White House misstates homicide declines to credit Trump’s National Guard deployments

The White House promoted a Council on Criminal Justice mid-year report as proof that Trump’s deployment of National Guard forces and federal officials to certain cities curbed homicides. The administration named Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Memphis and New Orleans as the top four cities with the sharpest declines, yet the report identified Lincoln, Nebraska; Rochester, New York; and Little Rock, Arkansas as the true leaders, with Washington only sixth and Los Angeles seventeenth.

Memphis and New Orleans do not appear in the original study, and the administration’s citation of a separate article was disputed by its author. A subsequent release cited one outlet's analysis of a Major Cities Chiefs Association survey, again claiming high rankings for Washington and Memphis, but neither source linked the broader fall in homicide rates to Trump’s actions. Experts note that factors such as community-violence programs, not federal troop deployments, likely drove the observed changes, while the administration has simultaneously cut significant federal gun-violence-prevention funding.