President Trump traveled to Long Island on Friday to release new FBI crime statistics showing year-over-year declines in murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault in 2025, using a visit to the Nassau County Police Academy as the backdrop for an argument his administration has made America safer ahead of the November midterms.
Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel made the trip with the president, signaling the White House's intent to frame the data release as a law enforcement milestone rather than a routine statistical publication.
"President Trump promised to make America safe again and the data proves he has done just that," White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement ahead of the event.
The choice of Nassau County was deliberate. Trump carried the county in 2024, flipping it to the Republican column for the first time in more than two decades. Two Democratic-held House seats in the county are on Republicans' target list for November, and the county is home to Bruce Blakeman, the Trump-endorsed Republican running against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Friday's appearance was Trump's second trip to the New York area this year. In May he campaigned in the Hudson Valley alongside Blakeman, describing crime in New York at that event as out of control.
Blakeman issued a statement ahead of Friday's visit thanking the president for touring the county's law enforcement facilities and for meeting with local officers. In a Fox Business interview, Blakeman dismissed suggestions that Trump's presence in the county could hurt Republican candidates with New York voters.
Hochul's campaign pushed back, highlighting the governor's own public safety spending record and criticizing Blakeman for bringing the president to Nassau County. The exchange made explicit what the White House had already telegraphed: the visit is as much about campaign positioning as it is about crime data.
The 2025 FBI statistics cover all four major violent crime categories—murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault—and will mark the first full-year federal crime data released under Trump's second term. The White House did not release specific figures ahead of the event.
The Nassau County Police Academy sits in a county of roughly 1.4 million residents that has served as a bellwether in New York suburban politics. Republicans' ability to hold gains made there in 2024 is central to their House majority math heading into 2026.
