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Community floods school with supplies after devastating fire

By CNN

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    MILWAUKEE (WISN) — An outpouring of community support has given Lincoln Avenue School students and teachers the supplies they need to start the new school year, less than two months after a devastating fire destroyed the building.

Milwaukee Public Schools announced Friday that it is no longer accepting donated supplies for the school because its immediate needs have been met.

“The response to the devastating fire at Lincoln Avenue School has shown the very best of Milwaukee and MPS,” Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in a statement.

The MPS Foundation will continue accepting monetary donations through its Lincoln Avenue School Fund to help cover future needs.

The donations follow the June 30 five-alarm fire that destroyed the 109-year-old school near 18th Street and Lincoln Avenue. Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said chemical-soaked rags placed in a garbage can sparked the accidental fire.

The fire forced MPS to find a new home for nearly 500 Lincoln Avenue students ahead of the school year. The district decided to move the school into dedicated space at Casimir Pulaski High School, where Lincoln Avenue students will have their own entrance, classrooms and cafeteria.

Lincoln Avenue students are scheduled to begin classes at Pulaski on Sept. 1.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Murder is at lowest rate since the 1950s. Trump touts it as a personal success.

By CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump, surrounded by his top law enforcement officials, touted Friday the significant drop in murder and other crimes following the FBI’s 2025 crime report.The murder rate is now at lows not seen since the 1950s, according to the agency’s report, following a downward trend since the numbers spiked in the 2020s, as the Covid pandemic took hold of the US.The trend is continuing in 2026, with murder, violent crime, and robbery rates continuing to drop in the first half of the year, according to data from the FBI and independent organizations.“I’m thrilled to announce that the FBI has just released a new Uniform Crime Report showing that in 2025 we achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history,” Trump said at an event Friday on Long Island, New York. “Pretty amazing. And last year there were over 3,100 fewer murders than the year before I took office.”Trump and his officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, have pointed to the administration’s efforts to surge federal resources to cities across the US and, in a refrain used often by Patel, letting “good cops be cops.”Others are less dogmatic about the cause of declining crime rates, which have been dropping since before Trump’s second term began.What has caused this welcomed decline in crime across the US is “as clear as a glass of milk,” Adam Gelb, the president of the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice said in releasing its own report Thursday on 2025 crime rates.“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” Gelb said. “Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership. The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up.”While no single cause can easily explain the decline across a country of over 340 million people, researchers at CCJ told CNN that a range of possible influences include changes in how criminal justice is enforced as well as societal and culture change and technological advances have likely all contributed to the decrease.Trump says his administration, including Patel and newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche, are deserving of the credit.“Let’s say they don’t have good leadership, like Chicago has very bad leadership. But we have the numbers down because of what the federal government’s doing,” Trump said Friday. “They like to take all the credit, but everyone knows we’ve done an amazing job. The US attorneys and the FBI, all the people, Kash, and Todd has been unbelievable.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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