The Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicides in 35 major U.S. cities fell 21% in 2025 compared to 2024, and were down 44% from the 2021 peak — the largest single-year homicide decline in modern recorded history. Robberies fell 20%, aggravated assaults fell 9%, and gun assaults fell 22%. The White House cited the data in claiming President Trump had achieved the lowest crime rate in 125 years. These figures are confirmed by the Council on Criminal Justice, the White House, Fox News, NPR, and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump's claim of a '125-year low' has been fact-checked as partially accurate: the murder rate specifically may be approaching or at a historic low by some measures, though the broader claim about 'all crime' at a 125-year low is harder to verify given data-collection changes over more than a century. Both the White House and NPR cited the Council on Criminal Justice's 35-city dataset as the most reliable available measure.

The DOJ cut hundreds of millions in community safety grants in April 2025, including grants to violence-interruption programs and community-based organizations that criminologists had credited with contributing to urban crime declines. The cut came as the 2025 crime data was still accumulating. Researchers told NPR that cuts to violence-intervention programs could reverse the trend in 2026.

Fox News and the White House attributed the crime decline to Trump's law-and-order policies, increased police funding, and what they described as the reversal of 'defund the police' sentiment. NPR and the Brennan Center acknowledged the dramatic decline but warned that DOJ grant cuts to community programs could reverse the gains, and cautioned that attributing the decline to any single administration's policies overstates what any one policy can achieve.