“Non-fatal violent crime dropped 25% from 2024 to 2025,” reads the headline from the Department of Justice. What changed from one year to the next to bring about the largest single-year decline on record? Joe “Autopen” Biden shuffled off into retirement, and Donald Trump regained the Oval Office.
As crime researcher John Lott put it, “The U.S. has been running a real-time experiment on two approaches to criminal justice: the Biden-era emphasis on social justice versus the Trump administration’s embrace of traditional law and order. The results are now in.”
Indeed, it’s quite simple. When you justify and celebrate things like the Black Lives Matter riots, crime rises. When you prioritize law enforcement, crime declines.
The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has compiled the National Crime Victimization Survey annually for half a century, measuring crime through a household survey. This most recent survey, redesigned in January 2025, included 102,000 households and interviews with 152,000 people.
The FBI’s annual statistics measure law enforcement reporting. Since victims often don’t report crimes, its stats are incomplete. Nevertheless, its annual report earlier this year likewise showed a big drop in crime — the biggest since 1937.
“The rate of violent crime, property victimization, burglary or trespassing, motor vehicle theft, and other types of household theft fell significantly in 2025,” said the DOJ on Monday. “The rate of non-fatal violent crime excluding simple assault declined 25%. ... The rate of aggravated assault also declined 31%. ... The rate of property victimization declined 19%.” Finally, “The rates of burglary or trespassing (down 25%), motor vehicle theft (down 30%), and other types of household theft (down 19%) decreased from 2024 to 2025.”
As Lott notes, “Murder also declined sharply last year. The U.S. recorded about 4.1 murders per 100,000 people in 2025, a record low, down from roughly 5.1 per 100,000 in 2024.”
That’s all great news. Crime skyrocketed beginning in the summer of 2020 as Democrats exploited the death of George Floyd to exact a racial vendetta across the country. Ironically, blacks suffered the most because most of the crime was committed in their inner-city neighborhoods.
Trump promised to clean things up, even sending the National Guard to various cities — much to the consternation of Democrats. It worked. Lott points to the numbers in Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, to show the success of Trump’s National Guard deployment:
Trump took federal control of D.C.’s policing on Aug. 11, 2025. From September through December 2025, murders plunged 63%, from 63 to 23, compared with the same four months in 2024 — the final four full months of the Biden administration.
Trump began a federal law enforcement intervention in Memphis on Sept. 29, 2025. Murders there fell 42%, from 50 during October through December 2024 to 29 during the same months in 2025.
Overall, Americans are safer. “This report is proof that President Trump’s ’Make America Safe Again’ agenda is working,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. “This success reinforces our commitment to ensuring every American can live, work, and raise a family without fear.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche added, “This is what happens when you have an administration that prioritizes the safety and security of Americans and our communities.”
Team Trump’s strategy involved better policing with the support of government officials, more thorough prosecution, targeting drug trafficking, closing the border, and deporting criminals. With the assistance of Republican officials — and despite the stubborn resistance of Democrat ones — Trump has been quite successful on all of those fronts.
According to the Washington Examiner, “The administration also attributed the declines to its immigration enforcement policies, including the deportation of more than 400,000 illegal immigrants who had previously been charged with or convicted of crimes, according to the White House. Officials argued that stepped-up enforcement has also deterred criminal activity among those who remain in the country.”
Tens of thousands of illegal aliens have committed crimes other than crossing the border or overstaying a visa, and many, if not most, of them live in Democrat-run “sanctuary” jurisdictions that harbor criminals instead of protecting innocent people. Most crime statistics don’t categorize crimes by illegals separately, leading the Leftmedia to falsely report that illegals are more “law-abiding” than American citizens.
Of course, illegals wouldn’t be here in the first place if they were law-abiding.
In any case, both the DOJ and FBI reports reveal that deporting illegal aliens has a measurable effect on crime nationwide. That wouldn’t happen if illegals were law-abiding. Who knew?
Finally, more Americans are taking personal protection into their own hands.
“Surveys show that the share of general-election voters who carry concealed handguns increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 30.9% in July 2026,” Lott says. “The increase has been especially pronounced among minority voters, who are the most likely victims of violent crime. Hispanic and black voters are 2.6 times as likely as white voters to report carrying all or most of the time.”
As voters cast their ballots in this midterm election, it’s worth reflecting on these numbers. Democrats are effectively pro-crime — pro-criminal, pro-illegal, anti-Second Amendment — while Republicans are pro-Rule of Law. Vote accordingly.
