Today’s Big Story

A Carjacking Crisis

Car thefts and carjackings are up. Unreliable data makes it hard to pinpoint why.

Here is some distressing news for anyone who owns a car: Carjackings and car thefts are up significantly compared with the number of incidents before the pandemic, according to several data points. And it’s prompting fear and calls for action in many American cities.

Motor vehicle thefts increased by 29% in 2023 compared with the previous year, while carjackings slightly decreased by 5% in nearly 40 American cities, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s most recent crime trends report. But between 2019 and 2023, both car thefts and carjackings increased dramatically, by 105% and 93%, respectively, according to the report.

Even when the pandemic abated, carjackings kept increasing. In 2019, Prince George’s County police officers investigated fewer than 100 carjackings; by the end of 2023, that number had risen to more than 500. They’re happening everywhere, to everyone: a mother buckling in her children outside an elementary school; a food-delivery driver making his final stop of the day; a 90-year-old who watched the carjackers drive off with her late spouse’s ashes.

The Atlantic reports that some of the victims were high-profile, too. In October of last year, three masked men carjacked Henry Cuellar, a Democratic congressman from Texas, as he arrived at his apartment, making off with his Toyota, phone, iPad, and sushi dinner. In January, Mike Gill, a 56-year-old father of three who’d served as the chief of staff for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was driving his new Jeep to pick up his wife from her law office in downtown D.C. when a man climbed into his car and shot him.

The five cities with the highest year-over-year increases in motor vehicle theft between 2022 and 2023 were Rochester, New York; Baltimore; Buffalo, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Cincinnati. The cities with the highest carjacking rates per 100,000 residents in 2023 were the District of Columbia; Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; Chicago; and Denver. Many have blamed the surge in auto theft on a social media trend among teenagers that exposes vulnerabilities in certain kinds of cars, especially Kia and Hyundai models. But the varying reliability of motor vehicle theft data at different law enforcement levels and the scarcity of national carjacking data make it hard to determine what—or who—is responsible for the spikes.

But The Atlantic’s reporting found that the increase could stem from “a complex and still somewhat mysterious set of factors, but prominent among them, at least according to cops in the Carjacking Interdiction Unit, were protracted school closings.” This fueled truancy and juvenile crime and paired with police reforms that restricted the ability to fight crime effectively—along with a new hesitancy among some officers about risking their career or their life in a political atmosphere (“Defund the police!”) that they felt villainized them more than the criminals.

Israel Says It Will Only Strike Iranian Military Targets

It’s a sign of restraint after concerns that strikes on oil or nuclear facilities would trigger a wider war

Israel has assured the Biden administration that a planned retaliatory attack on Iran won’t target nuclear and oil facilities, according to U.S. officials, a promise sought by the White House to head off further Middle East escalation and to avoid a potential oil-price increase.

In the two weeks since Iran’s latest missile barrage on Israel, its second direct attack in six months, the Middle East has braced for Israel’s promised response, fearing the two countries’ decades-long shadow war could explode into a head-on military confrontation. Natan Sachs, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, said Netanyahu’s decision was somewhat “reassuring for the Biden administration.” But, he added, Israel’s response is likely to aim for inflicting severe damage on Tehran.

At the same time, a deadly attack by Hezbollah against an army base deep inside Israeli territory presents a major headache for Israel as it continues to struggle to defuse the threat from the Iran-backed militant group, despite launching a major bombardment campaign and a ground operation against it. According to CNN, both the timing and the location of the strike suggest that Hezbollah had gathered enough intelligence and possesses the capabilities to maximize the number of casualties. The assault is also the single bloodiest attack on IDF troops inside Israel since the beginning of the war last October.

Watching the Border

30% of the cameras in Border Patrol’s main surveillance system are currently broken, memo says

Nearly one-third of the cameras in the Border Patrol’s primary surveillance system along the southern U.S. border are not working, according to an internal agency memo sent in early October, depriving border agents of a crucial tool in combating illegal migrant crossings. “The nationwide issue is having significant impacts on [Border Patrol] operations,” reads a Border Patrol memo sent to a sector of agents along the southern border and obtained by NBC News.

The large-scale outage affects roughly 150 of the 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was due to “several technical problems,” according to the memo. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, blamed outdated equipment and outstanding repair issues.

The camera systems, known as Remote Video Surveillance Systems, have been used since 2011. And while officials said that some repairs have been made this month, there are still over 100 outstanding requests for camera repairs. This weekend, Former President Donald Trump proposed hiring 10,000 additional Border Patrol agents and giving them a $10,000 retention and signing bonus—but this, PBS News points out, is after he derailed a bipartisan bill earlier this year that included funding for more border personnel and infrastructure.

The Pandas Are Coming Back

China’s cutest diplomats are headed for Washington

Two giant pandas, in a plane stocked with bamboo shoots and carrots, have departed China for an hours-long flight to Washington, D.C. and a new home at the National Zoo, where they will begin a 10-year residence in the nation’s capital.

Bao Li, a three-year-old male, and Qing Bao, a three-year-old female, are the latest pandas to be sent to the U.S. after a series of repatriations from American zoos raised concerns that geopolitical tensions could be hurting “panda diplomacy”, a longtime symbol of friendship between the world’s two largest economies. That anxiety turned to optimism last November when Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly stated a desire to continue the panda exchange programs. This year, a new pair of bears has been delivered to the San Diego Zoo, while another pair has been promised to San Francisco.

The bears are being transported on a FedEx Boeing 777 cargo jet nicknamed the “Panda Express” from Chengdu, China. FedEx also did not disclose details of the trip but said on X on Monday that the Panda Express was “on the move”. According to FlightAware, a FedEx cargo jet from Chengdu via Anchorage is scheduled to arrive at Dulles International Airport at 9:55 a.m. this morning.

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