The Country Is a Mess … but First, Two Pieces of Genuinely Good News–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Jan. 8, 2026

Indy Digest: Jan. 8, 2026

There is so much heinous news right now that I couldn’t decide which alarming topic to cover in this space—so instead, I am going to highlight two legitimately GOOD bits of news.

(Yeah, we’re still going to get into some of the heinous topics in the “More News” section below.)

The first piece of good news: Homicide rates—and violent crimes over all—are down. In fact, the numbers are WAY down.

The Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey reports:

The number of homicides in some of California’s biggest cities dropped to remarkably low levels in 2025, a piece of good news that immediately touched off debate about who, or what, was responsible.

It’s safe to say that while politicians in both parties claimed credit for improved safety, there won’t ever be a definitive explanation for what caused the decline in killings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and other cities.

Los Angeles tallied 230 homicides in 2025, as my colleagues Libor Jany and Richard Winton reported. Although that number is not final, because investigators are continuing to assess some deaths, it would probably represent the fewest killings since 1966, when LA. had 30% fewer residents. Measuring per capita, it was the city’s safest year since 1959.

Similarly, San Francisco counted just 28 homicides in 2025, a 20% decline from the 35 killings it had the year prior. It marked the Bay city’s lowest total since 1954. And Oakland logged 66 homicides through Dec. 28, on pace to become the lowest annual total since 1967. That’s a huge decline from the 125 homicides that rocked the city in 2023.

Wow.

The piece later cites a story by Axios from a couple of weeks ago that shows murders and other crimes are down nationwide—and, in fact, the decrease in murders is the largest year-to-year drop ever recorded:

The decline in killings is part of a broader decrease in violent crime following the COVID-era spike. Mass killings in the U.S. also fell in 2025, reaching their lowest level since 2006.

The Real-Time Crime Index, which compiles data from 570 law enforcement agencies, shows a nearly a 20% decline in murders this year compared with the same period in 2024.

The second piece of good news comes from The Washington Post, and a story headlined “A study offers a surprising reason for plunging U.S. overdose deaths.” Here’s the lede:

Chinese crackdowns on chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl may have played a significant role in the sharp reduction of U.S. overdose deaths, according to research published Thursday.

The paper suggests that the illicit fentanyl trade—which drove a historic surge in drug deaths during the past decade—experienced a large-scale decline in supply. Overdose deaths had surpassed 100,000 annually during the Biden administration but began to decline in mid-2023 and plunged further in its final year. They have kept falling under President Donald Trump, who invokes drug trafficking as he imposes steep tariffs on other countries and unleashes missile strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, adds to debates among government officials, public health researchers and addiction experts over the complex reasons for the precipitous drop in deaths.

They have also pointed to billions spent on addiction treatment, the overdose reversal drug naloxone and law enforcement actions that disrupted traffickers domestically and abroad. Researchers in the Science paper stressed that those factors have been crucial in saving lives but emphasized the importance of efforts to prevent fentanyl from even being manufactured.

Whatever the reasons are for these decreases in crime and overdose deaths, the news is undeniably good. Hooray for that.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Welcome to the dumpster-fire news section! First up: Minnesota state investigators say they’ve been prevented from participating in the investigation of the killing of Renee Good, who was shot multiple times in the face by an ICE officer. The Associated Press reports: “‘The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,’ Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement. It had been decided that the BCA would investigate Good’s shooting death along with the FBI, but the U.S. attorney’s office changed that, according to Evans. The announcement came as protestors and law enforcement clashed Thursday morning outside a Minneapolis immigration court, with the governor urging restraint and schools canceling classes as a precaution. Asked about the development, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that Minnesota authorities ‘don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.'”

• The president of the United States claimed in an interview with The New York Times that he does not need to follow international law or treaties: “Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: ‘Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’ ‘I don’t need international law,’ he added. ‘I’m not looking to hurt people.’ When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, ‘I do.’ But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States. ‘It depends what your definition of international law is,’ he said.’ Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.“

• Related: This piece from the AP, headlined “US will exit 66 international organizations as it further retreats from global cooperation.” Details: “The Trump administration will withdraw from dozens of international organizations, including the U.N.’s population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations, as the U.S. further retreats from global cooperation. … Many of the targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor, migration and other issues the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and ‘woke’ initiatives. Other non-U.N. organizations on the list include the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the Global Counterterrorism Forum. ‘The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.”

• Just a heads-up that bird flu is still a thing. The Los Angeles Times reports: “The World Health Organization in November was alerted to the 71st human case of bird flu in the United States, but the first since February 2025. The Washington state resident died later that month. Health officials in Washington did not release the patient’s name but shared that they were considered ‘older,’ had underlying health conditions and had had contact with live infected poultry in their backyard. … The human cases earlier in 2025 tended to be the H5N1 strain of the virus. But November’s case was the first recorded incident of a person contracting the H5N5 strain. As the virus spreads and mutates, experts worry human-to-human transmission could become a problem. The head of France’s Institut Pasteur respiratory infections center recently said that if the bird flu were to gain human-to-human transmission capabilities, it could cause a pandemic ‘potentially even more severe than the (COVID-19) pandemic we experienced.’”

• The parent company of both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh City Paper announced both publications are being shuttered entirely. Nieman Lab says: “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette—‘One of America’s Great Newspapers,’ it has proclaimed on its front page for decades—announced it would be printing its final edition on May 3. But that’s not so it can boldly embrace the digital future—it’s to shut down completely. Block Communications—the company that owns the newspaper and has been controlled for more than a century by the Block family—said it had lost more than $350 million running the Post-Gazette over the past 20 years and ‘the realities facing local journalism make continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable.’ Why today? This morning, the Supreme Court denied, without comment, the newspaper’s appeal of a federal court ruling that found it had improperly violated the terms of its main union contract by making cuts to workers’ health care plans (among other things) in 2020.” The piece goes on to speculate that the paper will be saved in some form; here’s hoping the author is right.

• And finally … this would be good news, if it were based in science … but it’s not, so, ugh. The Washington Post says: “The ongoing debate about the health harms of alcohol took a turn Wednesday after the United States dropped its long-standing guidance to consume no more than one or two drinks per day. It marks a pullback in messaging for the federal government—under President Joe Biden, the U.S. surgeon general recommended adding cancer warnings to alcohol products, and reassessing limits on alcohol consumption. During a news conference rolling out new U.S. dietary guidelines on Wednesday, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said people should drink judiciously. Then he added it is a ‘social lubricant that brings people together’ and ‘there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.’ Critics scoffed at the characterization, saying Oz was echoing talking points from the alcohol industry. Mike Marshall, CEO of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, called the statement irresponsible and said the pared-down guidelines fly in the face of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make American Healthy Again movement.” Wow!

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