We were lectured that police presence was the problem, not criminals. Cashless bail was justice, and somehow, letting repeat offenders roam free was enlightened thinking. And if you questioned any of it, you were told you just didn’t understand “the data.”
Well, the data is finally speaking. Actually, it's shouting. And it’s telling a very different story than the one pushed from podiums and university panels.
According to a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice, violent crime across America has plummeted. Not nudged downward. Not plateaued. The bottom fell out. Eleven of thirteen crime categories declined in 2025 compared to 2024. Nine fell by double digits. Homicides dropped 21 percent. Car theft fell 27 percent. Burglary and shoplifting followed right behind.
🚨 JUST IN: The Experts are STUNNED, they did not expect this in Donald Trump's America
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 23, 2026
"Homicides are down 21% from 2024! Carjackings down 43% Overdoses down 20%!"
"I mean, these numbers are INDISPUTABLE!" 🇺🇸🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/YpnUJ6eNgM
That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the federal government stops apologizing for enforcing the law and starts backing the people sworn to uphold it.
ALSO SEE: The Trump Effect: Murder Rate in America Takes Stunning Turn
FBI Scores Another New Win: 'Top 10 Most Wanted' Canadian Busted in Mexico
President Donald Trump ran on a simple promise: Restore law and order. And I'm not talking about the cop show that somehow has limitless episodes that my mom can't stop watching. The real kind. The kind where criminals are arrested, prosecuted, and removed from the streets. The kind where police officers are supported instead of scapegoated. The kind where public safety matters more than ridiculous activist slogans.
And when our President followed through, the results quickly followed behind him.
Washington, D.C., is the clearest example. After the administration took a hands-on role, deploying federal officers and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal oversight, homicides dropped by 40 percent. Denver saw a 41 percent drop. Omaha tied D.C. at 40 percent. Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Buffalo all saw declines north of 30 percent.
These are not sleepy suburbs. These are cities that were held up for years as proof that “reimagined policing” worked. Cities that experimented with defunding, de-policing, and soft-on-crime policies while residents paid the price. Thank God the experiment is over.
Nationally, the Major Cities Chiefs Association reports a roughly 20 percent drop in homicides across 67 major police agencies. The FBI’s full 2025 data has not yet been released, but early indicators suggest the same trend. This marks the fourth straight year of declining homicides, with 2025 crime rates not just lower than the pandemic surge, but 25 percent lower than 2019 levels.
Let that sink in. After a 30 percent spike in murders during the pandemic era, America didn’t just recover. It steered into a full-blown course correction with President Trump at the helm.
New York City just recorded its safest year for gun violence in recorded history. Philadelphia saw its lowest homicide total since 1966. Chicago, often treated as the poster child for urban dysfunction, logged a 30 percent reduction in homicides in one year.
The media will try to tell you this is coincidence. Or weather. Or demographics. Or “community vibes.” Anything but leadership. But even law enforcement professionals are stating the obvious.
Josh Schirard, a former police officer turned law enforcement executive, pointed to a return to old principles. Police are the public. The public are the police. Focus on the small number of individuals driving violence. Support officers instead of handicapping them politically. If you're really feeling bold, enforce the law consistently. These "radical" ideas just may have been crazy enough to work.
Be sure to note another common thread. The cities still struggling most with gun assaults since 2019 include Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The common thread isn’t geography. It’s governance. These are places where ideological resistance to proactive policing still runs deep. It's in these places where prosecutors are the ones handcuffed, and where political leaders are more afraid of activists than victims.
This matters beyond the statistics. Every percentage drop represents fewer funerals. Fewer mothers burying sons. Fewer small business owners locking up forever. Fewer kids growing up thinking sirens are background noise. Public safety is not an abstraction. It is the foundation of freedom. This is the trajectory I want for the nation my boys will grow up in.
For years, Americans were told that law and order was code for cruelty. That enforcing laws was incompatible with compassion. But the past year has exposed that lie for what it always was. It may just be my opinion, but the most compassionate thing a government can do is protect innocent people from those who would harm them.
You don’t get safer streets by pretending crime is a social construct. You get safer streets by arresting violent offenders, backing police, and making it clear that lawlessness will be met with consequences. The drop in crime didn’t happen because America became more progressive. It happened because America became more serious.
When leaders respect the law, the law works. When they abandon it, chaos fills the gap. Trump chose the former, and Americans are safer for it. The question now is whether cities and states will keep learning that lesson, or whether they’ll try to hand the wheel back to the same ideas that drove us off the road in the first place.
Editor's Note: The days of lawlessness in Washington, D.C. are over. Thanks to President Trump, our nation's capital will be SAFE once again.
Help us continue to report on President Trump’s efforts to restore law and order to our great nation. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member