The outpouring of sympathy for Lindsay Clancy has overshadowed the deaths of her three children. That same tendency to center criminal offenders at the expense of others can be seen in policy. You need look no further than Tewksbury Hospital, where Clancy has resided for 3.5 years. The Massachusetts Nurses Association says conditions there have devolved into an “epic epidemic of violence.” Tewksbury is intended for civil psychiatric patients, but recently about 70% of its beds were occupied by people sent there through the criminal courts. Nurses are groped and attacked. Civil patients are scared. There were 478 assaults in 2025. Yet the hospital responded by eliminating pepper gel, batons, and handcuffs used by security officers to keep people safe. Nationwide, state psychiatric hospitals are overrun with forensic patients, who now occupy a majority of scarce beds needed for civil patients. The growth is driven by criminal defendants seeking “competency restoration.” If deemed incompetent to stand trial, they can spend months in the relative comfort of a psychiatric hospital, with that time counting toward their sentence. It can lead to dismissal or create a record later used to argue for reduced criminal responsibility. Forensic patients bring violence, chaos, escapes, and homicides, while civil patients wait weeks or months for a bed. I found reporting in 18 states where these consequences have drawn headlines, but the problem is more widespread. The push comes from progressive criminal justice reformers pursuing “decarceration.” Aggressive litigation by the ACLU and disability-rights organizations is pressuring states to move criminal defendants from jails into psychiatric hospitals. Read my latest for @CityJournal: city-journal.org/article/lin…

Very happy to report that our new article "False memories, iatrogenesis, and social contagions" is just about to be published in The Handbook of Autobiographical Memory (ISBN: 978-0-443-33040-7) A subtly fearless article in places, with Henry Otgaar @HenryOtgaar shop.elsevier.com/books/the-…

An indication of how the current demand for ADHD and ASD assessments is putting huge pressure on NHS budgets. theguardian.com/society/2026…

A new form of trauma is gaining popularity among female-dominated professions, including therapy, social work, nursing, and teaching. “Secondary traumatic stress” or “vicarious trauma” describes the apparent “trauma” one experiences simply by interacting with others who have experienced trauma. When researchers look at male-dominated professions, including policing, where officers frequently encounter victims of crime, they find much lower rates. One study of police officers found 90 percent scoring in the low range. Apparently trauma is highly contagious, but somewhat selective about its host. cityjournal.substack.com/p/t…

happy american horror story day to those who celebrate

I’ve been interested in the growing tendency to recast social problems as mental-health problems. In criminal justice, progressive groups have seized on that framing to advance their “decarceration” agenda. ACLU and disability-rights organizations are using aggressive litigation to pressure states to send more criminal defendants found incompetent to stand trial into already strained psychiatric hospitals. Competency evaluations are rising in 82% of states. Forensic patients now fill more than half of state psychiatric-hospital beds while civil patients can wait months for care. At the hospital where Lindsay Clancy is housed, 70% of patients recently came from corrections. Nurses are being groped and assaulted, patients are scared, and escapes are mounting. One union leader called it an “epic epidemic of violence.” city-journal.org/article/lin…

In case you missed what was probably the most interesting discussion of the Indian Child Welfare Act ever, here's the recording of my discussion today with some amazing experts. aei.org/events/will-equal-pr…

I am taking this very seriously. We need to have a discussion about the huge demand for diagnosis.

Exclusive: government officials told us how California illegal immigrant households can collect over $100K in tax-free cash and benefits This is the lifestyle equivalent of a working Californian making ~$160K The latest from @christopherrufo, me, and @austenhufford

A nice piece in Fox News about @DavidMastio's recent op-ed citing my report on the "trans genocide" myth. I told @FoxNews: "At the @ManhattanInst, we believe that real justice requires an unwavering commitment to the truth. We have presented that truth in our report, and now the media must decide whether to acknowledge it or hide from it." Read the Fox News piece here: 🔗foxnews.com/media/boston-glo…

I can't recommend @segm_ebm's Nov 5-7 conference enough. The world's top experts on youth gender medicine discuss topics & controversies. The evidence is weak: where should we go from here? In the clip: former @ASPS_News president at the last SEGM conference. Register 👇

📢The American Society of Plastic Surgeons decided to put evidence above politics in the care of gender-dysphoric youth. We're thrilled to announce that the past president of @ASPS_News will speak at SEGM's upcoming conference in DC Nov 5-7. Register for in-person & online⬇️

A new article in the New Yorker on declining birth rates opens by sneering at conservatives for blaming feminism, individualism, sexual liberalization, and the erosion of marriage and family norms, then presents “capitalism” as the more serious explanation. But much of the piece ends up supporting the cultural factors the author mocks conservatives for identifying. She describes greater career focus and emphasis on individual fulfillment, declining interest in marriage and children, and changes in sexual and dating culture that make lasting relationships harder to form. She also claims conservatives “have little to say” about affordability, which just isn’t true. She then undercuts the argument that economics is the dominant factor by acknowledging that countries with far more generous family benefits haven’t escaped collapsing fertility. She concludes that “culture plays a larger” role than economics. Conservatives often say things that are fairly obviously true, but because they’re conservatives, their arguments are dismissed as “culture-war culprits” coming from “cranky pro-natalists” and “censorious baby boosters,” even when their critics eventually arrive at many of the same conclusions. newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…

I started calling this the “Bill Maher Cycle” a few years ago. Conservatives shout true and valid things from the rooftops, but as you say it’s dismissed because they’re conservatives. Then a year or two later, long after the preventable damage has been done, an “enlightened” liberal goes on Bill Maher (or writes a New Yorker piece, e.g.) saying a roundabout version of the thing conservatives were laughed at or scorned for stating clearly two years prior and everyone acts like it’s a courageous statement of a brilliant new insight. It’s maddening but better late than never I guess?

Notice a pattern? My coauthors and I reached out to the lead author of an extremely influential "brain sex" paper to request the data. They were also invited to respond to our critique. No response. A Boston Globe reporter reached out to the HRC's lead researcher for a response to my report debunking their "Epidemic of Violence" narrative. No response. Do you need any more evidence that we've thoroughly won the argument? I don't think so, but I'll keep providing it.

In a free country, you are entitled to believe you are a woman with a penis. But not to take it into a female changing room, nor to cheat your way into a female athletic competition, nor in any way to impose your private delusion on the rest of us. theguardian.com/politics/202…

The Boston Globe has just published a shockingly sober article about the nonexistent genocide supposedly targeting the transgender community. In it, they cite a report I coauthored showing that the murder rate is actually lower for trans-identifying people than the general population. Our report was responding to the HRC's annual reports pushing the narrative that there is an ongoing "Epidemic of Violence" against the transgender community. The reporter says he "offered the Human Rights Campaign's key researcher, the transgender woman Charleigh Flohr, or anyone else with the organization an opportunity to rebut the Manhattan Institute finding, but they didn't reply to me." That's unsurprising because the HRC is engaging in fundraising propaganda. They don't care about the truth, only promoting the narrative. Our report presenting the actual data is irrefutable. That's why they have nothing to say in response. You can read our report summary in @CityJournal here: 🔗city-journal.org/article/hum… Or explore our comprehensive report here: 🔗dont-shoot-the-data.github.i… Read the Boston Globe article here: 🔗archive.ph/VqhlI

We won't have children. We will be children.

This is the story with practically every “centrist” or “classical liberal” (notable exceptions). They can’t bring themselves to admit that people they consider boorish and superstitiously religious actually were right, even as the evidence of every single social conservative prediction continues to mount around their heads.