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Murders and other crimes plummet bigly under President Trump

January 23, 2026 | | Print Article

Last year, the United States experienced “the single-largest one-year drop” in the murder rate, according to a new study.

Conducted by the Council on Criminal Justice, the study released Thursday found that murders dropped by 21 percent from 2024 to 2025.

“That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record,” according to the Council.

Other forms of crime also declined. Carjackings dropped by 61 percent compared to 2023, while shoplifting dropped by 10 percent compared to 2024.

However, the Council abstained from offering a reason for these stunning numbers, citing the need for more comprehensive research.

“Unfortunately, identifying decisive factors, and understanding the complex interplay among them, is tricky,” the Council maintained. “Without rigorous evidence, it is not possible to confidently pinpoint the factors fueling the drop in homicide.”

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“Any assertive claims about the influence of specific policy interventions, such as National Guard deployments and increased immigration enforcement or expanded community violence intervention programs, should be supported by robust research designs intended to measure their causal effects,” the Council added.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, appeared to strongly disagree:

In the tweet above, he referenced President Donald Trump’s agenda, which has focused partly on jailing and then, in some cases, deporting habitual violent offenders back to their home country.

The White House referenced the same.

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“Whether it be deporting criminal illegal aliens, supporting law enforcement officers, or finally being tough on criminals, the Trump Administration has employed a whole-of-government approach to drive down crime and make communities safer,” a spokesperson told Axios.

But senior research specialist Ernesto Lopez cast doubt on this by suggesting that the drop in crime extends all the way back to 2008, right before former President Barack Hussein Obama assumed office.

“It is possible that these rates reflect a longer-term downward trend punctuated by periods of elevated homicides,” he told CBS News.

Axios suggested similarly.

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“[V]iolent crime was already falling to a two-decade low in Biden’s final year, calling into question whether Trump’s policies have made an impact,” the left-wing outlet claimed.

To his credit, Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council, admitted that national events (such as Trump’s executive orders) might have indeed had an effect.

“We want to believe that local factors really matter for crime numbers, that it is fundamentally a neighborhood problem with neighborhood level solutions,” he told ABC News.

“We’re now seeing that broad, very broad social, cultural and economic forces at the national level can assert huge influence on what happens at the local level,” he added.

The cities that experienced the largest drop in homicides included Denver, Colorado; Washington, D.C.; Omaha, Nebraska; Los Angeles, California; and Buffalo, New York.

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Los Angeles and D.C. are notable because President Trump deployed National Guard troops to both beleaguered cities earlier this year.

Vivek Saxena
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