FBI: Homicide Rate Hit Lowest Level Since 1956 Last Year, Trump Claims Credit

The FBI released its 2025 Uniform Crime Report Friday, and the numbers are historic. Homicides dropped 18.1% from 2024 to 2025. The national murder rate hit 4.1 per 100,000 people, tying 1955 and 1956 for the lowest rate since agencies started tracking it in 1900, according to the FBI report cited by The Independent and multiple other outlets.

Overall violent crime fell 9.3%. Property crime dropped 12.4%. Motor vehicle theft, which spiked in 2022-2023 after a social media trend showed people how to exploit a manufacturing flaw in certain Kia and Hyundai models, fell almost 23% to its lowest level in more than 20 years.

The FBI also noted crime kept falling through the first half of 2026, according to reporting from The Independent, WSLS, and the Daily Gazette. That's unusual. The agency normally waits for a full year of data before commenting on trends. With midterms a few months out and Republicans eager to campaign on crime, the timing raised eyebrows even among outlets that didn't editorialize about it.

Trump takes the mic

President Trump announced the numbers himself Friday during a visit to the Nassau County police academy on Long Island, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche. According to PBS, the event was billed as a crime-stats rollout but turned into a full campaign rally for New York Republicans ahead of November.

"I'm thrilled to announce that the FBI has just released a new Uniform Crime Report showing that in 2025 we achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history," Trump said, according to CNN. "Last year there were over 3,100 fewer murders than the year before I took office."

Trump credited his administration's surge of federal resources into cities and Patel's push to let "good cops be cops." He also touted deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and other cities, and said, per PBS, that "young, beautiful girls in the White House" thanked him for making the capital safer, without specifying who.

He didn't stop at the numbers. Trump called Democrats "Dumb-ocrats," ripped New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and called state Attorney General Letitia James "a real slob" and "a disgrace," according to PBS. James won a civil fraud judgment against Trump and his companies. A separate mortgage fraud indictment against James, brought last year, was dismissed after a judge ruled the prosecutor who filed it had been illegally appointed.

What the researchers actually say

The decline didn't start on his watch. Violent crime has been falling nationally since 2022, according to Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, cited by The Independent, CNN, and others.

"The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what's driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk," Gelb said. "Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership. The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up."

CCJ researchers told CNN that likely contributors include shifts in criminal justice enforcement, broader cultural changes, and technology, but no single factor explains a nationwide trend this consistent.

Trump rejected that framing directly. "Let's say they don't have good leadership, like Chicago has very bad leadership. But we have the numbers down because of what the federal government's doing," he said, according to CNN, crediting Patel, Blanche, and federal prosecutors.

Both things can be true here. The crime drop is real and enormous, the lowest homicide rate in 75 years is an FBI-reported fact. What's not established is that any one administration's policy caused it, given the trend predates Trump's second term.

The data caveat nobody's headline mentions

FBI crime data is voluntary. Not every law enforcement agency in the country reports, which means the national figures are estimates built from thousands of departments choosing to participate, not a complete census. That's been true of FBI crime reporting for decades and isn't unique to this report, but it's a limitation none of the coverage reviewed here flagged prominently.

The Council on Criminal Justice has said 2026 could see an even larger decline once full-year data comes in, meaning the next data point that actually tests these competing claims won't arrive until early 2027.