The Dictatorship
At least 2 killed, 9 injured in shooting at Brown University; person of interest in custody
Following an all-night manhunt, a person of interest has been detained in the campus shooting that left two people dead and nine others injured Saturday afternoon on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said during a news conference on Sunday morning that the individual was taken into custody in the early morning hours, and that police are not currently looking for anyone else.
Smiley confirmed the shelter-in-place order had been lifted and said hopefully the people of Providence can “breathe a little easier this morning.”
Smiley also said on Sunday that one of the injured had been discharged from the hospital.
As of Saturday night, six of the injured were in critical but stable condition, one was in critical condition and one was in stable condition, according to a Brown University Health spokeswoman. Smiley said that an additional victim had suffered non-life-threatening injuries from “fragments” near them and is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities have not identified the two people killed or those injured.
Authorities released a short video late Saturday night showing the person they believe to be the suspect in the shooting. The video showed a man dressed all in black and wearing a black beanie walking down a sidewalk at a brisk pace before taking a sharp right turn and continuing down the sidewalk until he is out of the frame. The man’s face could not be seen in the video.
Smiley said on Saturday that authorities were canvassing the neighborhood and campus “for additional video footage, still photography and are interviewing witnesses.” And Providence Police Commander Timothy O’Hara asked the public during a Saturday news conference to contact police if they recognized the person.
The shooting took place inside a first-floor classroom in the Barus & Holley Building, a university engineering and physics building thatcontains classrooms and lab space, Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez Jr. said. Police were alerted to the gunshots at 4:05 p.m.
Perez said police do not know how the suspect entered the building but that he exited on the Hope Street side of the complex.
According to Smiley, no “useful video” from inside the building where the shooting took place had been found.
“My community is afraid right now, and we’re saddened that this has come to Providence,” Smiley said. “And there’s two people who, a week away from Christmas, aren’t going to be celebrating with their family, or two days away from the first day of Hanukkah.”
Brown President Christina Paxson said Saturday night that the two who were killed and at least eight of those injured were students at the university. Authorities said they had not confirmed that.
“This is the day that one hopes never happens, and it has. Our focus right now is on supporting the families who have been affected by this,” Paxson said.
A Shelter in Place remains in effect in the greater Brown University area. Please continue to avoid the area if possible.
— Providence EMA (@ProvidenceEMA) December 13, 2025
Police have not given a motive for the violence.
Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee said he had spoken with President Donald Trump on the phone. Trump expressed urgency and offered support from federal authorities “to make sure that we catch the individual that brought so much suffering to so many people,” McKee said.
Trump said earlier Saturday evening that he had been briefed on the situation and that the FBI was working alongside local law enforcement. “What a terrible thing it is,” he told reporters outside the White House. “All we can do right now is pray for the victims.”
Members of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on the scene and working with local and state authorities, O’Hara said. Smiley said he expects the FBI will take over the investigation.
Law enforcement members established a perimeteraround a portion of Brown’s campus, according to an update from university police. Individuals in residential buildings within the perimeter were told to continue sheltering in place. Those in administrative campus buildings were told to wait until law enforcement officials arrive to escort them out.
All final exams scheduled for Sunday have been canceled, Brown University Provost Francis Doyle said.
FBI personnel are on the scene and assisting this evening after the shooting at Brown University and we will provide all capabilities necessary. Please pray for all those involved. We will update with more information as we are able.
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) December 13, 2025
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he was “praying for the victims and their families,” adding, “My heart breaks for the students who were looking forward to a holiday break and instead are dealing with another horrifying mass shooting, this time in our own Providence community.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement: “Brown’s students and its neighbors are shaken. Some families, classmates, and loved ones are gathered together in hospital waiting rooms at this very moment waiting for updates on patients. We are with them in spirit. They will need the support of all of us in the days ahead.”
Ian Ritter, university news editor for the student-run Brown Daily Herald, said he had been in contact with several students who were in Barus & Holley at the time of the shooting. Some fled the scene, some took shelter and others were evacuated by law enforcement, Ritter said.
“It was chaos from what I’ve heard,” Ritter said. “And students weren’t really sure where the gunshots were coming from, and throughout the afternoon we were learning different things about possible locations where the shooter may have gone, or at that time, people thought there could possibly be more than one shooter.”
For one Brown student, Saturday’s school shooting was painfully familiar. Mia Tretta, a junior, said she had been shot in the stomach with a 45-caliber ghost gun during a mass shooting at her California high school in 2019.
“There’s no handbook that you get when you get shot in the stomach during a school shooting and your best friend is killed, and you no longer feel safe at school,” Tretta said in an interview with MS NOW. She said she learned of the news in her campus dorm room. “It’s the worst possible thing that you can imagine, and to have to go through that once, let alone twice, is horrific.”
Tretta urged her fellow students to seek support and lean on one another.
“It is because of decades and years of inaction across the country, within each individual state, that things like this continue to happen,” Tretta said.
Gun safety advocates condemned the tragedy and called for meaningful action.
“Students should only have to worry about studying for finals right now, not hiding from gunfire,” former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting in 2011, said in a statement. “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.”
“While we await details, one thing is clear: today’s shooting at Brown University is another unacceptable reminder of our nation’s gun violence crisis,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “We either take action, or we bury more of our kids.”
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, said, “No student should ever receive an alert telling them to run, hide, and fight just to survive on campus. This is not normal, it is not acceptable, and our students deserve action that ends gun violence — not instructions on how to endure a tragedy that never should have happened.”
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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