America is on track for the lowest annual homicide rare in over a century

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released a midyear crime trends report which illustrated that homicides in large American cities fell by 18 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, effectively putting the country on track for its lowest annual homicide rate in over a century, reported JURISTnews.

The CCJ analyzed 13 crime categories across 336 cities that have consistently reported monthly crime data for the past nine years. Nine of these offenses declined in the first half of 2026, with carjackings showing the largest decrease at 47 percent. Homicides have dropped 51 percent since their peak in early 2022, and carjackings have decreased 73 percent since their 2023 peak. The report also noted a 13 percent year-over-year reduction in residential burglaries and a 56 percent decline compared to their 2018 peak.

However, not all categories improved. Drug offenses increased by 12 percent compared to the first half of 2025, and domestic violence incidents rose by 8 percent. Shoplifting remains the only offense still elevated above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, up by 5 percent.

Roughly a third of the 36 sample cities recorded an increase in homicides compared to the first half of 2025, including Norfolk, Virginia, which saw a 64 percent rise, and San Francisco, which saw a 55 percent increase.

The CCJ said that there was no single explanation for the broadly declining trends, pointing to a range of possible influences including changes in criminal justice operations, technological advances, alongside broader shifts in society and culture. Commentators have pointed out that this decline could also be attributed to shifts in how people go about their daily lives, with many favouring digital transactions over cash payments, making it less likely for opportunistic thefts and street robberies to occur.

With the end of the pandemic, where millions of people had lost their livelihood, economic security has since stabilized and this inevitably reduced the financial desperation that often motivates survival-driven violence. Additionally, an influx of funding, with hundreds of billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery funds being channeled into stabilizing local city budgets have allowed for more targeted efforts in identifying youth populations facing the highest risk of violence.

The organization has tracked crime trends since the emergence of the pandemic, which brought a historic surge in homicides before the subsequent decline began in the second half of 2022.

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The struggle for adequate indigent defense continues

When America’s Founding Fathers were debating the Constitution, they realized that it didn’t do enough to protect individual rights, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth.

Thus, three years after its adoption, they added the document’s first 10 amendments, collectively known as the Bill of Rights. Amendment No. 6 concentrated on providing criminal defendants with a fair judicial process, including the right to be assisted by an attorney.

In 1963, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Sixth Amendment to dictate that this right to counsel applies to all felony defendants in state courts, not just those wealthy enough to hire an attorney. Thus, for more than six decades, any defendant too poor to afford an attorney has been guaranteed that one would be provided at the government’s expense.

As a comprehensive story from The Greenwood Commonwealth this past weekend explains, it is unclear how well Mississippi is living up to this constitutional obligation. An analysis of the documents filed by the state’s 23 circuit court districts, where felony criminal trials are held, exposed wide variations in how and when the courts provide indigent defendants with an attorney. Only about a third of the court districts have clear plans that closely follow the guidelines to provide defendants with an attorney soon after their arrest to discuss the charges, request a preliminary hearing and petition for release on bond while awaiting trial.

The variations in the public defender system exist not just from district to district but can also exist from county to county within a court district. For example, in the 4th District, which covers three counties in the Delta, Washington County operates with a full-time public defender’s office, Sunflower County contracts with two private practice attorneys to provide indigent counsel, and Leflore County appoints the public defenders from a list of private practice attorneys willing to do the work.

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Senators call for investigation into ICE hiring, vehicle pursuits and body cameras

Dozens of Democratic U.S. senators and the Independent senator from Maine pushed for more details Monday from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the agency’s vetting practices for new agents and how officers conduct vehicle pursuits, even as they demanded that body cameras be swiftly rolled out to all officers, reported The Associated Press.

The demands came in a letter spearheaded by Maine’s Independent Sen. Angus King, signed by 38 Democratic senators and sent to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. The demands follow two deadly shootings in which ICE officers shot and killed immigrants in Houston and Maine.

The Associated Press reported last week that the ICE officer in Maine who opened fire and killed a man from Colombia had a history of violent behavior toward family members that was detailed in family court records.

His first ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told AP he was physically violent with her, including once throwing boiling water at her while she was holding their child.

His second ex-wife, Lucinda Brouillette, sent a statement over the weekend alleging “a persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear, and control.”

“Throughout our marriage and in the years that followed, I have feared for a long time that his anger, aggression, and escalating behavior would eventually result in severe, life threatening violence, and I often believed I would be the one on the receiving end of it,” she wrote.

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Judge: Forcing states to enforce federal immigration laws violates the Tenth Amendment

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration challenging Minnesota’s state and local “sanctuary” laws, policies and ordinances, reported Courthouse News Service.

In the 56-page order, Chief U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud said forcing state and local officials to enforce federal immigration law violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes a balance of power between federal government and individual states.

Though the Trump administration argued state law was preempted by a federal statute allowing local officials to enforce immigration laws under formal agreements, Tostrud rejected that claim.

“This statute does not require a state or any of its political subdivisions to enter into this type of agreement; these agreements are voluntary,” Tostrud wrote, also ruling immigration detainers are requests, not mandates. “At the same time, the statute does not forbid a state or any of its political subdivisions from voluntarily cooperating with the United States.”

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Maine senator says citizens don't trust FBI of DHS

“The people of Maine are not going to buy an investigation that’s strictly run by the F.B.I. or D.H.S.,” Senator Angus King, an independent, reported The New York Time. “I’m sorry. They just don’t have the credibility.”

Senator King was referring a killing in Maine by ICE of  a man legally in the U.S. ICE has said victims in Maine and other states were brandishing a gun, “weaponizing” a car or attacking with a shovel. But these explanations, which federal immigration officials gave for shooting people, were swiftly undercut or contradicted by video evidence.

Now, local officials and some members of the public are meeting the Department of Homeland Security’s accounts of the fatal shootings this month in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, with intense skepticism. In Maine on Monday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian living in Biddeford. The department said little more than that he had tried to flee a traffic stop and that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” had fired at him.

Videos that capture the shooting have not surfaced. Maine officials have called for state law enforcement officials to help determine what occurred.

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Federal courthouses are crumbling around the country, Congress turns a blind eye

Judges across the country have been complaining that their courthouses are in a dire state of disrepair, and that the G.S.A. is not doing enough to respond, reported The New York Times. The extent of the problem was highlighted in interviews with chief judges of district courts as well as in a list of maintenance issues compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which coordinates operations across the judiciary.

For years, the chief judge overseeing the federal courts in Chicago had been trying to fix the water inside the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. A study had found that the water flowing to the building’s showers, sinks and drinking fountains most likely contained elevated levels of Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.

A judge in Oklahoma worked beside a trash bin to catch water falling from a leaking ceiling, before the problem became so severe that she was forced to move to temporary chambers for more than a year. A century-old courthouse in Asheville, N.C., is plagued by mold and a dilapidated heating system, requiring some court services to move off-site. Judges from other courthouses say the G.S.A. has been slow to address problems with critical HVAC systems, falling ceiling tiles and termites.

In the Middle District of Florida, the G.S.A. has been slow to respond to repeated leaks in Jacksonville and has taken more than two years to fully repair a fence that secures a parking lot for judges in Ocala, Chief Judge Marcia Morales Howard said in an interview. She criticized the agency for failing to take into account the impact of courthouse shutdowns on jurors, litigants and the rule of law. “G.S.A. gets paid their rent no matter what,” she said. “And we can’t move. So there’s just no urgency in getting the repairs done.”

The problems with the nation’s courthouses are one facet of a crisis over the federal government’s longstanding inability to maintain its own buildings. Edward C. Forst, the G.S.A.’s administrator, has blamed a requirement that the agency get congressional approval in advance of major projects. As for courthouses, he has argued that the $1.3 billion the judiciary pays each year in rent is a bargain compared with the cost of repairs. He has also cited a report from the Government Accountability Office that found the judiciary’s own guidelines for the design of its courthouses will lead to higher costs.

But for judges the problem is especially frustrating because they must rely on the G.S.A., part of the executive branch, to persuade Congress to address their needs.

G.S.A. control of courthouse repairs is inconsistent with the nation’s tradition of separation of powers, said Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., the director of the Administrative Office.

“We ought to be responsible for our own buildings. We ought not to be reliant upon an agency of the executive branch to manage our buildings,” Judge Conrad said in an interview. “Judicial independence, conceptually, is more important today than it has ever been.”

After years of frustration, Judge Conrad said the judiciary is now asking Congress to give it control of courthouses in 10 of the country’s 94 judicial districts — a pilot that could eventually lead to a more substantial handover. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, mentioned the possibility of legislation that would transfer control of some courthouses to the judiciary in a hearing on Tuesday.

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Acting AG Blanche meets with Epstein victims, they were not impressed

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met  accusers of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following a request to do so by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose support is crucial to advancing his nomination to lead the Justice Department, reported CBS News.

Epstein accuser Annie Farmer said in a statement following her meeting with Blanche that she feels "even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States' Attorney General."

Farmer alleged that Blanche was "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors," which she described as "a marked contrast" from his testimony at Wednesday's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dani Bensky, whose name and personal information were mistakenly made public in documents related to the federal investigation into Epstein that were released by the Justice Department last year, testified before the committee earlier Thursday before taking part in the meeting with Blanche. 

Bensky said in a statement that Blanche treated the meeting "as a mere 'check-the-box' exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation."

Bensky said that Blanche "danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust." She said she believes Blanche "is not qualified to serve as attorney general."

"He did not adequately account for the release of materials that exposed survivors' identifying information and images, and he offered no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability beyond" Epstein and longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, she said.

The political firestorm over Epstein has been a persistent headache for the Trump administration, which released millions of investigative documents over the last year about the disgraced financier's crimes and connections to high-profile people. 

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