OUR PICKSU.S. Crime Has Dropped Sharply Since the Pandemic | Meltdowns, Vendettas, Chaos: Inside Kash Patel’s FBI | AI-Powered Disinformation Swarms Are Coming for Democracy, and more

Meltdowns, Vendettas, Chaos: Inside Kash Patel’s FBI  (Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser, New York Times)
Forty-five current and former employees on the changes they say are undermining the agency and making America less safe.

U.S. Crime Has Dropped Sharply Since the Pandemic.  (Tim Craig, John D. Harden and Carson TerBush, Washington Post)
The United States remains in a multiyear trend of falling rates of homicides and other crimes in cities nationwide, ushering in a period of relative safety that rivals the years before the pandemic, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from more than 100 police departments.
The drop in both violent and property crime has extended throughout the country. Rates of aggravated assault and burglary hit their lowest point last year since the start of the pandemic in 2020, when a surge of public safety issues rattled elected officials, law enforcement and the public.

Autopsy Report Classifies ICE Detainee’s Death as a Homicide  (Douglas MacMillan, Washington Post)
The report comes the same day a federal judge temporarily barred the deportation of two fellow detainees who said 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos was killed.

DHS’s Data Grab Is Getting Citizens Kicked Off Voter Rolls, New Complaint Says  (Vittoria Elliott, Wired)
As states check voter registration against a mashup of federal data, a new complaint says US citizens are getting kicked off state voter rolls as a result.

AI-Powered Disinformation Swarms Are Coming for Democracy  (David Gilbert, Wired)
Advances in artificial intelligence are creating a perfect storm for those seeking to spread disinformation at unprecedented speed and scale. And it’s virtually impossible to detect.

Doomsday-Prepping for Trump’s Third Term  (Michael Scherer, The Atlantic)
Dmitri Mehlhorn has created a fictional world to game out constitutional collapse.