President Donald Trump claimed in his State of the Union address that after his takeover of law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, the capital is “now one of the safest cities in the country.”
That’s not true. Nor is his claim that the capital has “almost no crime anymore,” as a cursory glance at public data or police press releases shows; more than 1,300 crimes were reported in the last month.
Crime data expert Jeff Asher told CNN in a February email: “DC crime fell substantially in 2025 but it was not anywhere near the safest city in America.”
