Editorials from Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post and others

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

___

Aug. 14 – The New York Times says shrinking crime rate is encouraging

America is in the midst of a historic decline in crime. In 2023, murders fell 10 percent, which was then the largest annual drop since reliable records began in 1960. Last year, the country very likely set another record, with a 15 percent drop. This year, murders are on track to set yet another record, having fallen about 20 percent in major cities. Shootings, robberies and thefts have also plummeted.

These declines have erased the spike in crime that occurred during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, the murder rate in 2025 could end up being lower than it has been at any other point in at least 65 years. In terms of violent crime, modern America may be safer than it has been in decades, based on data collected by the crime analyst Jeff Asher.

Crime is down in Washington, D.C., too, contrary to President Trump’s claims this week that it is a hotbed of violence. Although the city’s murder rate remains far too high, it is now comparable to what it was before the pandemic.

America’s leaders typically rush to move on from a crisis once it is over, but we want to pause on the recent surge of violent crime and its reversal. We see two central lessons from this period that can help policymakers reduce crime even further and make progress against other societal ills.

The first lesson is the importance of public trust and stability. Think back, as unpleasant as it may be, to 2020: The virus was spreading. People could not visit family members and friends. They could not go to churches, libraries or restaurants. Children were stuck at home and saw their friends only on screens. Weddings, funerals and graduations were canceled.

Around the same time, America’s political divisions became even more intense than usual. George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 increased tensions about racial justice and the conduct of the police, leading to large protests and occasional riots. A close presidential election eventually led to a violent attack on Congress. In the background, people argued bitterly over mask mandates, vaccination rules, school closures and other pandemic policies. Americans did not rally in response to these crises so much as rage at one another about them.

The anger led to a loosening of the behavioral norms that govern society. Americans became more willing to break rules, like speed limits. It was an example of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim called “anomie” – a breakdown in the subtle standards that allow communities to function. Our society relies not just on written laws and policies but also on less formal norms and values to bind us together. These largely unspoken rules range from small to big, such as holding a door open for somebody or calling 911 for a seriously ill neighbor. We behave accordingly, trusting that others will, too. When that trust frays, an everyone-for-himself mentality – the kind you often see in postapocalyptic fiction – can take hold.

During the pandemic, reckless driving, deaths from car crashes and road rage incidents increased. Alcohol and drug deaths also rose. Even little things, like people using phones in movie theaters, seemed to worsen even after Covid receded. It was as if many Americans took a so-called moral holiday.

In periods of anomie, crime tends to rise. It happened in the 1960s and ’70s, when Americans were angered by the Vietnam War, Watergate, racial inequality, inflation and more. Crime began increasing in the early 1960s and did not begin consistently falling until the 1990s. Other countries have experienced similar cycles, including France and Italy before World War II.

The good news is that our recent burst of anomie and crime appears to have been brief. The end of the pandemic and reopening of America allowed people to return to more normal lives, and crime has largely fallen to prepandemic levels. Yet the past several years should serve as a reminder: The United States today is a polarized country with widespread cynicism, and it is vulnerable to outbreaks of anomie.

In 2020, policymakers played a direct role in accelerating anomie by shuttering services that promote social cohesion. Consider school closures. Whether to keep schools closed after the initial months of the pandemic was a difficult decision. But officials at least should have put more weight on obvious costs of closures, including learning loss, social isolation and the possibility that closures contribute to crime. Data has long made clear that murders spike in the summer, when school is out. As the old saying goes, “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.”

The lesson extends far beyond the question of what the country should do if another pandemic hits. Social cohesion is both valuable and delicate. America has much to lose when it undermines people’s connections to institutions like schools, churches, government agencies and community groups. If we could find ways to restore confidence in those institutions, the rest of our problems would become easier to solve.

The second lesson involves the importance of law enforcement. During the 2020 protests, many progressives embraced calls to “defund the police,” and some prominent Democrats – including then-Senator Kamala Harris of California, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and then-Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles – supported the defund movement. But police funding did not decline much, if at all, in most cities.

Nonetheless, the protesters seemed to have an effect. Some officers, disheartened by public criticisms, quit their jobs. Police departments began reporting staffing shortages. Other officers stayed on the job but pulled back from enforcing the law. Sometimes, this pullback reflected genuine uncertainty among officers about how to do their jobs; other times, it came from a cynical desire to punish communities that police departments considered hostile.

Virtually all sides in the debate made mistakes during this intense period. Among the most damaging was the growing belief among Democratic officials that enforcing the law could be counterproductive when it involved low-level offenses such as public drug use, shoplifting and homeless encampments. Some Democrats believed enforcement of these laws disproportionately hurt minority groups and did not contribute much to public safety.

This argument never made much sense, especially given that polls showed strong support for basic law enforcement across racial and income groups. And the real-world results were miserable. Parts of San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and other cities came to feel lawless, with people defecating and shooting up in public and store owners locking up items to reduce theft or simply closing their shops.

The situation has partly reversed in the past few years. The defund movement is considered a failure, and many of its old backers have distanced themselves from it. Police departments have stopped shrinking. Some departments have even increased recruitment and staffing levels. Local officials brought back tougher policing strategies, and some states, including California and Oregon, have rolled back laws that reduced penalties on low-level offenses. This shift is likely helping suppress crime.

With crime falling, however, there is a risk that public officials will once again become complacent. Democratic leaders, in particular, should remember the pandemic-era crime spike. They should continue their worthy efforts to reform the criminal justice system: Racial discrimination is a serious problem in policing and the courts, and abusive officers too often escape accountability. But reformers should move carefully and avoid undermining the policies that prevent disorder. They should make clear that most officers do a hard job admirably and provide a crucial service to communities.

It is worth mentioning one factor that has played little role in the recent crime decline, contrary to claims from Mr. Trump. He has suggested that the crime spike was the fault of illegal immigration during the Biden administration and that the reversal stems from his border crackdown. That appears to be simply false. Immigrants, including those who entered the country illegally, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans (in part because of the potential consequences, including deportation). The timeline does not work, either. Murder began surging in 2020, when migration was very low, and began falling in 2023, when it was still high.

Perhaps the most encouraging conclusion from the past several years is that we know more about what drives crime trends than it can sometimes seem. Law enforcement matters, and the national mood matters. So does access to guns; the laws regarding heavy-duty firearms are far too lax, as are the regulations that allow even many people with violent histories or mental illness to own guns. Even at today’s levels, violent crime remains far too common in the United States. No other peer country has nearly so high a murder rate. The recent decline should give Americans confidence that we could make more progress if we were willing to try.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/opinion/crime-statistics-washington-dc.html

___

Aug. 16 – The Washington Post on Trump’s summit in Alaska

President Donald Trump arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday with a clear goal: extract a ceasefire agreement from Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Russian president came to Alaska not to end his war against Ukraine but to avoid expanded economic sanctions. Although only one side got what it initially wanted, what happens in the coming days will be more consequential.

“We’ve made some headway,” Trump told the press after talks ended early. Contradicting Putin’s earlier assertion that they had reached an agreement, Trump added that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.” The two did not take questions. In an interview with Fox News, Trump declined to disclose the biggest sticking point, which nevertheless seems to have been his desire for a ceasefire. Yet the president is plowing ahead.

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump posted Saturday morning on Truth Social. That followed a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will fly to Washington for a visit with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday.

Trump and Zelensky are open to trilateral meeting after that. Is Putin?

The key for Zelensky in the coming days is to ensure that Moscow, not Kyiv, is rightly blamed for any lack of progress. That means maintaining an openness to negotiations and not being baited into public debating, like in their last Oval Office meeting. Despite the summit’s inconclusive end, Trump and Zelensky reportedly discussed security guarantees that ought to be appealing to the vulnerable nation.

Indeed, the core Ukrainian goal remains to survive the current onslaught while ensuring Ukrainian sovereignty for the long haul. Praising Trump’s acumen and showing an openness to dealing with Putin is a morally unsatisfying but necessary approach for Zelensky – especially if he can win promises to deter a future invasion once hostilities end.

For weeks, Trump had threatened secondary sanctions that would prevent countries such as India and China from buying fossil fuels from Putin’s regime. Such sanctions crippled Iran’s already fragile economy during Trump’s first term and would have a material effect on the Russian war machine. Oil and gas revenue account for around a third of the country’s federal budget, which is increasingly strained.

Our preference is to impose sanctions now. We understand the worry that this would blow up negotiations, but the bigger risk is that Putin believes he can string along talks to avoid punishment, as Iran did during Joe Biden’s presidency. Putin is driven by the logic of power and force, not diplomatic niceties. If the White House really believes a deal is close, the least the administration can do is outline exactly what penalties Putin should expect if he does not sit for a trilateral meeting – and what will come if that meeting does not produce tangible results. This would place the onus on Putin to take negotiations seriously while making it easier to swiftly impose them if talks fall apart.

Criticism of Trump for meeting with Putin doesn’t quite land. Like it or not, the Russian strongman is firmly in power and remains the driving force behind the war. Trump’s praise of hostile leaders is too often over-the-top, but this summit doesn’t permanently bring Putin into the civilized world. Recall that Trump met Kim Jong Un three times; the North Korean dictator got some propaganda photos, but he remains isolated. The real danger now is not that Putin gets a small public-relations victory but that he continues his war without further consequences.

Despite his unorthodox approach, Trump demonstrated a clear-eyed understanding of American interests when dealing with Iran and North Korea. In the end, he was willing to increase pressure and walk away from bad deals. The time for that might not have come yet, but it is fast approaching.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/16/trump-putin-summit-russia-ukraine/

___

Aug. 15 – The Wall Street Journal says migration from blue to red states could cost Democrats seats in the House

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is promising a referendum in November to gerrymander five more Democratic House seats on top of the 43 of 52 they already have in the state. Even if it works, his victory may be short-lived. The real problem for Democrats is that progressive policies are driving population flight, which on current trend could cost their states 10 House seats after 2030.

Migration from blue to red states is one of the great stories of the age. It accelerated during the Covid lockdowns as Americans fled states with high taxes and living costs-and disorderly streets and lousy schools. Sayonara, San Francisco. Hello, Salt Lake City.

Start with the raw numbers. Between 2020 and 2024, California (-1,465,116), New York (-966,209) and Illinois (-418,056) lost the population equivalent of Kansas to other states. Texas (747,730) and Florida (872,722) gained the equivalent of West Virginia. Utah, Idaho, Arizona and North Carolina also experienced a rush of newcomers.

Births and foreign migration have somewhat lessened the population losses in Democratic-run states. But their populations are nonetheless aging as young people and families leave. Between 2020 and 2024, California’s population under the age of 18 shrank by 523,000, while New York’s fell by 250,000 and Illinois’s by 186,000.

School closures during the pandemic no doubt contributed to their loss of children, but maybe parents also don’t want their children learning about the varieties of sexual experience in third-grade or being taught that America was founded to preserve slavery. Just a thought. Texas gained 199,000 children and Florida 219,000 in the same period.

While slowing immigration under President Trump will dampen population growth in some Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, it will steepen losses in many Democratic states. Notable, though, is that many immigrants who initially come to New York, California and Illinois later leave for other states-for the same reasons native citizens do.

Only about one-third of immigrants who came to California between 2010 and 2023 on net stayed in the state. Immigrants who arrive in Florida and Texas are more likely to settle there. California’s foreign-born population increased by about 600,000 between 2010 and 2023, versus roughly 1.5 million for both Florida and Texas.

What do you know? Immigrants want good schools, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods and cheap energy too. It’s tough for day laborers to make a decent living in Brentwood when they’re paying $5 a gallon to fill up a truck and $2,500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment to house a family of four.

Oh, and good luck trying to start a taqueria or McDonald ‘s franchise in California or New York with their regulations, taxes, minimum-wage mandates and laws aiding plaintiff attorneys. Democratic Governors may hold their states out as “sanctuaries,” but their policies burden immigrants who come to America in search for opportunity.

Despite their policy failures, Democrats have used gerrymanders to entrench their power in statehouses in California, New York, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere. Population flight cost Democratic states several House seats during the last Congressional reapportionment following the 2020 Census, but they lost fewer seats than expected.

That’s partly because Covid lockdowns increased the risk of miscounting college students and people with second homes. Perhaps Floridians with pied-à-terres in Manhattan were counted as New Yorkers. The Census Bureau in 2022 reported that New York’s population was over-counted by 3.4% while there were under-counts in Florida (3.5%) and Texas (1.9%).

Such inaccuracies may have cost Florida and Texas an additional House seat and given Rhode Island, New York and Minnesota one each they shouldn’t have received. Tough for GOP Speaker Mike Johnson. But if population trends continue, Republican states stand to gain at least 10 House seats in the 2030 reapportionment.

The left-leaning Brennan Center estimated in December that Texas and Florida would each gain four House seats while Utah, Idaho, North Carolina and Arizona would each add one. California would lose four, New York two, and Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island one each.

GOP legislatures will draw favorable maps to give their new seats to Republicans, as they did in the last redistricting cycle. And if partisan trends hold, Republican-leaning states will gain 10 electoral votes in the 2032 presidential election, about as many as Arizona currently has. Republicans can thank Mr. Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

Maybe if Democrats didn’t so heavily gerrymander their statehouse districts to prevent political competition, they might not be at risk of losing representation in Washington.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-real-house-democratic-nightmare-3002f098?mod=editorials_article_pos5

___

Aug. 15 – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says RFK Jr.’s policies could cost lives

The single most important achievement of President Donald Trump’s first term was the lightning-fast development of COVID vaccines by the end of 2020. By some estimates, those vaccines developed under Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” saved between 14 million and 19 million lives worldwide in their first year of use alone. While it’s true that the irresponsible mixed messaging Trump himself sent to his supporters (then and now) regarding the efficacy of the vaccines and of mainstream medicine generally has likely cost lives, the mortality score undoubtedly still lands in his favor.

Why, then, does Trump risk reversing that historic achievement by refusing to rein in a Health and Human Services secretary whose policies and rhetoric couldn’t be more dangerous if he was trying to kill Americans?

We’re not suggesting that’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal – only that it’s the eventual, inevitable outcome of allowing this anti-vaccination zealot to continue basing federal health policy on radical fringe beliefs that are anathema to mainstream medicine.

The latest and most ironic example of Kennedy’s single-minded determination to undo generations of vaccine advancement is his decision to cancel almost $500 million in federal funding for the development of vaccines using mRNA technology.

That process – which uses the body’s own cells to spur the production of antibodies instead of using dead or weakened specimens of the virus in question – was instrumental in the development of the COVID vaccines during Trump’s first term. Those with the kind of medical and scientific expertise Kennedy lacks say it’s among the most promising methods to address potential future pandemics.

Yet Kennedy, leaning as usual on conspiracists and quacks instead of qualified experts, has effectively declared the entire mRNA field of study to be inefficient, ineffective and even potentially dangerous. Mainstream medical entities across the board say there is no evidence of this outside the cherry-picked anecdotal data of isolated problems that any medical advancement will necessarily include.

This is consistent with Kennedy’s worldview, which includes his bizarre assertion, in 2021, that the original COVID vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” In Kennedy’s upside-down medical universe, those with medical expertise who adhere to the tried-and-true scientific method to advance medicine are bad actors in cahoots with the pharmaceuticals, while conspiracy-mongers and anti-science cranks are the heroes of the story.

This is why Kennedy continues to disparage the importance of measles vaccination even as the once-eradicated disease is making a comeback in parts of the U.S. due to deeply misguided anti-vaccination beliefs.

It’s why Kennedy summarily removed all 17 expert members of The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices and replaced them with new members that include known anti-vaccination activists or skeptics.

It’s why Kennedy unilaterally revoked COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women, prompting legal action from mainstream medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine – organizations that, unlike Kennedy and his anti-vax groupies, actually know what they’re talking about on these issues.

It’s why, in May, in a precursor to his most recent cuts, Kennedy canceled an almost $600 million contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Kennedy’s slash-and-burn tactics against the future of vaccination don’t represent one side of a valid medical debate; they represent unproven, anti-science fringe assertions that have been denounced as dangerous by the American Medical Association and virtually every other mainstream medical entity.

Kennedy’s policies threaten to leave America wide open and powerless against the next deadly pandemic.

And he’s doing so in direct defiance of the promises he made during his Senate confirmation hearings not to weaponize the federal government on behalf of his anti-vax quackery. Do Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt and the others who confirmed Kennedy have any thoughts at all on being lied to in a way that potentially threatens the very lives of their own constituents?

And does Trump care so little about his own legacy as to let this go on until Americans start literally dying for RFK’s warped beliefs?

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_c5eb21ef-0bd1-4100-b2ff-b0eeb8ee950d.html

___

Aug. 17 – The Boston Globe on Trump’s deployment of military troops to U.S. cities

Once again, President Trump has deployed the US military on American soil for law-enforcement purposes. A few months ago it was Los Angeles; this time, it’s a supposed crime wave in Washington, D.C., that has prompted Trump to flood an American city with armed soldiers.

There is crime in D.C., just as there is in every US city. Murders, like the June killing in Washington of UMass student Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, are unacceptable, and the federal government would certainly be justified in offering the city’s government more resources to fight crime.

But those crimes, as heinous as they are, do not remotely justify the extreme step of enlisting the National Guard and taking over the city’s police department against the mayor’s wishes. Trump is not only misusing the soldiers, who are not trained for such a mission – he’s crossing a line that has worried America since its founding by using what the founders would have called the “standing army” for matters that should be left to civilians.

It’s clear that he intends to keep sending troops into American cities. But Americans can’t let that become the new normal.

There ought to be bipartisan pushback. After all, Republicans used to be the first to object to federal interference in local affairs. Indeed, it should not have to be said how dangerous this is: Federalized police takeovers of cities are hallmarks of autocracies. When leaders cannot govern by democratic means, they turn to force to bend citizens to their will.

And, as is often the case in backsliding democracies, they falsely claim to be acting for people’s own good.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump said at a press conference Monday announcing “Liberation Day” in the capital and declaring a crime emergency.

His words are not backed up by data. Among other things, he cited 2023 crime statistics from the city, which did experience a post-pandemic crime surge. But since then, violent crime has plummeted in the city.

Even if the district really were the dystopian hellscape Trump describes, though, it is wrong to think the military could fix it. Crime is a complicated, multifaceted problem, not something that can be solved with Humvees.

Trump, though, was not deterred by facts.

“I’m officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, you know what that is, and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control,” Trump said.

Trump’s announced plan is, at least in part, of debatable legality. Because of D.C.’s unique status as the nation’s capital, the president and Congress do have powers there that they lack elsewhere. Still, the law Trump cited does not allow the president to commandeer local law enforcement in Washington, as he seemed to imply. The Home Rule Act, which established D.C.’s local government, gives the president no local law enforcement powers at all, meaning he cannot direct local police to conduct patrols, detain people, or arrest them.

What the law does allow is for the president to direct the local police, under Section 740, if “special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require the use of the Metropolitan Police force for federal purposes.” The law also caps the amount of time such emergency declaration can last to 48 hours, which can be extended to 30 days if Congress is properly notified of the action.

“In other words,” writes Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, “the President can borrow the (Washington police) for his own priorities; but he can’t control how they discharge their other duties.”

This is something Trump could have done, for example, on Jan. 6, 2021 during the violent siege of the US Capitol building to allow seamless coordination of local and federal law enforcement to assist Capitol Police in stemming the violence. But in that emergency, he chose not to.

Something else the president has done in D.C. this week that he didn’t do during the Jan. 6 attack is to mobilize the D.C. National Guard. Unlike in states, where governors direct the National Guard, the D.C. National Guard reports directly to the president, who reportedly deployed about 800 troops last week.

The federal government also has some powers to deploy agents from other agencies, such as the US Park Police, the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE, but the law limits some of those agency’s powers based on jurisdiction and subject matter. For example, ICE agents can only conduct civil immigration enforcement, they cannot conduct an arrest for suspected carjacking or any other local criminal action, and Park Police only have jurisdiction on federal land.

Whether all law enforcement officials are staying within legal and constitutional lines is yet to be determined. In California, where a trial is underway to determine if the administration violated the law with its deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles, it will take months if not years for the matter to make its way through the courts. The same will be true with the latest gambit in D.C.

But in the meantime, the president and other administration officials have the visuals that fit their false narrative: nightly large law enforcement presence in myriad D.C. neighborhoods, including a traffic checkpoint Wednesday on 14th Street in northwest D.C., a busy and popular area full of restaurants, shops, bakeries, and other businesses. Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney for D.C., even touted felony charges being brought against a since-fired Justice Department employee for throwing a sandwich at an officer – a moment that went viral online.

The president is taking advantage of the fact that he can implement legally and constitutionally dubious actions before courts have time to vet and stop them.

But leaders, including Republicans who have long called for limited government, should decry this and do what they can to stop this autocratic move. Whether it is part of a cynical play to the the GOP’s base ahead of midterm elections, or part of a deeper plan, as outlined by the White House earlier this year to ” unleash ” law enforcement on American cities, the threat to our basic form of government is the same. The military’s job is to fight America’s enemies, not to police its citizens.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/17/opinion/trump-police-dc/