot be disrupted—even as the Times and other legacy media outlets were all aboard the monument desecration train during the BLM era.
“The Park Service has acknowledged,” they write, “that the arch, given its massive scale, would ‘adversely affect’ more than 40 historic sites and districts around the capital. It would interrupt the visual link between the Lincoln Memorial and Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House that was meant to symbolize the reunification of the country after the Civil War.”
Did you catch that? All of a sudden, the Times is worried about the symbols that were erected following the Civil War as an attempt to unify the nation. Where was this concern for the symbols of unification when the Times seemed to endorse the tearing down of Civil War memorial equestrians such as Stonewall Jackson? Or the removal of Teddy Roosevelt from in front of the museum he commissioned? Or the destruction of countless statues around the country, including those of abolitionists, because statues of white men were just not acceptable anymore?
“It would loom over some parts of Arlington National Cemetery, and block views from John F. Kennedy’s gravesite inside the cemetery,” the Times wrote. “It would be visible from the Jefferson Memorial and alter views from as far away as the Capitol and the Washington National Cathedral.”
Oh! The horror! The Arch will be visible! If only Trump made the arch entirely invisible, the Times would not be quite so pearl-clutchingly concerned about it. Parks, they say, “will not consider locating the arch elsewhere or making changes to its design.”
Every notion from Trump’s critics is that he should minimize his impact, just in the interests of good taste. How dare he, you can almost hear them saying between the lines, leave no trace of himself or record a patriotic love of country? What the preservationists want to preserve is the era before Trump, so much so that they want him to disappear altogether.
Many are stoked for this big arch. It’s about time we in the present day contributed to the monumental architecture that is the legacy of our capital city.
Fairfax County kept finding the same mismatch: people who told the DMV they were not citizens, yet appeared on the voter rolls. The registrar sent the names out in batches. Seventy-one in one referral. Seventy-eight in another. Hundreds over about eighteen months. Every name went to Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano and the Attorney General. The number of prosecutions was zero.
Then the Democrat-majority Electoral Board voted, in February 2026, to stop the referrals. The stated reasons were simple. The policy produced no charges. It consumed staff time at the elections office, the prosecutor’s office, and the attorney general’s office. A checkbox on a DMV form, they argued, would never meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. So they stopped sending the names.
That is the closed loop. Find the cases. Refer the cases. Decline the cases. Call the referrals a burden. Then treat the empty prosecution file as proof that nothing was there.
Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax GOP, described it as a system arranged not to know the answer—and then treating its own ignorance as reassurance.
These were not hunches pulled from the air. Virginia flags people who told a state agency they were noncitizens. Fairfax canceled 985 registrations on citizenship grounds between January 2022 and July 2024. County Republicans count 1,912 cancellations over four years, including 538 in 2025. Statewide, Virginia removed 6,303 in two and a half years. Ohio found 597 potential noncitizen registrations, 138 of whom had cast ballots. Texas and North Carolina have reported thousands more.
The cases that surface are usually the ones who volunteered the truth at the DMV or on another government form. Virginia does not systematically verify citizenship at registration. Detection is mostly accidental. Prosecution is optional. Databases of “proven” fraud then exclude everything that was never charged.
Prosecutors have a legitimate point about intent. A mismatched checkbox is not, by itself, a finished criminal case. Some flags are errors. Some people never voted after the mismatch. Registrar Eric Spicer told the board that many names on the lists had already been removed. That is fair as far as it goes.
It does not justify the next step: shutting off the referrals so the public never sees the next list. If the evidence is weak, say so in writing, case by case. If the DMV data is dirty, fix the data-sharing. If the statute is too hard to prove, take that argument to the legislature. What officials should not do is find hundreds of possible violations, test none of them in court, and then announce that the problem is vanishingly rare.
Every ineligible ballot cancels a legal one. Virginia has already seen a House of Delegates seat decided by a tie and a drawing of lots. Rare is not the same as irrelevant. “We stopped looking” is not the same as “we looked and found nothing.”
This is what happens when the people who maintain the rolls and the people who enforce election law decide that looking is the inconvenience. The registrar flags. The prosecutor sits. The board rescinds the policy. The official tallies stay empty. Commentators cite the empty tallies. The next close race is treated as settled.
Remember who runs the prosecutor’s office and the Electoral Board. That is not a slogan. Under the current arrangement, it is the only remaining check…
September 10, 2026
9.3%Violent crime decline2025 vs. 2024 — largest single-year drop since FBI estimates began in 1936
18.1%Murder declineLargest single-year decrease since 1937 — third straight year of record drops
4.1Murders per 100,000Ties 1955/56 for lowest in FBI history. Fewest murders since 1968.
18.5%Robbery declineLowest robbery rate in 20 years. Rape -7.6%. Assault -7.5%. Property -12.4%.
Every year, the gun control debate generates predictions. More guns means more crime. Expanding concealed carry will produce shootouts in the streets. Removing barriers to firearm ownership will cause violence to rise. These predictions have been central to the policy argument for gun restrictions for decades. The FBI’s 2025 crime data — released August 14, 2026, in an unusually early publication FBI Director Kash Patel called historic — puts those predictions in direct contact with the facts.
The facts are not ambiguous. Violent crime in the United States fell at the fastest pace since FBI national estimates began 90 years ago. The murder rate hit a 70-year low. This happened during a period when more Americans owned more guns than at any prior point in history, when concealed carry permits reached 20.88 million before constitutional carry expansion made the true carry population substantially higher, and when the gun rights community was in the middle of the most sustained legal and legislative expansion of Second Amendment access since Heller.
The data does not prove that guns reduce crime. Correlation is not causation, and the crime decline is a complex phenomenon that criminologists attribute to multiple factors — demographic shifts, economic conditions, policing strategies, and others. What the data does prove is the specific negative: the prediction that more guns in private hands would cause more violent crime was wrong. Demonstrably, measurably, historically wrong.
“This release confirms that crime in the U.S. is falling at or near a historic clip. This is the third straight year of a record drop in murder and the data for 2026 points to a continued large drop this year.”— Jeff Asher, AH Datalytics, August 2026
The FBI released its 2025 Reported Crimes in the Nation data on August 14, 2026, using data submitted by more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies covering 96% of the U.S. population — the broadest data submission in the report’s history. The headline findings:
| Overall violent crime | Down 9.3% from 2024 │ Largest single-year decline since FBI estimates began in 1936 │ 328 per 100,000 — lowest since 1968 |
|---|---|
| Murder & non-negligent manslaughter | Down 18.1% │ Rate of 4.1 per 100,000 — ties 1955/1956 for lowest ever recorded │ Fewest estimated murders since 1968 |
| Robbery | Down 18.5% │ Rate of 49.4 per 100,000 — lowest in 20 years |
| Aggravated assault | Down 7.5% from 2024 |
| Rape (reported) | Down 7.6% from 2024 |
| Property crime | Down 12.4% from 2024 |
| Law enforcement assaults | UP — 90,178 officers assaulted in 2026, a 10-year high │ One category that bucked the trend |
| 2026 preliminary data | Violent crime down 10.6% Jan–Jun 2026 vs. same period 2025 │ Murder down 23% │ Robbery down 19.6% │ Rape down 18.6% │ Trend accelerating |
| Projected 2026 murder rate | Jeff Asher projects ~3.5 per 100,000 — would be by far the lowest in recorded U.S. history if sustained through year-end |
| Data coverage | 17,000+ agencies │ 96% of U.S. population │ 15,000+ agencies on NIBRS │ Largest coverage in report history |
The 2020 murder spike is the comparison point that makes 2025’s numbers meaningful. In 2020, the combination of COVID disruption, civil unrest, and a sharp pullback in proactive policing produced the largest single-year increase in the U.S. murder rate since record-keeping began. The rate jumped from 5.0 per 100,000 in 2019 to 6.5 in 2020, a 30% increase in a single year that gun control advocates immediately attributed to pandemic-era gun sales.
The argument was simple and politically effective: millions of Americans bought guns during COVID; the murder rate spiked; therefore the guns caused the spike. This became the foundation of what gun control organizations called an “epidemic of gun violence” that required emergency legislative response.
The FBI’s 2025 data requires a reckoning with that argument. Gun sales have remained elevated since 2020. The carry population has grown. Constitutional carry has expanded to 29 states. And the murder rate has not merely stabilized — it has collapsed, falling from 6.5 in 2020 to 4.1 in 2025, a 37% decline in five years that now puts the rate below where it was before the COVID spike and at a 70-year historical low.
If the theory that more guns in civilian hands causes more murder were correct, the murder rate should have remained elevated or continued rising as gun ownership stayed at record levels. It did the opposite. The 2020 spike and the subsequent collapse both correlate with the COVID disruption cycle — the disruption produced both the gun-buying surge and the murder spike through separate causal pathways, and as the disruption resolved, the murder rate fell regardless of whether the newly purchased guns were still in private hands. They were. The murders weren’t.
What the data does not say: The crime decline does not prove that gun ownership reduces crime. The causal relationship between gun prevalence and crime rates is genuinely complex and contested in the academic literature, and honest analysis does not overstate what the data supports. What the data does establish clearly is that the specific prediction — that more guns in private hands would cause violence to rise — was not borne out. The murder rate is at a 70-year low after years of record gun sales. That is a fact, not an argument.
NICS background checks — the primary proxy for gun sales — have been elevated since 2020. The COVID-era gun buying surge added an estimated 8.4 million new gun owners. Subsequent years maintained elevated sales. The total number of privately owned firearms in the United States is estimated by the Small Arms Survey and other researchers at well over 400 million as of 2026. That population of firearms has been in private hands for the entire period during which the murder rate fell from 6.5 to 4.1 per 100,000.
The CPRC’s 2025 Annual Report counted 20.88 million active carry permits — and that number substantially undercounts the actual carry population because 29 states now allow permitless carry. A 2022 peer-reviewed AJPH study, using 2019 data, estimated approximately 16 million Americans carried handguns at least monthly. That population has grown since 2019 through constitutional carry expansion, the Bruen decision’s normalization effect, and the post-COVID carry permit surge.
The murder rate during this period of expanding carry fell to the lowest level in 70 years. The two facts coexist without proving causation in either direction. But they demolish the argument that an expanding carry population inevitably produces more violence.
The NFA tax elimination effective January 1, 2026 produced a 177% increase in NFA checks. More suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs are in private hands in 2026 than at any prior point in history. The preliminary 2026 data shows violent crime continuing to fall 10.6% in the first half of the year, with murder down 23%. The expansion of legal NFA item ownership and the continued crime decline are occurring simultaneously.
The gun control response to the FBI data has been predictable and worth addressing directly. The primary response has been to credit the decline to specific policy interventions — red flag laws in certain states, local violence intervention programs, changes in policing strategies — rather than to acknowledge that the relationship between gun prevalence and crime is more complex than the simple causation model implies.
These alternative explanations may have merit. They may genuinely account for some portion of the decline in specific jurisdictions. But they face a basic problem: the crime decline is national, not jurisdictional. It happened in red states and blue states, in states with expansive gun laws and in states with restrictive ones, in constitutional carry states and in states requiring permits. A policy intervention in California or New York does not explain the murder rate falling in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana simultaneously.
The more honest conclusion — which some criminologists have reached regardless of their policy positions — is that the 2020 spike was primarily a COVID disruption phenomenon and that the subsequent decline reflects the resolution of that disruption, with demographic, economic, and community-level factors playing significant roles that are still being studied. The guns-cause-crime and guns-prevent-crime theories both overfit a complex reality.
What is not honest is the continued invocation of an “epidemic of gun violence” when the FBI’s own data shows the murder rate at a 70-year low. The epidemic framing was built on the 2020–2022 spike. The spike ended. The framing has not caught up with the data.
The FBI’s 2025 report included preliminary 2026 data covering January through June. The early read: violent crime down 10.6% compared to the same period in 2025. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter down 23%. Robbery down 19.6%. Rape down 18.6%. Aggravated assault down 7.2%. Every major violent crime category continues declining.
Jeff Asher, whose Real-Time Crime Index tracking has proven highly predictive of final FBI numbers, projects the 2026 murder rate at approximately 3.5 per 100,000 if preliminary trends hold through year-end. That would be, unambiguously, the lowest murder rate in recorded United States history. Not the lowest since 1955. The lowest ever.
The 2026 data will be released in 2027. If it confirms the preliminary trajectory, the “more guns, more crime” thesis will have been falsified by the most comprehensive crime data in American history during the period of the most significant gun rights expansion in American history.
Gun Talk Media does not overstate what data supports. The FBI’s 2025 crime figures do not prove that guns reduce crime. They do not vindicate any specific policy. They do not settle the academic debate about the causal mechanisms of crime decline.
What they do is something simpler and more direct: they establish that the claim used most frequently to justify gun restrictions — that more guns in private hands cause more violent crime — has not been borne out during the most significant expansion of civilian gun ownership in American history. The murder rate is at a 70-year low. Record gun sales and record low murder coexist in the same FBI dataset.
That is a fact. It deserves to be stated plainly, without exaggeration, and without overreach. The gun control community built a policy agenda on a prediction. The prediction was wrong. The data says so.
Pennsylvania’s health department just proposed swapping “pregnant woman” for “pregnant individual” across core rules, and the fallout tells you where culture and policy now collide.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Health introduced a regulatory overhaul on August 8, described as about 500 pages long. Reports say the draft replaces “pregnant woman” and “mother of a newborn” with “pregnant individual” and “postpartum individual” across relevant sections.
The updates land in practical places, like testing rules during pregnancy and instructions tied to postpartum care language. The proposal reflects the administration’s push to use gender-neutral terms in health code text, not only in public messaging.
The update comes amid other maternal and postpartum policy work in the state. Law and policy documents still use sexed terms in many places.
One rule on postpartum eligibility for medical assistance says a woman keeps coverage through the postpartum period, while recent federal approvals pushed that period to 12 months in programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The proposal does not repeal those laws. It rewrites health department regulations, which sit under state statutes.
Words set who is counted, who gets targeted help, and how staff read duties. Advocates argue gender-neutral terms include every patient who can be pregnant, like transgender men and non-binary people. They say it can reduce missed care for small but real groups.
Critics warn that removing “woman” or “mother” can blur sex-specific risks, make data tracking harder, and push ideology into clinical rules. They frame it as a values fight over biological reality and public clarity.
Medical and public health groups do not agree on a single script. Some guidance lists paired terms such as “women and birthing parents” to balance clarity and inclusion.
Others suggest “pregnant patient” or “pregnant person” in general text, while keeping exact sex words where biology drives risk or law demands precision. These split models aim to protect both readability and the dignity of all patients, but their execution varies by agency and audience.
Named critics say the department crossed a line. Pennsylvania Family Council’s counsel said the new wording “represents the triumph of ideology over biology” and “erases female identity as a stable category.”
A state lawmaker argued the draft “erases words like ‘pregnant woman’ and ‘mother’” inside hundreds of pages of mandates. That charge lands with many readers because pregnancy is unavoidably sex-linked, and clarity about women’s health is both moral and practical.
The substance behind that critique deserves weight. Public-facing communications research shows heavy shifts to desexed terms can confuse lay readers and risk hiding women’s specific needs.
Experts have warned that generic language like “pregnant people” may reduce visibility for women in studies and guidelines. Health codes must guide real-world practice among busy clinicians and families. Plain, sex-accurate words lower error and protect trust in the rules.
Two tests can keep both truth and care intact. First, does the rule say who needs what when sex changes risk? If yes, use “women” where biology drives the point. Second, does the rule also need to cover a small group whose care would be missed if the text says “women” only?
If yes, pair terms or add a clear clause. “Women and other patients who can be pregnant” is longer, but it signals scope without erasing sex or people at the margins.
On balance, the facts show a real shift in wording within Pennsylvania’s draft health regulations. The dispute is not about whether pregnancy involves women. It is about whether code text should address every case in neutral terms, and what that does to clarity.
Americans prioritize plain language, biological reality, and family-centered care. Any final rule should protect those anchors while ensuring that no patient falls through the cracks due to a language gap.
lifesitenews.com, glensidelocal.com, dailywire.com, law.justia.com, palegis.us, pa.gov, americanfaith.com, aclupa.org, law.nyu.edu, patch.com
Last week, in a Bronx courtroom that drew almost no cameras, Judge Audrey Stone found Dimone Fleming not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect for stabbing her sons, Daishawn Fleming, 3, and Octavius Canada, 11 months old, to death. The prosecution stipulated to postpartum psychosis. Fleming will not go to prison. She remains in custody for a psychiatric evaluation and returns to court this month. Assistant District Attorney Tiffany Wichman explained afterward that “prosecuting mothers does not and cannot prevent these crimes from happening, but public discourse might.” The New York Times recorded the outcome in a single clause: she will avoid prison.
This morning in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a jury of nine women and three men is back for a fifth day on the case of Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse who killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, on January 24, 2023. She does not deny the acts. She denies responsibility for them. The Commonwealth says she sent her husband out of the house and carried out a plan. On Tuesday, the jurors told Judge William Sullivan they were unable to reach a unanimous decision, and he sent them back to keep working. Outside the courthouse, supporters in pink have treated her as the injured party, and a fundraiser for her family has drawn hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Eighteen days before the Fleming ruling, Governor Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, stripping the Massachusetts 24-week abortion limit and leaving late pregnancy to a physician’s “professional judgment.” So the same commonwealth that will not mark a line at a viable unborn child is now asking twelve jurors whether three deadborn children amount to a crime or a medical episode. The jurors’ hesitation is not a failure of nerve. It is what happens when a culture has spent a generation teaching that a child’s claim on life yields when the child depends on a mother who no longer accepts the cost.
Judith Jarvis Thomson’s 1971 essay remains the most cited philosophical defense of abortion in the English-speaking world. She granted the fetus full personhood and argued anyway. Her case is the unconscious violinist strapped to your kidneys for nine months. You may unplug him, she said, even though he will die, because a right to life is not a right to the use of another person’s body against that person’s will. The argument does not turn on whether the violinist is human. It turns on whether you may be forced to keep him alive with your own tissue, sleep, and time.
A born child still lives off his mother, on her breasts or on the wages she earns for formula, on her sleep and her attention, and when those give out, on her sanity. The late fetus needs her to keep existing. The 8-month-old needs her to work, on purpose, every few hours through the night. If the moral fact doing the work in Thomson’s essay is unwanted dependence, delivery does not shrink that fact. It enlarges it. Postpartum depression, which afflicts roughly 1 in 8 American mothers, and postpartum psychosis, which occurs in 1 to 2 of every 1,000 births, are the mother’s body and mind refusing that dependence in clinical form rather than in a slogan. The slogan “my body” was never, examined closely, a claim about a uterus. It was a claim about who can be required to keep another human being alive.
That is why the implication is ugly and why it keeps getting restated in journals rather than on campaign literature. A society that permits a woman to end her child’s life before birth because the child depends on her has not produced a principle that stops at the cord. The infant is still drawing on her body and her hours. If wantedness and burden were enough in the womb, they remain enough in the crib, and postpartum psychosis is precisely the kind of psychological break in which the burden becomes, for the mother, unbearable.
Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva said this in the Journal of Medical Ethics without much throat-clearing. “Killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be,” they wrote, including cases in which the newborn is healthy, and only “the well-being of the family is at risk.” They coined the term “after-birth abortion” so no reader could pretend they meant palliative care. If “economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone,” they added, then “people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.” Postpartum psychosis is a psychological circumstance. A newborn is offspring. Peter Singer had already supplied the ranking that makes the conclusion feel tidy, holding that human infants are not persons and that a newborn’s life is worth less than a pig’s.
The usual reply is that birth is a bright legal line and that what I have just described is already a crime. The reply is weaker than lawyers like to admit. The United Kingdom’s Infanticide Act of 1938 charges a mother who kills her child under 12 months while “the balance of her mind was disturbed” by birth or lactation with infanticide rather than murder, and prison is rare while hospital orders are the norm. Roughly two dozen countries run a version of that statute. The Boston Globe, covering Clancy on August 1, called the US an “outlier in prosecuting infanticide,” which is a polite way of saying that American juries and prosecutors are late to a settlement much of Europe reached before the Second World War. Illinois has already written postpartum depression and psychosis into its sentencing code as a statutory mitigator, at 730 ILCS 5/5-5-3.1(a)(17), after Public Act 100-0574. Massachusetts advocates spent this summer pushing H.1924 to import the same logic, requiring expert screening for mothers charged within a year of birth and treating the diagnosis as a reason to reduce a sentence.
The federal record is not a hypothetical either. On January 23, 2025, the House passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act 217 to 204, with a single Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voting yes. The White House said the bill would “protect the most vulnerable and prevent infanticide.” Senate cloture had failed the day before, 52-47, with every Democrat present voting no. The Heritage Foundation has spent years pointing out that CDC and state reports already record infants who survive abortion attempts and then do not receive ordinary care. A party that will not require that care for a child who has already been born, and who survived an attempt on his life, has answered the personhood question in the only register that counts. Governor Ralph Northam said in 2019 that after a live delivery the infant “would be kept comfortable,” resuscitated only “if that’s what the mother and the family desired,” and that then “a discussion would ensue.” A discussion, with a living newborn in the room, about whether the newborn continues. That is after-birth abortion spoken by a sitting governor, and the country treated it as a gaffe that expired in a news cycle.
No legislature will pass a bill titled the Infanticide Permission Act, because it does not have to. It needs findings of no criminal responsibility, hospital orders instead of verdicts, statutory mitigators, juries that cannot agree, and a prosecutor of two dead boys who offers public discourse as the remedy. The practice is already here. It arrived through diagnosis rather than through a floor speech.
I do not accept the premise that got us here. Thomson’s violinist is a stranger strapped to you by an accident you did not choose. A son or a daughter is not a stranger, and the duty that follows birth is not a kidney you may disconnect because the night has become unbearable. The inferences from Thomson to Giubilini to a Bronx courtroom are tidy, which is why the starting point cannot be kept. Daishawn Fleming was 3 years old. Octavius Canada was 11 months old. Cora Clancy was 5, Dawson was 3, and Callan was 8 months. No diagnosis, no statute, and no rally in pink turns those names into a footnote about somebody else’s suffering. Unlimited abortion is wrong for the same reason the quieter sequel is wrong: a small human being’s life does not belong to anyone else’s convenience, comfort, or crisis, however genuine the crisis may be.
We have ended roughly 67 million lives since Roe, and that figure is almost certainly conservative because the newer counts leave out self-managed medication abortions obtained outside the formal US health-care system. National Right to Life and the Charlotte Lozier Institute, working from Guttmacher’s own revisions, have been raising the cumulative total as the clinic and telehealth numbers were restated upward. This was a national commitment made without a single election that ever put the full cost on the ballot in those terms. Meanwhile the general fertility rate in the US has fallen to record lows near 53 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, and a country that cannot talk itself into having children should at least stop talking itself into discarding the ones already here, the collapse is not a mystery of economics alone when the official ethic keeps teaching that a child’s claim is negotiable the moment the child becomes costly. We need more babies, more households that can stand a crying night, and more neighbors who notice when a new mother is coming apart. If more mothers are reaching the point where they cannot stop themselves from killing their own children, the answer is not to rename the killing after the fact. The answer is to reach them beforehand to build the screening, the family, the church and the block that catch a woman before psychosis takes the wheel. Save the mothers if we can, but the children are not a remainder.
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