The president has launched a lawsuit, attacking a report issued by the Center for American Progress. It argues the crime rate has not been much affected by placing thousands of troops on the streets of particular American cities, such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, Memphis and New Orleans. These deployments have been expensive. The "Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that sending National Guard and U.S. personnel to Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Memphis; Portland; and Chicago cost $496 million in 2025. Almost $1.1 billion may be spent to place troops in Washington DC.
Trump claims the report is defamatory, and demands $5 billion in compensation. It does not look like he has a strong case. The lawsuit looks frivolous, as the report is based on the government's own statistics. There is something pathetic about Mr. Trump attacking anyone's factual accuracy, since he has made countless and rather amazing errors of fact himself. For example,
He falsely claimed there was no inflation during his first term, when it was about 8% for the four years.
He falsely claimed that Europe had given $200 billion less support to Ukraine than the United States, when in fact the Europeans had given more support than the US, and continue to do so.
He falsely claimed that before him, no administration had ever received any tariff payments from China, "Not even 10 cents." Just plain nonsense.
Falsely claimed that China was operating the Panama Canal. Nonsense.
He claimed, numerous times in recent months, that Iran was defeated and would soon sign a peace treaty. No sign of this actually happening.
But enough of this; examples abound on line, or just read tomorrow's newspaper, as there is a wild statement made almost daily.
Just for fun, here are some interesting statistics drawn from the FBI statistics.
(1) Pretty much every year, the number of murders peaks sharply in December. I do not think this can be blamed on either the Democrats or the Republicans. Nor is Santa Claus the culprit.
(2) Violent crime varies enormously from state to state. Maine has the fewest homicides of any state, and New England as a whole is the safest region; the South and the West are more violent. Overall, the blue states seem less crime prone than the red states who voted for Trump.
(3) The highest rate of violent crime is in Memphis; but the rate was low in Savannah. The South is not uniformly dangerous.
(4) While the general trend of non-violent crime is down, shoplifting has increased dramatically since 2000 (13,682 cases) to 2025 (952,303 cases). One might argue that this change is related to the rise of a billionaire class while ordinary Americans are struggling. I wonder if shoplifting declined in cities where Trump stationed troops.
(5) Arson declined from 69,000 cases in 2000 to 27,000 cases in 2025. This is remarkable, since the Republicans fear that there are terrorists everywhere.
(6) Car theft: from 1995 until 2007 more than 1 million cars were stolen almost every year. But in the fourteen years after 2010, the average was less than 800,000 hijackings. This was not a supply problem. The nation had more automobiles than ever.
The exciting trend seems to be declining crime, rolling along despite shifts in party politics. The change is especially dramatic if one calculates the rate per 100,000 people rather than simply counting all the cases, because the US population has increased by 50 million since 2000.
