A leading left-leaning think tank is urging more spending on police, the latest sign that many Democrats want to shake the “defund the police” label and strike a tougher tone on crime, even as they condemn President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of federal law enforcement.
“Voters barely believe Democrats even care about fighting crime or respect police,” according to a slide presentation prepared by a sister group for the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank that has long served as a political and policy workshop for leading Democrats.
The think tank on Thursday released a plan it hopes will help rewrite that image — calling for more local police officers, a focus on crime “hot spots” and “swift and certain consequences” alongside the social-service-focused solutions favored by some on the left.
Democrats see both opportunities and pitfalls on crime as Trump uses the issue to justify deploying the National Guard and surging immigration officers to liberal cities. Many on the left say the president is overplaying his hand, alienating voters with heavy-handed tactics that have sometimes turned deadly. At the same time, some are wary of fanning GOP claims they are soft on crime after paying a political price for activist calls to “defund the police” amid 2020 racial justice protests.
“It’s important for Democrats to demonstrate that they understand that crime is an issue and that they have solutions around it,” said CAP president Neera Tanden, who served as domestic policy council director under President Joe Biden, in an interview. She argued the party should be “on their front foot” talking about the subject and offering an alternative to the “terror tactics” on display this month in Minnesota.
Democrats have been divided over the best approach, however. An advocacy group’s presentation at the Democratic National Committee’s meeting last summer also called for the party to convey it is “serious about safety” — but it focused on the systemic problems that fuel crime and argued that voters favor “better, more accountable policing — not more officers or more funding,” as one slide put it. Republicans were happy to amplify the pitch.
Democratic politicians have also faced backlash in recent years for past support of anti-crime measures that critics said were too harsh and hurt minority communities. A tough 1994 crime bill championed by President Bill Clinton became a stumbling block for onetime supporters including Biden and Hillary Clinton, who distanced themselves as they ran for president. CAP, which has ties to many Democratic administrations, was founded by a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
CAP’s plan calls for more investment in the preventative efforts favored by police skeptics, from youth employment initiatives to community anti-violence programs. But it also cites research to argue that “more officers, when well-trained and properly utilized, reduce crime” and calls on Congress to direct more funding to local law enforcement.
Voters “assume Republicans will lead on accountability and Democrats will focus on prevention,” according to a polling analysis from the sister group CAP Action.
“Democrats are most competitive when they clear the bar on accountability,” the analysis adds.
Some Democrats have embraced anti-crime messaging in recent years and distanced themselves from the most liberal voices in the party. In liberal San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie won in 2024 while promising to make the city safer and staff up the police. In swing-state Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) campaigned on a pledge to hire thousands more police officers. In left-leaning New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered the state’s National Guard to Albuquerque to combat crime last spring.
Democrats have also sought to chip away at Trump’s tough-on-crime image, criticizing him for his pardons and cuts to federal funding that supported law enforcement.
Still, voters have long favored Republicans to handle crime and crime remained one of Trump’s stronger issues last year in polling, even as his overall approval ratings dipped and his deployment of the military to U.S. cities stoked a backlash.
After Trump sent the National Guard to D.C. last August, an AP-NORC survey found that 53 percent of Americans approved of how he handled crime, higher than his approval ratings on the economy and immigration.
As Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota sparked new tensions over federal law enforcement in blue cities, some Democrats warned the party against calls to “defund” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), fearing a repeat of the “defund the police” rallying cries that they said came back to haunt the party. “Democrats: Abolish ICE Abuses — Not ICE,” the center-left think tank Third Way pleaded in a memo this month.
Others in the party see immigration enforcement as a distinct issue, particularly amid outrage over two fatal shootings by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in recent weeks. Prominent liberals including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani have called to abolish ICE, and Democratic members of Congress across the ideological spectrum said after the second fatal shooting that they would block funding for the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to force changes.
Tanden said ICE has “become a perversion of what ICE is supposed to be” and needs dramatic changes, perhaps “from the root.” But she also said Democrats should be mindful not to come across to voters as hostile to any enforcement of immigration laws.
As for “defund the police”: “That was not a strategy or a slogan that made sense to the vast majority of Americans,” she said.
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