Claim:
President Donald Trump “achieved the largest drop in the murder rate EVER recorded, to the lowest level in 125 years—since 1900” during 2025–2026.
Summary:
The statistical core of the claim is supported for 2025 within the FBI’s national series: the murder and nonnegligent-manslaughter rate fell 18.5%, the largest year-to-year decline since FBI national estimates began in 1936, and reached 4.1 per 100,000, tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest FBI-recorded rate. But describing it as a Trump “achievement” implies a causal relationship that the available evidence does not establish, and the stronger “lowest in 125 years” formulation relies on combining historical datasets that are not fully comparable (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2026; Lopez & Boxerman, 2026; Jacobson, 2026). Assistance from Claude AI.
Analysis: Accuracy, Sources, and Related Fact-Checks
The record decline is real. The FBI’s finalized 2025 report states that the estimated murder and nonnegligent-manslaughter rate fell 18.5% from 2024 to 2025. The FBI explicitly says this was the largest year-to-year decrease in the murder rate since national estimates began in 1936. The estimated number of murder and nonnegligent-manslaughter offenses fell 18.1% (FBI, 2026).
The 2025 rate was extraordinarily low, but “lowest in 125 years” needs qualification. The FBI calculated a 2025 murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. It did not call that uniquely the lowest rate in 125 years; it said 4.1 matched the rates in 1955 and 1956, making 2025 tied for the lowest rate since the FBI’s national-estimate series began in 1936 (FBI, 2026).
The 125-year formulation comes principally from the Council on Criminal Justice. Its January 2026 analysis combined FBI data with older public-health and historical homicide estimates and concluded that a projected 2025 rate near 4.0 could be the lowest level in a series extending back to 1900. Importantly, CCJ acknowledged that its pre-1960 figures come from different sources and methodologies; it uses historical mortality data for 1900–1959 and FBI data beginning in 1960 (Lopez & Boxerman, 2026).
That distinction matters. PolitiFact interviewed crime-data researchers who cautioned that pre-1960 figures are not directly comparable with the modern FBI series. Before 1930 there was no equivalent FBI national murder statistic, and early public-health figures measured homicide, a broader category than the FBI’s modern murder and nonnegligent-manslaughter definition. Thus, the statement that 2025 was the lowest rate across an uninterrupted, directly comparable 125-year dataset is too categorical (Jacobson, 2026).
The word “achieved” is the weakest part of the claim. The homicide decline did not begin when Trump returned to office. FBI figures show murder and nonnegligent manslaughter fell 11.6% in 2023 and another 14.9% in 2024, before Trump’s second term, followed by the still larger decline in 2025 (FBI, 2024, 2025, 2026).
The Council on Criminal Justice specifically warns that the causes of the decline cannot presently be pinned confidently on particular policies without rigorous causal research. It describes possible influences ranging from criminal-justice practices and local violence-prevention programs to technology, demographic and behavioral changes, economic conditions, and broader social trends (Lopez & Boxerman, 2026).
Therefore, it is factually sound to say that the record FBI decline occurred during 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term. The data alone, however, do not demonstrate that Trump or his administration caused the national decline.
Existing fact-checks have reached similar conclusions, although some were written before the final FBI numbers arrived. FactCheck.org noted in February 2026 that homicide was falling sharply but that the decline was a continuation of a trend already underway before Trump’s return to office (Farley et al., 2026). PolitiFact initially cautioned that the 125-year claim depended on non-comparable historical datasets (Jacobson, 2026). After the final FBI figures were released, PolitiFact again noted in September 2026 that the FBI itself supports a record decline and a 4.1 rate tied with 1955 and 1956, while the claim extending the comparison all the way to 1900 goes beyond the FBI’s own national series (Specht, 2026).
Logical Fallacies:
Calling the decline something Trump “achieved” risks a post hoc or causal-attribution error: because a major decline occurred while he was president does not, by itself, demonstrate that his policies produced it. The preexisting decreases in 2023 and 2024 are especially important counterevidence to any claim that the trend originated with the change of administration. Establishing causation would require evidence isolating the effects of particular Trump administration policies from local policing, state policies, demographics, economic conditions, technological changes, and the broader multiyear decline (FBI, 2024, 2025; Lopez & Boxerman, 2026).
The phrase “EVER recorded” also collapses two different propositions. The FBI can definitively say the 2025 decline was the largest since its national estimate series began in 1936. Extending “ever” back to 1900 requires stitching together data collected under substantially different definitions, geographic coverage, and reporting systems, which warrants qualification rather than absolute wording (FBI, 2026; Jacobson, 2026).
End Notes:
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Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2026, August). UCR summary of reported crimes in the nation, 2025. U.S. Department of Justice.
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Lopez, E., & Boxerman, B. (2026, January). Crime trends in U.S. cities: Year-end 2025 update. Council on Criminal Justice.
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Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2025, August 5). FBI releases 2024 reported crimes in the nation statistics. U.S. Department of Justice.
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Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2024, September 23). FBI releases 2023 Crime in the Nation statistics. U.S. Department of Justice.
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Jacobson, L. (2026, February 12). Is Donald Trump right that the U.S. crime rate is at its lowest in 125 years? PolitiFact.
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Farley, R., Gore, D., Robertson, L., McDonald, J., Yandell, K., Spencer, S. H., Juvvadi, S., Noh, A., & Wang, A. (2026, February 25). FactChecking Trump’s State of the Union address. FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center.
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Specht, P. (2026, September 17). ‘Blood-soaked killing fields’: Fact-checking Trump and Whatley’s claims about Cooper and crime in North Carolina. PolitiFact.