What really happened this week: Oops All Good News Edition!

Electric cars in Africa, plunging murder rates, and more

Hello friends.

Welcome to my weekly paywalled news roundup. Every week I give you a measured amount of the news so you can stay informed without going insane, plus action steps.

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This week, things are a little different. In honor of my Friday post on taking in the good, I’ve got 5 good news stories for you.

Yes, there’s a lot of terrible stuff happening as always and I promise, I will get to it next week.

1. A political prisoner is freed

2. New support for a great independent media project

3.Why murder is plunging

4.Astonishing images of space

5. EVs catching on in Africa

1. A political prisoner is freed

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the first high-profile political kidnappings of this regime, was released and got to meet his newborn son. He gave an interview to the New York Times.

He said that if President Trump’s goal had been to suppress pro-Palestinian speech, the president had “absolutely failed.”

When he was in prison, he had received hundreds of letters from people whose interest in the Palestinian movement had been catalyzed by his case, he said.

2. Support for a great independent media project

This is a small thing in the scheme of things, but it’s big in my world; The Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP) received a transformative $1.65 million grant from the Ford Foundation that will keep it strong for years to come.

EHRP, founded by Barbara Ehrenreich (best known for Nickel and Dimed) and run by Alissa Quart (Squeezed, Bootstrapped), supports work that’s not only about inequality; it’s, often, written by working-class and economically struggling reporters. They’ve won gobs of awards. I am currently a proud recipient of a New Narratives fellowship from EHRP to support coverage of trans rights as they intersect with inequality.

Here’s my first story from that fellowship, if you’d like to see.

And I also recommend checking out the work of the late Lori Teresa Yearwood, who wrote about homelessness from the inside.

3.Why murder is plunging

Why I Think Murder Is Plunging

Data analyst Jeff Asher wrote that since 2022, murder has been falling at the fastest rate ever recorded. And this is during a time of fewer police officers than before.