President Donald Trump’s doom-and-gloom claims about America’s so-called “hellhole” cities have been undercut by the data.
Homicide rates are plunging across the country—including in the Democratic strongholds he’s singled out as violent war zones. According to a new Axios analysis of data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, homicides dropped by 19 percent nationwide during the first nine months of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
In some cities, the declines were staggering—more than 40 percent in Buffalo, Denver, Orlando, and Seattle. The findings contradict Trump’s repeated claims that urban crime has spiraled out of control and that National Guard deployments are the only answer.
The president has dispatched troops to several cities—including Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Chicago—while threatening to send them to Portland and parts of California.
“The reality is, Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now,” Trump said in September, defending his decision to intervene. “We have the right to [call in the National Guard] because I have an obligation to protect this country.”
Axios reports that Chicago led the nation with a 22.1 percent drop in overall violent crime during the first nine months of 2025. The city recorded the most homicides of any U.S. city last year—573—but its homicide rate didn’t even crack the top 20 among major American cities, according to FBI data cited by Axios.
Portland, which Trump once described as “like living in hell,” recorded a 39 percent decline in homicides. Violent crime in Baltimore fell nearly 20 percent, the fifth-largest decrease in the country. And Memphis, where Trump deployed the National Guard in mid-September, logged a 19 percent drop in homicides.
The data paints a drastically different picture from Trump’s rhetoric, which has leaned heavily on images of crime-ridden cities in chaos. Axios notes that violent crime rates have been falling steadily since President Joe Biden’s final years in office, following a pandemic-era surge that began in 2020—the last year of Trump’s first term.
White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson defended the president’s focus on urban safety despite the numbers. “President Trump cares deeply about the safety and security of the American people—no amount of violent crime is justifiable,” she told the Daily Beast. “Chicago has had the most murders of any U.S. city for 13 consecutive years—which has destroyed the lives of many law-abiding Americans.”
The trendlines tell a different story. Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, and Las Vegas each had drops of 25 percent or more in homicides this year. Only a handful of cities bucked the pattern—Atlanta posted a 19.4 percent rise in violent crime, driven by robberies and assaults, and Columbus, Ohio, had a small increase.
Even New York and Los Angeles, the two largest cities in the country and frequent Trump punching bags, posted major declines: 17 percent and 23 percent fewer homicides, respectively.
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