By WILL WEISSERT and JILL COLVIN, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was telling a Rose Backyard viewers about his efforts to quell violence within the nation’s capital when, as if on cue, his phrases had been drowned out by the wail of sirens from passing automobiles.
“Listen to the beauty of that sound,” Trump mentioned, grinning. “They’re not politically correct sirens.”
Coming because it did throughout an in any other case somber occasion to posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the second encapsulated how Trump’s law-and-order-at-all-costs push has grow to be a centerpiece of his second time period.
He’s deployed troops to Democrat-majority cities and directed federal officers, typically with their faces obscured by masks, to spherical up folks residing within the nation illegally. He’s advised city areas might grow to be navy “training grounds” and toyed with invoking the Revolt Act so political opponents can’t use the courts to foil his plans.
Now settled into his second time period, Trump has embraced the sort of tough-on-crime method he has at all times campaigned on however was unable to attain with the naysayers who typically checked his most excessive instincts throughout his first 4 years in workplace. Within the course of, his Republican administration has typically trampled legislation enforcement norms and critics say Trump has weaponized the Justice Division, utilizing it to go after political opponents.
On Wednesday, he touted the outcomes of a crackdown named “Operation Summer Heat.” Flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Legal professional Common Pam Bondi within the Oval Workplace, Trump mentioned the FBI made 8,000-plus arrests.
Trump mentioned he’d talked about crime throughout his marketing campaign final yr however by no means anticipated it to be such a serious second-term focus.
“Now it’s like a passion for me,” he mentioned, and his actions had been “many, many steps above” what he’d pledged and “we’re just at the start.”
FBI Director Kash Patel speaks throughout an occasion with President Donald Trump within the Oval Workplace on the White Home, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, in Washington. (AP Picture/John McDonnell)
It’s in some methods the total realization of the mindset Trump has had since his early days as an actual property mogul again within the gritty days of Nineteen Seventies and ’80s New York, when crime was rampant and residents clamored for crackdowns.
Trump’s efforts have drawn resistance from native leaders. His plans to ship troopers to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have been thwarted by authorized challenges. He has mentioned he’s assured he’ll win on attraction however hasn’t dominated out utilizing the Revolt Act as a workaround, if wanted.
However elsewhere, his strikes have dramatically altered day-to-day lives. Earlier this yr, he took management of the California Nationwide Guard in response to protests in opposition to immigration raids in Los Angeles and despatched the Nationwide Guard into Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee.
Trump additionally has mused about taking comparable motion in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York and threatened Boston, suggesting World Cup video games set to be performed in close by Foxborough subsequent yr may very well be moved if legislation enforcement actions aren’t intensified.
‘Bring Back Our Police’
Trump’s eagerness to embrace the toughest attainable line in opposition to crime suspects — responsible or not — burst into public view greater than 30 years in the past. He stirred racial tensions by calling for the execution of the Central Park 5, a gaggle of Black and Hispanic youngsters wrongly convicted of rape in 1989.
“That’s the very same spirit that’s at work now,” mentioned the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner of the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. Turner mentioned Trump had “demonized” and “targeted” Memphis, which is 62% African American and has a Black mayor and county chief.
Trump “seems like he is bent on seeing us in the way he has seen other persons of color throughout his first term, and possibly, I would say, throughout his public-facing life,” Turner mentioned. “We have this president unleashed in this second term.”
First-term flirtations
Trump lined among the similar political floor in his first time period throughout the protests over racism and police brutality sparked by the 2020 killing of George Floyd, when he despatched troops to the streets of Washington and to Portland. However his advisers on the time staunchly opposed lots of his calls to extra broadly deploy the navy to beat again unrest.
Trump’s former protection secretary Mark Esper later advised CBS’ “60 Minutes” that Trump had requested throughout the protests whether or not the Nationwide Guard may very well be more durable on demonstrators. “’Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs, or something,’” Esper mentioned he recalled Trump saying.
Nevertheless, a Trump signature bipartisan achievement in his first time period was a 2018 prison justice reform measure meant to cut back federal jail populations and handle disparities in sentencing, after lobbying from advocates together with Kim Kardashian.
Trump was attacked from the appropriate for that coverage, although, throughout the 2024 Republican major and barely spoke about his prison justice reform invoice whereas campaigning. He as a substitute drew cheers with requires the demise penalty for drug sellers and those that kill law enforcement officials and railed in opposition to cashless bail and different measures aimed toward reversing systematic bias within the justice system.
‘We’re going to avoid wasting all our cities’
Trump now sees getting powerful on crime as a profitable political concern that solely will get stronger for him the extra he pushes.
Cities the place President Donald Trump has ordered or publicly talked about ordering the deployment of Nationwide Guard troops. (AP Digital Embed)
“We’re going to save all of our cities, and we’re going to make them essentially crime-free,” he mentioned Wednesday.
The shift additionally displays a Trump now not encumbered by chiefs of workers, generals and others who noticed their obligation as reining in his most excessive impulses and have lengthy been changed by loyalists.
“This time around, he has people around him that are not simply supporting what he’s doing, they’re encouraging him,” mentioned Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow on the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s completely terrifying that any of this stuff is going on.”
As a political concern, Trump’s tough-on-crime method has advantages for his occasion heading into subsequent yr’s midterm elections. Latest polling from The Related Press-NORC Middle for Public Affairs Analysis discovered his administration’s tough-on-crime method has emerged as one in every of his finest points, amid frustrations over his dealing with of the financial system and immigration.
The overwhelming majority of People, 81%, see crime as a “major problem” in massive cities, at the same time as statistics present violent crime is down throughout the nation following a coronavirus pandemic-era spike.
‘Making all Americans safer’
The White Home rejects options Trump’s crackdown on crime has something to do with race. It says the Nationwide Guard is being utilized in numerous cities for various causes.
Washington is a crime-fighting push that Republican state leaders in Tennessee requested be replicated in Memphis, it argues. In Portland and Chicago, as in Los Angeles beforehand, the purpose is safety of federal authorities engaged on priorities like immigration enforcement.
FILE – With the White Home within the distance, Nationwide Guard troops patrol the Mall as a part of President Donald Trump’s order to impose federal legislation enforcement within the nation’s capital, in Washington, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Picture/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
“The president’s bold actions in cities across the country are making all Americans safer,” White Home spokesperson Abigail Jackson mentioned, describing Trump’s actions because the success of a marketing campaign promise.
Nonetheless, deploying troops to cities provides Trump the chance to color Democratic opponents as tender on crime whereas overstating — typically in apocalyptic phrases — how dangerous the issue actually is. He then exaggerates the outcomes his crackdowns get.
He spent weeks suggesting Portland is “on fire” and declared, about Washington: “When I got here, this place was a raging hellhole.” Trump now suggests Washington crime has fallen to zero, which additionally isn’t true.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, mentioned the administration’s efforts are an extension of Trump’s model, which she described as “using race overtly to drive division, to consolidate a base and to use that to usurp power a president does not have, or should not be deemed to have.”
Certainly, Trump now routinely speaks of criminals as folks with out redemption.
“They’re sick,” he mentioned not too long ago, “and we’re taking them out.”
Colvin reported from New York.
Initially Printed: October 16, 2025 at 8:40 AM EDT
