President Donald Trump is heading to a key political battleground on Long Island today with top law enforcement officials to tout low crime rates during his first year back in office as the GOP seeks to use public safety as a key part of their midterm elections messaging pitch.
Newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel are expected to flank the president at a visit to the Nassau County Police Academy, where Trump will unveil the findings of the FBI’s 2025 Crime Statistics Report. A preliminary FBI memo revealed a 9% decline overall of violent crime between 2024 and 2025, with sizable drops in murder and robbery rates.
The agency previously described the decline as the single largest year-over-year decrease in violent crime and murder since 1937. According to early findings released in May, police-recorded murder rates dropped by 18%, and aggravated assaults fell by 7% last year. More agencies contributed to the nationally recognized dataset in 2025 at over 17,000, the FBI said.
“Unlike Defund-the-Police Democrats, President Trump will always stand with our law enforcement officers and deliver safer American neighborhoods,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement previewing the trip. “President Trump promised to make America safe again and the data proves he has done just that.”
While Trump has made “law and order” a centerpiece of his administration and frequently has seized on falling crime as a vindication of his policies, federal data indicates violent crime has been declining since 2022 under former President Joe Biden in the aftermath of the pandemic. Trump and his team previously referred to the FBI’s data as “fake” during his 2024 campaign, arguing that crime was increasing despite evidence showing otherwise.
Now, the president has credited his deployment of National Guard troops to major cities as a factor in driving down crime, though experts say it has mostly deterred petty theft. In remarks to Justice Department employees on Thursday, Blanche credited local officials in part for the trend.
“The violent crime rates in this country have gone way way down, and that’s not all the federal government, but we are certainly a big part of that success,” he said.
With the economy remaining voters’ biggest focus in the upcoming midterms, crime barely ranked among Americans’ top priorities in November’s elections, according to an Economist/YouGov poll published last week. Only 3% of participants said it was their most important issue.
However, in states with typically higher crime rates, like New York, an assessment of candidates’ perceived toughness-on-crime often plays a bigger role in electing local officials. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is running to replace New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, is also expected to join Trump during his stop at the local police academy.
In 2022, several Republicans won seats in New York in the midterms as images of migrants transported to New York City blanketed conservative media and crime rates remained elevated post-pandemic. That year, more than 60% of voters described violent crime as “very important” to their congressional vote. Now, with lower crime rates and a war with Iran on the cusp of entering its sixth month, Americans’ attention has turned sharply to the cost of living.
A Siena poll published on Wednesday found Hochul leading Blakeman by 10 points in her race to remain in the governor’s mansion. Hochul also held a slight lead over Blakeman, 47% to 44%, when voters were asked which candidate they trusted more to stop crime.
Nassau County is also home to New York’s 4th District, one of the key races that will decide control of the House in the midterms. Congresswoman Laura Gillen flipped the district blue in 2024, but Republican tax official Jeanine Driscoll is seeking to win the seat back for her party.
Democrats have distanced themselves from calls from some progressives to “defund the police” in the wake of widespread protests against police brutality in 2020. Francesca Hong, who lost her primary bid in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race to moderate David Crowley earlier this week, has faced criticism for her past calls to abolish police in 2020 and 2021.
Gillen, however, has been an advocate for additional resources for local law enforcement, including a million-dollar investment in Rockville Centre Police security cameras earlier this year. She also sits on the Congressional Law Enforcement Caucus.
Her opponent, Driscoll, is positioning herself as a law-and-order candidate, which Trump noted in his endorsement, while tying Gillen to national Democratic policies related to immigration and public safety.
“Driscoll will work tirelessly to Safeguard our Elections, Keep our Border SECURE, Stop Migrant Crime, Ensure LAW AND ORDER, Strengthen our Incredible Military/Veterans, and Defend our always under siege Second Amendment,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month.
Republicans are hoping those attack lines will still have salience in this year’s midterms.
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