I have ridden the New York City subway almost daily for more than 20 years. I’ve commuted through Times Square for nearly a decade. But in the years since the peak of the pandemic, I’m more nervous doing both. Data would tell me that fear is irrational, and that the city has seen a decline in most major crimes since the start of 2025. I can’t fully quiet those worries regardless. Indeed, on questions of public safety, it can often be hard to divorce feelings from facts. But we expect more from our leaders than the average citizen. On the one hand, I can see why President Trump is overreacting to the horrible beating of Edward Coristine, a Trump ally and federal employee — the crime clearly feels personal to the president. He ordered the National Guard into Washington, D.C., this week following the attack on Coristine, even as data told a different story about the prevalence of crime in the city. But public policy should rarely, if ever, be purely based on emotion and politics. By most evidence, this decision by Trump is a misuse of the American military: D.C. had among the lowest rates of violent crime last year that the city has had in decades. Crime has also fallen on a national level, and an editorial published by Times Opinion today could help offer Trump — and readers — insight into what is behind that drop. “Even at today’s levels, violent crime remains far too common in the United States,” the editorial says. “The recent decline should give Americans confidence that we could make more progress if we were willing to try.” The vital work of law enforcement officers is crucial to making communities safer, as the editorial notes, but so is public trust. The breakdown in the public’s confidence in institutions and one another that America has experienced in recent years has contributed to crime and general disorder. Sending troops into D.C. is unlikely to start rebuilding that trust.
Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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