WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s recent focus on crime in Washington and other big cities came as views of his handling of immigration — the early focus of his second term — had been souring, a new analysis by The Associated Press shows.
Trump's approach to crime is now a clear strength for him, according to a new poll from The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It found about half of U.S. adults, 53%, approve of his approach, higher than support his handling of immigration, the economy or the Russia-Ukraine war. That's despite outcry from Washington residents and Democratic leaders over his takeover of the city’s police department and his deployment of the National Guard and the fact that violent crime is down both in Washington and across the nation following a coronavirus pandemic-era spike.
Trump's tough-on-crime turn happened alongside a small boost in his overall approval rating. Just under half, 45%, of Americans now approve of his performance as president, up from 40% in July.
It’s another case of Trump shifting the national conversation to his advantage, often by seizing on Americans’ most deep-seated fears and using hyperbolic language and shock-and-awe tactics that push legal bounds. The businessman and reality TV star-turned-politician has deftly used the tactic throughout his political career to dominate news cycles and redirect public attention from sometimes politically damaging topics.
Crime has traditionally been one of Republicans’ stronger issues, “so it’s not a real surprise that he has pushed that to the top of the agenda and that people favor him,” said veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
The AP-NORC poll found that crime in large cities is a “major” concern for 81% of U.S. adults as the topic has become a top story in both conservative and mainstream news outlets.
“He’s elevated it as an issue," Ayres said. "And if you’re in the White House you’d much rather be talking about crime than tariffs or inflation or a stalemate in Ukraine or than Jeffrey Epstein.”
The public appears to sours on Trump’s immigration push
It was clear early in Trump's second term that immigration was one of his strengths, as it had been during the 2024 campaign.
In March, an AP-NORC poll found about half of U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling immigration — putting it above other key issues like the economy.
But that advantage had disappeared by the summer, when a July AP-NORC poll found only 43% of U.S. adults approved of his approach. Other polls found the same, suggesting that Americans might be souring on his aggressive action amid headlines about college students being whisked off city streets by masked federal agents and men who were alleged to be gang members wrongly sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison with no due process.
A July CNN/SSRS poll found that 55% of Americans said that Trump had gone too far on deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, up 10 points in February.
In the latest AP-NORC poll, Trump’s standing on immigration remains underwater, as does his handling of the economy, which has risen slightly, from 38% in July to 43% now. But both of those issues are now dwarfed by his advantage on crime — including among key groups like independents.
Trump's pivot to crime
While Trump had long threatened a federal takeover of Washington, which has limited autonomy because it is not a state, his focus on the city came after one of the most prominent members of the Department of Government Efficiency was the victim of an attempted carjacking and beating earlier this month.
After Edward Coristine, nicknamed Big Balls, was assaulted by a group of teenagers, Trump threaten to seize control of a city he deemed “out of control."
Days later he posted photos of homeless encampments and garbage strewn across city streets after a Sunday morning motorcade ride to his Sterling, Virginia golf course and announced he would be holding a news conference the next day to unveil his takeover plans.
"Be prepared! There will be no “MR. NICE GUY.” We want our Capital BACK.” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump's takeover of the city's police department and his activation of the National Guard wasn't his first such action. In early June, he ordered the deployment of about 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines in early June to respond to protests against immigration raids in and around the city.
It's not his first pivot to crime at a politically challenging moment. During the 2020 campaign, Trump activated federal agents to fight crime in Chicago and Albuquerque and warned suburbanites of rising crime as he struggled with a flagging approval rating.
Trump's overall approval remains steady
Trump's ability to change the conversation may have helped him weather controversy over the years. His presidential approval numbers remained within a relatively narrow band during his first term, according to AP-NORC polling, a pattern that's persisted so far in his second. And even when he was out of office, his favorability rating remained remarkably stable.
Tim Roemer, 59, a lifelong Democrat who lives in Utica, New York, is opposed to the president's efforts to take over city police departments and Trump's use of the National Guard, given that crime numbers are down across the nation.
He said it seemed Trump was seizing on an issue and taking credit for improvements to help himself politically in upcoming elections.
“I think he’s trying to keep his numbers up because he knows the 2026 midterms are coming up and he knows it's going to hurt him if his numbers are down,” he said. “He knows how to win people over, unfortunately."
A campaign promise
At the same time, Trump and the White House have not abandoned their unprecedented focus on immigration. The Republican administration still frequently talks about the issue, and the president's rhetoric on crime and immigration are closely tied.
As part of the Washington takeover, federal authorities have set up checkpoints across the city, where they have asked people about their immigration status and detained them. According to the White House, of the 1,170 people arrested since the takeover began, at least 319 were related to immigration issues.
The American Immigration Council, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants’ rights, has called the Washington deployment a “Backdoor for Immigration Enforcement” and noted the administration has used its takeover to force the district’s police to cooperate with immigration enforcement in an unprecedented way.
The White House also disputed the idea that Trump had shifted focus. During his campaign, they noted, he spoke often about crime, accusing then-President Joe Biden and other Democrats of having “turned our once great cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime," even though statistics refute that claim.
His campaign released a pair of policy videos in which he pledged to “End Crime and Restore Law and Order” and “the Nightmare of the Homeless, Drug Addicts, and Dangerously Deranged on American Streets" and threatened to “send in federal assets including the National Guard.”
“Making America Safe Again was a key campaign promise for President Trump – he has long talked about addressing violent crime, especially in our nation’s capital, and ensuring all Americans feel safe in their communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
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This story has been corrected to show the spelling of the pollster’s surname is Ayres, not Ayers.
___ Colvin reported from New York.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,182 adults was conducted Aug. 21-25, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Jill Colvin And Amelia Thomson-deveaux, The Associated Press
