THE UNIVERSITY MURDERS: Investigators announced yesterday that they had identified the suspect in the classroom murders of two Brown University students and linked him to the killing of an MIT professor before finding him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot in a New Hampshire storage unit.

  The man was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente from Portugal, a 48-year-old former Brown graduate student last known to have lived in Miami.

  The Brown shooting in Providence, Rhode Island occurred last Saturday afternoon. Two days later Dr Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an MIT physicist, was shot in front of his Brookline, Massachusetts home. Investigators later linked the two events through a rented car seen near both scenes.

  Developing more information, police rushed to the storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, only to find Valente dead.

  The motive for the killings and their connections is unknown. 

TRANS BAN: Treating a medical-psychological matter with politics and religion,  the Health Department under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced yesterday that the federal government will refuse funding for any hospital that gives gender-related care to a minor. This means they would cut off all grants and reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.

  The policy is an extension of President Trump’s claim that gender treatments for minors are “a stain on our Nation’s history.”  The federal government under Trump recognizes only a person’s sex at birth.

  “We want our hospitals returning to healing, not harming, the patients entrusted in their care, or they’re going to pay a very steep price,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at a news conference.

  Gender-related treatments for minors are not casually applied but some people in the Trump administration have described it as an ideology, almost like it’s a fad. Most medical groups consider what’s known as “gender dysphoria” to be a serious issue needing treatment.

  Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of the health department, said at the press conference, “At the root of the evils we face, is a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.”

WALK OF INSULT: The White House has installed plaques describing previous office holders along President Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame” formally enshrining in bronze praise for Donald Trump and his heroes and denigration for the ones he doesn’t like … Joe Biden number one among them.

  All the plaques are installed beneath portraits of the presidents, except Biden, who is represented by a picture of an autopen signing his signature. Obviously written by Trump, it says, “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

  Trump’s own plaque brags about his 2024 victory, claiming he overcame the “unprecedented Weaponization of Law Enforcement against him, as well as two assassination attempts.” It says Trump has “delivered” on his promise to usher in the “Golden Age of America,” repeating his mantra about wars he claims to have ended, borders sealed, and foreign gang members deported.

  Barack Obama is described as “one of the most divisive political figures in American History.” About the one-term Jimmy Carter the plaque says, “Many feel that President Carter was more successful after his presidency than during it. He did wonderful things for Humanity!”

  “The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement. “As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself.” 

THE REGIME:

— The board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington voted yesterday to change the name to the “Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The board mostly appointed by Trump bowed to his need to have his name stamped on everything he touches, and Trump feigned surprise at the honor he’s been lobbying to get.

  The Kennedy Center honoring the assassinated president was named by law Congress and cannot be legally changed without an act of Congress. That is not likely to stop Trump and his worshipers. 

— President Trump signed an executive order downgrading cannabis from the most restrictive category of drugs like heroin, making medical research easier. It does not legalize marijuana in states where it is not legal.

— Trump signed President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to downgrade cannabis from the most restrictive category of drugs like heroin, which would facilitate medical research. But it did not legalize marijuana.

THE OBIT PAGE: Peter Arnett, the Associated Press war correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Vietnam War and the front man on the scene of wars and conflicts for 18 years with CNN, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, California.

THE SPIN RACK: Former NASCAR champion Greg Biffle, his wife, two children, and three other people died yesterday in the crash of a private jet in North Carolina. The jet bound for Florida was in the air only a few minutes before attempting to return and land. — Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin state judge, was found guilty yesterday of obstructing federal agents for ushering undocumented immigrant out a back door while agents were waiting in the hallway to detain him. Judge Dugan faces up to five years in prison and as a convicted felon would be unable to hold office as a judge. — Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she’s engaged to Brian Glenn, 56, the White House correspondent for the conservative Real America’s Voice who asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office why he wasn’t wearing a suit.

BELOW THE FOLD: Weekend reading. Today is the day the Justice Department is required to release the files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

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