How the White House is turning a win on crime into a loss

In cities big and small, led by both Democrats and Republicans, violent crime is plunging. Not only did robberies, aggravated assaults and carjackings drop by double-digit percentages between 2024 and 2025. But far fewer Americans are shooting or killing one another — including in Los Angeles, where homicides hit lows unseen since the 1960s, and in New York, which just recorded the lowest number of gunshot victims in the city’s history.

Why this is happening remains something of a mystery — or, at least, a matter of debate. But the Trump administration is eager to take sole credit for it, even though the decline began under the Biden administration in early 2023 and is likely a reflection of broader changes in policy that predate even that.

Testifying on Capitol Hill last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that the new "numbers tell an important, yet straightforward story: President Donald Trump has given us the resources, the support and the leadership to protect the American people." Equally cocksure, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X that "this administration brought law and order back."

Americans aren’t buying it. President Donald Trump’s disapproval rating on crime has risen from 38% last February to 47% this month, according to YouGov. Trump, with his unpopular mass deportation campaign and attempts to federalize the National Guard in the name of public safety, has bungled a policy issue that Republicans have historically owned.

Historically, one big reason voters haven’t trusted Democrats to address public safety is because they are largely in charge of the U.S. cities where crime is the biggest concern. The party has an interest in defending its record. But Democrats also have been slow to acknowledge what Republicans long ago accepted: How voters feel about crime matters far more than statistics. This is how Trump managed to persuade voters, who were then greatly worried about crime, to send him back to the White House to restore "law and order," despite his own 34 felony convictions.

Now, though, crime isn’t only declining at record rates, according to new reports from the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Council on Criminal Justice. Americans are starting to believe it’s declining at record rates.

According to Gallup, 49% of adults say crime is an "extremely" or "very" serious problem, and another 49% believe crime has increased across the U.S. in the past year. That’s a big decline from 2024, when 56% and 64% of adults, respectively, said the same, and an even bigger shift from the modern highs recorded in 2018. Democratic, Republican and independent voters have all changed their thinking.

Trump has not. The president has long argued that he alone can fix crime in Democratic-run cities. As he said in September, "Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now. We have the right to [call in National Guard troops] because I have an obligation to protect this country."

The irony is, now that crime is actually declining, Trump has made it harder for voters to give him credit for it.

He has blurred the lines of public safety and immigration enforcement to the detriment of both. By suggesting that mass deportations are necessary to improve public safety, he has saddled a potential policy win on declining crime with the baggage of a policy loss on immigration. A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found that, as of late January, 62% of Americans said the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown — most prevalent in cities, but spreading to small towns too — is making the U.S. "less safe."

Public opinion was starting to sour as far back as July, when Trump began deploying the National Guard to Democratic-run cities, supposedly to quell protests over federal immigration raids and fight street crime. And polls as far back as October showed most Americans objected to using troops to supplant civilian police forces in cities. Those objections only deepened in January, when Trump threatened to deploy troops to Minneapolis to help federal immigration agents.

There are signs the White House is starting to wake up to the problem, though. After repeated losses in the courts, the Trump administration recently withdrew the last of the National Guard troops it had deployed to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. And last week, White House border czar Tom Homan announced that immigration agents would also begin leaving Minneapolis.

Homan, attempting to save face for an administration beating a retreat, said the "worst of the worst" had been apprehended. The White House described them as "killers, rapists, gang members, and other violent criminals." But — following the brutal scenes in Minneapolis — polls show many Americans don’t believe that. As one Trump voter told NPR, "He’s not after criminals anymore. He’s dividing families at this point."

The combination of declining crime rates and Trump’s self-inflicted political wounds has given the Democratic Party an opening to build credibility with voters on a policy issue that Republicans have long dominated. Many are trying. This week in LA, Mayor Karen Bass held a news conference to tout a historic decline in gang violence. She praised investments in crime prevention and community policing that have improved public safety in the poorest neighborhoods of a city once famous for its warring gangs.

"It took many, many years to reach this point here, where I can proudly stand up and say that we have had a very significant reduction in crime," Bass said.

Like Republicans, Democrats are rushing to take credit ahead of the midterm elections. And Trump’s bungling has handed his political opponents a rare opportunity to get it.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Erika D. Smith is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She is a former Los Angeles Times columnist and Sacramento Bee editorial board member.