Arsonists have been caught on camera lighting fires across Los Angeles as the city burns, highlighting the role of crime and homelessness in the area’s deadly wildfires.
In 2023, City Journal reported on how the Los Angeles Fire Department spent approximately $427 million of its $854 million total on homeless-related fires; two years earlier, a Los Angeles Times analysis found more than half of all fires LAFD responded to were associated with homelessness.
Podcaster and Stanford professor Andrew Hubermancaptureda video of what appear to be arsonists in dark clothing setting a fire in Santa Monica, an urban area well beyond the evacuation zone and far from any active wildfires.
“People are lighting fires in otherwise non-burning urban areas of LA,” said Huberman on X. “Saw this happen first hand at 302 Pico in Santa Monica.”
Huberman shared that the fire department was able to put out the fire before it spread.
In 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared that a major underpass fire that shut down the I-10 freeway for days was determined to be the result of “malice.”
After that fire, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Traci Park, whose district includes the Pacific Palisades — where Cal Fire says a preliminary survey suggests approximately 5,316 structures have been destroyed — ordered the Los Angeles Fire Department to create a report on the number of encampment fires that have occurred underneath freeways in the city.
The city has reported 45% of homeless individuals are “service resistant,” or unwilling to take offered free services. With 75% of unsheltered homeless surveyed in a California Policy Lab analysis saying they have a drug or alcohol addiction, and 78% saying they have a severe mental illness, it’s likely many of the service resistant individuals are those with substance abuse disorders, severe mental illness, or both.
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Federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) continue to fund invalid, ideologically driven “scientific” research that subsidizes leftist activists and harms conservatives and the American people at large. There’s currently no plan to stop.
Conversely, NIH does not fund obvious research topics that would help the American people, because of institutional leftist bias.
While serving as a senior advisor at NIH, I discovered many active grants like these:
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
The study claimed that people saw COVID as less “serious” after the tweet. I apologize for the flashback to when Democrats demanded everyone feel the exact level of COVID panic and anti-optimism they felt (and share their false beliefs on the efficacy of school closures, masks, and vaccines ). NIH fundedthis study and gave him another $651,586 in July for his new “misinformation” study, including $200,000 from the Office of the Director.
I’m a social psychologist who has focused on the harms of ideological bias in academic research. Our sensemaking institutions have been gashed by a cult political ideology that treats its conjectures and abstractions as descriptively true, without argument or even explanation, and enforces conformity with inhumane psychologizing and ostracism. This ideology – which dominates academia and NIH – poses an unprecedented threat to our connection to reality, and thus to science, by vaporizing the distinction between descriptive reality and ideological tenets.
In March, I emailed Jay Bhattacharya, Director of NIH, and pitched him on how I could build an objective framework to eliminate ideological bias in NIH-funded research.
Jay seemed to agree with my analysis. We spoke on the phone, and I started in May as a senior advisor to Jay in the Office of the Director (NIH-OD).
I never heard from Jay again beyond a couple of cursory replies.
For four months, I read tons of grants, passed a lengthy federal background check, started to build the pieces, and contacted Jay about once a week with questions, follow-up, and example grants. Dead air – he was ghosting me.
Jay also bizarrely deleted the last two months’ worth of my messages to him but kept the older ones. I’d sent him a two-page framework summary, asked if I should keep working on it, and also asked if I’d done something wrong, given his persistent lack of response. No response.
In September, the contractors working at NIH-OD, me included, were laid off. No explanation was given.
I have no idea what happened here. It’s been the strangest and most unprofessional experience of my career.
The result is that NIH is still funding ideological, scientifically invalid research and will continue to ignore major topics because of leftist bias. We have a precious opportunity for lasting reform, and that opportunity will be lost without a systematic approach to eliminating ideology in science.
What’s happened so far is that DOGE cut some grants earlier this year, after a search for DEI terms. It was a good first step but caught some false positives and missed most of the ideological research, including many grants premised on “microaggressions,” “systemic racism,” “intersectionality,” and other proprietary, question-begging leftist terms. Leftist academics are already adapting by changing their terminology – this meme is popular on Bluesky:
DOGE didn’t have the right search terms, and a systematic, objective anti-bias framework is necessary to do the job. It’s also more legally resilient and persuasive to reachable insiders — there’s no way to reform a huge bureaucracy without getting buy-in from some insiders (yes, you also have to fire some people). This mission requires empowered people at every funding agency who are thoroughly familiar with leftist ideology, can cleanly define “ideology,” and build robust frameworks to remove it from scientific research.
My framework identifies four areas of bias so far:
Ideological research
Rigged research
Ideological denial of science / suppression of data
Missing research – research that would happen if not for leftist bias
The missing research at NIH likely hurts the most — e.g. American men commit suicide at unusually high rates, especially white and American Indian men, yet NIH funds no research on this. But they do fund “Hypertension Self-management in Refugees Living in San Diego.”
Similarly, NIH is AWOL on the health benefits of religious observance and prayer, a promising area of research that Muslim countries are taking the lead on. These two gaping holes suggest that NIH is indifferent to the American people and even culturally and ideologically hostile them.
Joe Duarte grew up in small copper-mining towns in Southern Arizona, earned his PhD in social psychology, and focuses on political bias in media and academic research. You can find his workhere, find him on Xhere, and contact him at gravity at protonmail.com.
President Donald Trump is turning up the heat on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept a peace deal to end his war with Russia, and has set a deadline with potential consequences.
The U.S. is warning that certain weapons shipments and intelligence sharing could be at risk if Zelenskyy does not play ball with Trump’s peace proposal, Reuters reported on Friday. The president set a Thanksgiving deadline for Zelenskyy to sign off on the details. Speaking with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio, Trump confirmed that date, saying that while deadlines can be extended, “Thursday is it.”
Speaking with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio, Trump confirmed that, though deadlines can be extended, “Thursday is it.”
Zelenskyy signaled his willingness to discuss concessions outlined in the proposed peace deal despite objections from other European leaders over the terms, and said in a post on X that his whole government is at work on the individual points. However, the Ukrainian leader also said in a Friday video statement that the U.S. has put Ukraine in a position of “either losing its dignity or the risk of losing a key partner.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, said Friday Trump’s plan could “form the basis” for a final peace agreement.
A U.S. official told the Daily Caller News Foundation they “will not comment on sensitive peace discussions that may or may not have happened.”
“President Trump is working with both sides to end the war as quickly as possible, which has gone on for far too long, with too many senseless deaths,” the official said. “This would have never happened if he was President.”
Zelenskyy most recently has been embroiled in a corruption scandal, as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine launched a probe into Zelenskyy’s business partner, who allegedly laundered $100 million from Ukraine’s nuclear energy company.
“It was strongly implied to the Ukrainians that the United States expects them to agree to a peace deal,” another U.S. official told the DCNF. “Any changes will be decided upon by the President himself.”
The Ukrainian leader has been working to shore up support in Europe as well, most recently signing a deal with France to obtain 100 Rafale jets for its air force. The deal also included anti-air equipment, drones and other munitions.
The Trump administration has worked to offload direct military support for Ukraine to partners in Europe, with NATO agreeing to purchase U.S. weapons to then ship to Ukraine, instead of the American government delivering directly.
