The latest US crime figures highlight piquant parallels: serious offences are down at the same time that migration both illegal/legal have reduced too. According to the latest figures released by a non-partisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice, incidents of murder, gun assaults and carjackings actually fell during the first half of 2025 across 42 US cities, a trend that began in 2022. Does that mean Trump’s often apoplectic pronouncement worked?

The highest profile violent crime in the US is mass shootings. According to the latest statistics quoted by Forbes, these are at a seven-year low now, down by a whopping 44 per cent in the first half of 2025 from the 12-year high of 342 in the same period of 2023. While the figure of 195 mass shootings till July 2 is chillingly high, it is actually 25 per cent less than the 262 reported in the same time period in 2024. Overall crime rates in big cities, however, are the bellwether.

Of course, the US has many more cities (around 4,000) but at least in the 42 cited by CCJ, homicides are 17 per cent lower so far in 2025, compared with the same period in 2024 in 30 cities. Only five cities saw a rise, ranging from 6% in Milwaukee to 39 per cent in Little Rock, both of which have Democratic Party mayors. The drop in violent crime is mainly because of an improved record in traditionally high crime cities like Baltimore and St Louis, both also run by Democrats.

The lowering of crime rates after Trump took over has just cemented the belief among residents (especially the MAGA cohort) that the police and authorities are (or........

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