Donald Trump is headed to Long Island Friday to make a case midterm voters can feel in their own neighborhoods: the country is getting safer, and he wants credit for it.
New FBI figures, confirmed to the White House ahead of Friday’s official release, show the steepest one-year drop in violent crime the bureau has ever recorded.
The murder rate fell 18.1 percent from a year earlier. Robbery was down 18.5 percent, rape 7.6 percent, aggravated assault 7.2 percent. Property crime told the same story — motor vehicle theft down 22.7 percent, burglary down 15.8 percent.
The FBI’s full 2025 Crime Statistics Report, with all the underlying numbers and methodology, comes out later today.
The president will make his pitch at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, standing alongside County Executive Bruce Blakeman, now the Republican nominee for governor. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel are expected at the news conference to walk through the numbers themselves.
“President Trump promised to make America safe again and the data proves he has done just that,” said White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis. “Unlike Defund-the-Police Democrats, President Trump will always stand with our law enforcement officers and deliver safer American neighborhoods.”
It’s been a combative eighteen months.
Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has paired immigration crackdowns with federal policing surges and National Guard deployments in cities from Minneapolis to Memphis — moves that have drawn lawsuits, protests and plenty of political fire.
The White House’s answer to all of it is arithmetic: fewer murders, fewer robberies, fewer stolen cars. Whatever you think of the methods, the administration says, look at the results. That’s the argument Trump is bringing to Long Island, and it’s the one his party wants on the doorstep this fall.
