WASHINGTON, DC – News outlet USA Today released a fact-checking article regarding claims made by President Donald Trump during his State of the Union address where he asserted crime rates are falling in various cities. While the outlet quoted skeptics of the administration’s efficacy in the matter, USA Today conceded that crime rates in major cities are going down.
On February 24th, President Trump delivered the State of the Union address where, among numerous other claims pertaining to the current administration’s successes and endeavors, he asserted there’s been a “turnaround for the ages” regarding crime across the country.
The day following President Trump’s address, USA Today published an article bearing the headline, “Trump celebrated 'big success' cutting crime. Was he right,” which posed the question as to whether the president’s claims of reducing crime across the country held any water.
What USA Today’s piece concluded in their examination of President Trump’s claims was that crime has gone down substantially, but they simply can’t tell if the administration’s efforts contributed to the downward trend.
Quoting AH Datalytics cofounder Jeff Asher who addressed crime going down nationally under the current administration, the data analyst voiced his skepticism of President Trump taking credit for crime falling under his leadership, leaning on the fact there’s been a downward trend in recent years.
“I'm not sure I'd agree quite with the framing,” Asher stated, adding, “And a lot of the comments are, I’d say, imprecise and probably lack the context of what was happening in terms of the nation’s crime trends really since 2023.”
Adam Gelb, who serves as the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, addressed President Trump’s claim that the nation has seen “its single largest decline in recorded history” regarding the murder rate “in over 125 years,” saying the precise datapoint mentioned cannot be fact checked until the FBI publicly releases their latest national crime report.
However, Gelb’s outfit released a January report noting a 21% decline in homicides from 2024 to 2025 in 35 of the largest cities in the United States, which USA Today pointed out in their reporting that if the same trend is revealed in the FBI’s forthcoming report, then President Trump’s statement on historic lows would be accurate. When addressing the aforementioned, Gelb simply claimed that homicide rates dropping “defy easy explanation.”
“We're seeing big shifts in criminal justice policies and programs,” Gelb explained, further adding, “big advances in crime fighting technologies and big social, economic and cultural shifts happening.”
When it came to President Trump’s claims of crime plummeting in D.C. under his leadership and deployment of the National Guard, Asher claimed he couldn’t conclude there was any direct correlation to the National Guard’s presence in D.C. and crime dropping in the wake of said deployment.
“It's really hard to parse out any effect of the federal deployment in DC, necessarily,” Asher opined, further stating, “because it is a city that was already seeing really strong declines.”
On February 24th, President Trump delivered the State of the Union address where, among numerous other claims pertaining to the current administration’s successes and endeavors, he asserted there’s been a “turnaround for the ages” regarding crime across the country.
The day following President Trump’s address, USA Today published an article bearing the headline, “Trump celebrated 'big success' cutting crime. Was he right,” which posed the question as to whether the president’s claims of reducing crime across the country held any water.
What USA Today’s piece concluded in their examination of President Trump’s claims was that crime has gone down substantially, but they simply can’t tell if the administration’s efforts contributed to the downward trend.
Quoting AH Datalytics cofounder Jeff Asher who addressed crime going down nationally under the current administration, the data analyst voiced his skepticism of President Trump taking credit for crime falling under his leadership, leaning on the fact there’s been a downward trend in recent years.
“I'm not sure I'd agree quite with the framing,” Asher stated, adding, “And a lot of the comments are, I’d say, imprecise and probably lack the context of what was happening in terms of the nation’s crime trends really since 2023.”
Adam Gelb, who serves as the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, addressed President Trump’s claim that the nation has seen “its single largest decline in recorded history” regarding the murder rate “in over 125 years,” saying the precise datapoint mentioned cannot be fact checked until the FBI publicly releases their latest national crime report.
However, Gelb’s outfit released a January report noting a 21% decline in homicides from 2024 to 2025 in 35 of the largest cities in the United States, which USA Today pointed out in their reporting that if the same trend is revealed in the FBI’s forthcoming report, then President Trump’s statement on historic lows would be accurate. When addressing the aforementioned, Gelb simply claimed that homicide rates dropping “defy easy explanation.”
“We're seeing big shifts in criminal justice policies and programs,” Gelb explained, further adding, “big advances in crime fighting technologies and big social, economic and cultural shifts happening.”
When it came to President Trump’s claims of crime plummeting in D.C. under his leadership and deployment of the National Guard, Asher claimed he couldn’t conclude there was any direct correlation to the National Guard’s presence in D.C. and crime dropping in the wake of said deployment.
“It's really hard to parse out any effect of the federal deployment in DC, necessarily,” Asher opined, further stating, “because it is a city that was already seeing really strong declines.”
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