The Trump Effect: Sharp Decline in LEOs KIA
“The number of law enforcement professionals nationwide who died in the line-of-duty in the first half of 2025 decreased 53% compared to the same time period last year.”
Five years ago, in the summer ahead of the 2020 election, Joe Biden and his cadres of Demo governors and mayors controlling urban poverty plantations across the nation set off a “Summer of Rage” bomb as part of their election strategy. Fomenting hate and division and a culture of violence is Chapter 1 of their political playbook.
The ensuing riots by their Marxist so-called “Black Lives Matter” radicals and their “antifa movement” of self-styled “anti-fascist” fascists metastasized nationwide, which, when combined with the Democrats’ vilification of police and their defund-the-police campaign, unleashed a dramatic surge of violence nationwide over the following four years. The result was not only a police recruiting crisis but a surge in the number of law enforcement officers (LEOs) attacked and killed in the line of duty.
As a former LEO, the attacks and murders of police are much more than a statistic to me, and The Patriot Post has published tributes to federal, state, and local LEOs killed in action on our End of Watch page.
Now, the rhetoric of Congressional Demos in DC and urban leaders primarily on the Left Coast, is once again fueling violence against LEOs. Their targets this summer have been ICE officers. Typical of their rhetoric is this from LA’s communist mayor Karen Bass: “[ICE arrests] are a political agenda of invoking fear and terror. No plan other than fear, chaos, and politics.” And this from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA): “ICE is acting like a terrorist force. People across the country of all legal statuses — including U.S. citizens — are being kidnapped and disappeared off the street by masked men. No oversight, no accountability. Completely lawless.” Not to be outdone, former VP candidate and current Minnesota Governor Tim Walz insists that ICE agents are “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), among others, has chastised leftists for calling for violence against ICE: “Any time you diminish the importance and legitimacy of people who go in harm’s way, you increase the chances of their harm. … For Karen Bass to get in the way of totally lawful and core duties of ICE officers, and then to disparage them as that other deputy mayor did, truly puts them even more at risk.”
Their rhetoric has resulted in a surge of attacks on federal, state, and local officers.
On 4 July, Demo rhetoric inspired 10 assailants of an antifa terror cell to attempt to ambush ICE agents in Alvarado, Texas. Local law enforcement was called by the ICE officers, and a responding police officer was shot in the neck. After firing another 20-30 rounds, the suspects fled the scene. This was the first of two ambushes against ICE agents in Texas. The second was an attempt to ambush Border Patrol agents at the Rio Grande Valley annex in McAllen, Texas. The assailant in that incident was killed by police.
California Demo Senator Alex Padilla introduced a bill calling for the unmasking of ICE officers, which would result in doxing those officers and endangering their families. Brazenly, CNN has promoted an ICE-tracking app, which clearly increases the risk of violence against ICE agents.
That surge in leftist violence notwithstanding, there was some good news last week regarding attacks on LEOs. According to the 2025 Mid-Year Law Enforcement Fatalities Report, “The number of law enforcement professionals nationwide who died in the line-of-duty in the first half of 2025 decreased 53% compared to the same time period last year.”
Bill Alexander, head of the NLEO Fund, said, “We as an organization never like to use the words ‘good news’ when we’re talking about or reporting on even a single police officer’s death, but I would call this a very welcome and encouraging trend line.” He attributed the drop to the election of Donald Trump last fall, which marked a significant shift away from the anti-police attitudes fomented by the Biden/Harris regime.
That is an unavoidable conclusion and most welcome.
There has been a corresponding surge in recruitment of police officers since Trump’s election, akin to the surge in those signing up for military service.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
