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The Labor Day holiday became a violent weekend in the city of Chicago, as more than 50 people were shot and nine were killed from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2. Despite those grim statistics, President Donald Trump was wrong when he said on Truth Social on Sept. 2, “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!” That’s not the case, experts told us, and Chicago’s overall homicide rate declined more than 30% in the first six months of this year as compared with last year. But Chicago has topped the list of large U.S. cities for its number of murders for over a decade. After the burst of violence over the weekend, Trump was asked at a Sept. 2 press conference whether he planned to send the National Guard or other federal law enforcement purportedly to quell crime in Chicago, as he did in Washington, D.C. Trump replied, “Well, we’re going in — I didn’t say when. We’re going in.” Photo by be free / stock.adobe.com Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, joined by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at a news conference the same day, said, “There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops” in the city. Pritzker said the state would challenge Trump’s power to send troops to Chicago in court. (On Sept. 3, Trump seemed to backpedal on sending the National Guard to Chicago, telling reporters, “So we’re making a determination now. Do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad?”) Here, we’ll address some of the inaccurate or misleading claims by Trump and the White House regarding the trends in violent crime in Chicago. Highest Homicide Rates in the World In his Truth Social posts on Sept. 2, Trump said, “Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far,” and later wrongly claimed, “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!” Jeff Asher, co-founder of the consulting firm AH Datalytics, which compiles an aggregation of crime data provided by law enforcement agencies across the U.S., previously told us about Trump’s comparison of crimes in Washington, D.C., to other cities around the world, “It’s generally inadvisable to compare crime rates between cities, especially international cities with populations many times that of DC.” In a Sept. 2 email, Asher said, “No, Chicago is not the murder capital of the world, there are many cities with higher murder counts and rates globally.” Experts at the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent think tank which focuses on U.S. cities, directed us to a study of “the world’s most homicidal cities in 2023” by the Igarapé Institute, an independent Brazilian think tank. That study listed cities of 250,000 inhabitants or more by highest homicide rates — the number of homicides per 100,000 people. Chicago was not among its ranking of the 50 cities in the world with the highest homicide rates. The Igarapé Institute’s top 50 list did include U.S. cities (by highest ranking): Memphis (number 21 in world ranking); New Orleans (25); St. Louis (30); Baltimore (36); Cleveland (37); Detroit (48); and Washington, D.C. (50). The top 10 international cities are in Ecuador, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. Most Murders But Not Highest Rate A week before Trump’s Truth Social claims about Chicago, the White House posted a press release that said, “For 13 consecutive years, Chicago has had the most murders of any U.S. city.” The release cited an article in the conservative Center Square about the number of murders in Chicago in 2024. The press release also said, “For seven consecutive years, Chicago has had the highest murder rate among U.S. cities with more than one million people.” Asher told us, “The White House is correct that Chicago has recorded the most murders in the US for 13 straight years and has had the nation’s [homicide] highest rate for any city of 1 million or more, but that’s an arbitrarily tight comparison group to make in my opinion (usually comparisons are made amongst cities of 250,000 or more).” According to our analysis of FBI crime data, Chicago had the highest murder rate among the nine cities with a population over 1 million in 2024. But it ranked 10th among 37 cities with  population over 500,000. And it ranked 15th among 87 cities with a population over 250,000. Chicago had a population of more than 2.7 million in 2024. Ernesto Lopez, senior research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice, also said that the White House statement about Chicago’s number of homicides is accurate. “Chicago does have the highest number of homicides in our sample of 30 U.S. cities,” he told us via email. “Relying on homicide counts at the city level is misleading, however, because generally cities with more people have a higher number of homicides. Chicago does not have the highest rate of homicides. … Other major U.S. cities, such as St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, have higher homicide rates.” (Emphasis is his.) According to CCJ data going back to 2018, Lopez said, “Chicago does have the highest number of homicides. But again, using the number of homicides as a comparison across cities is not an advisable way to examine homicide trends. Chicago does not consistently have the highest homicide rate among cities with more than 1 million people.” Citing the CCJ criminal offense dashboard, Lopez said, “In our sample, we have homicide data for five cities with more than 1 million people — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Antonio.” That data shows Philadelphia had a higher homicide rate than Chicago in the first six months of 2019, 2024 and 2025. Examining Chicago Crime Data Responding to an anticipated deployment of the National Guard to Chicago, the mayor told CNN on Aug. 25, “I don’t know of any cities in America that are calling for federal troops to occupy their cities. … Homicides are down nearly 32%

Amid upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the firing of the agency’s director, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. distorted the facts to falsely claim that the agency’s website lists abortion as one of the “10 greatest advances in medical science.” Kennedy’s comments came in an Aug. 28 interview on “Fox & Friends,” the day after HHS announced on X that Susan Monarez, who had served as CDC director for less than a month after being nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate, was no longer head of the agency. Monarez, who reportedly clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, has disputed the legality of her firing. Her lawyers said in a statement posted on X that she was targeted after she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” The same day, the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID-19 shots for the 2025-2026 season, but only for certain people based on age or health condition, contrary to the advice of other major medical groups. Four high-level CDC staffers also resigned. While declining to speak about Monarez specifically, Kennedy said in the Fox News interview that the “CDC has problems,” citing what he viewed as deficiencies in the agency’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic. As another example of the CDC’s “problems,” Kennedy, who has repeatedly claimed not to be anti-vaccine despite decades of such advocacy work, proceeded to point to an agency website that he said listed abortion, water fluoridation and vaccination as major medical advances. “Today, on the CDC’s website right now, they list the 10 top advances — the 10 greatest advances in medical science. And one of them is abortion,” he said. “Another is fluoridation, another is vaccines. So we need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there is really a deeply, deeply embedded — I would say, malaise — at the agency.” “The agency is in trouble and we need to fix it,” he added. “And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.” Later in the day, at the end of a press conference in Texas, Kennedy repeated the claim. “The CDC has on its website — today — that among the top 10 medical innovations, greatest medical accomplishments in history, abortion. One of the greatest medical accomplishments because it keeps small families. Go to the website, look at fluoridation — giving kids a toxin — and vaccines.” We could find no CDC webpage listing the greatest medical innovations. There are a few older reports published in the agency’s journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, that list the top 10 public health achievements. But while vaccination and water fluoridation are indeed included, abortion is not a main entry in any of them. Nor are the lists featured on the CDC’s website in a consumer-friendly way. The pages are web versions of published journal articles that are primarily intended for medical or scientific audiences. Susan Monarez takes part in a Senate hearing on her nomination to head the CDC in June. Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images. HHS did not respond to our inquiry asking which list Kennedy was citing, but it’s likely that Kennedy is referring to an April 1999 MMWR that lists the 10 greatest public health achievements in the U.S. during the 20th century. (Two similar MMWR lists cover achievements in the first decade of the 21st century and include vaccination but do not ever refer to abortion.) In subsequent MMWR articles in 1999, which explain the rationale for each of the choices on the 20th century list, two of the entries, “Healthier mothers and babies” and “Family Planning,” include brief mentions of abortion. But abortion itself is not the major “achievement.” Rather, the October 1999 “Healthier mothers and babies” MMWR is about reductions in maternal and infant mortality, which are attributed to “[e]nvironmental interventions, improvements in nutrition, advances in clinical medicine, improvements in access to health care, improvements in surveillance and monitoring of disease, increases in education levels, and improvements in standards of living.”  Abortion is mentioned with regard to maternal mortality and sepsis, a potentially lethal immune response to an infection. Noting that maternal mortality was highest in the last century during the first three decades of the 1900s, the MMWR explains that poor obstetric practices were responsible for many preventable maternal deaths.   “Deliveries, including some surgical interventions, were performed without following the principles of asepsis,” the article reads. “As a result, 40% of maternal deaths were caused by sepsis (half following delivery and half associated with illegally induced abortion).” The MMWR goes on to explain that increased attention to the issue of maternal mortality starting in the 1930s led to maternal mortality review committees as well as new practice guidelines. In addition, more people began delivering in hospitals using aseptic techniques and with access to medical advances such as antibiotics and safer blood transfusions. At the end of the paragraph, abortion is mentioned once to note that legalization of the practice “beginning in the 1960s contributed to an 89% decline in deaths from septic illegal abortions” between 1950 and 1973. Legalization of abortion, therefore, contributed to some of the maternal mortality declines, according to the MMWR, but it was one of many factors — and did not mean abortions were not occurring previously. The “Family planning” MMWR from December 1999 is focused on modern contraceptives, not abortion. Describing family planning as it developed over the 20th century as “the ability to achieve desired birth spacing and family size,” the article notes that “couples chose to have fewer children” and that “[s]maller families and longer birth intervals have contributed to the better health of infants, children, and women.” Abortion is mentioned primarily in contrast to modern birth control, since contraceptives can prevent unintended pregnancies. The article is clear that the main goal is to reduce such pregnancies, which in turn would reduce abortions.  Under a section titled “Challenges,” the article states that unintended pregnancy in the U.S. “remains a problem;

While signing executive orders at the White House on Aug. 25, President Donald Trump wrongly said that an 11-day span of no homicides in Washington, D.C., was the “first time that’s taken place in years,” a claim reiterated by other members of the administration who credited Trump’s federal takeover of the district’s law enforcement. An 11-day stretch with zero murders is rare in the city, but there was a 16-day period with no murders earlier this year, from Feb. 25 to March 12, according to Metropolitan Police Department data. The Metropolitan Police Department investigates a double shooting of two males who were transported to the hospital on Aug. 18 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images. “In the last 11 days, we’ve had no murders and that’s the first time that’s taken place in years, actually years. We always have a murderer a week. They call it a murder a week,” Trump said as he prepared to sign executive orders aimed at ending no-cash-bail policies in Washington and other jurisdictions. He repeated it later: “So for 11 days there have been no murders. The record goes back years where that’s happened. They haven’t seen that happen in years.” So far in 2025, there have been 103 homicides in Washington, an average of about three per week. In all of 2024, there were 187, down from 274 in 2023. As we’ve reported before, the city’s murder rate in 2023 — 39 per 100,000 population — was the highest in 20 years, but it was half the peak murder rate in 1991. And the rate has been declining since 2023. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, repeated the claim at the same event, saying: “We’ve checked the records. No one can even find a record of being murder free for as long as we’ve been murder free under President Trump’s leadership.” Vice President JD Vance credited the president “and the team” with saving “six or seven lives.” There were no reported homicides in the city on Aug. 25, bringing the no-homicide streak to 12 days, dating back to Aug. 14. That information is available through the Metropolitan Police Department’s “crime cards” website, which provides preliminary crime data based on when crimes are reported to police. An early-morning homicide on Aug. 26, as reported by local news, ended the streak. Trump had announced a federal takeover of the city’s police force on Aug. 11, along with the deployment of National Guard troops and a surge of federal law enforcement officers in the city to combat what he called a “crime emergency” in the district. (As we wrote at the time, there was an increase in crime in Washington in 2023, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia reported in January that violent crime overall for 2024 was down 35% from the previous year and was “the lowest it has been in over 30 years.” The administration has accused the police department of reporting “phony crime stats” and is investigating the matter, as we’ve also explained.) There were two reported homicides on Aug. 11 and one more reported on Aug. 13, but the 12-day period with zero homicides began the following day. As we said, such 12-day periods aren’t common in the city, but it hasn’t been “the first time that’s taken place in years,” as Trump said. It’s been about six months, when the city went 16 days without a homicide in late February and early March. In 2024, the longest period without a homicide that we could find was 11 days, from Jan. 5 to Jan. 15. We asked the White House whether the president was using a different crime dataset to make his claim. Spokeswoman Taylor Rogers responded: “Here are the facts: Violent crime has been plaguing the streets of Washington, DC for years – in just two weeks, President Trump’s bold action has stopped the senseless killings, removed over one thousand violent criminals from the streets, and overall crime has decreased.” The MPD crime cards website does show a drop in violent and property crimes from Aug. 11, the date of Trump’s announced law enforcement takeover, to Aug. 26, compared with the same time period last year, or even a similar time period just prior to Aug. 11, with most of the violent crime reductions in robberies. But Jeff Asher, a co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that produces an aggregation of crime data, cautioned that it was too early to analyze very recent crime data and to try to tease out whether the federal government’s actions have had an impact. The crime data is “very preliminary,” and it could take weeks or up to two months for all the reporting to occur, he told us. There is some “underreporting of data,” he said, “when using a raw dataset like this.” The crime trends in the city were also “already going down,” so measuring two points on a downward slope will show a decline. According to the preliminary data, there were 32 fewer violent crimes reported from Aug. 11 to Aug. 26, compared with the prior 16-day period, a drop of 28%. The decline was 48% compared with the same time period in 2024. But as Asher noted, violent crime in the city had dropped 34% for the two weeks ending June 29, compared with the two weeks prior, and was 51% lower than the same period in 2024. “No intervention or anything, just randomness disguised as meaning,” he said.  That doesn’t mean the federal intervention in Washington hasn’t or won’t have an impact, but more time is needed to determine that, Asher said. “It’s challenging to see the effect of an intervention even months down the line. Doing it while it’s occurring … is not strongly advised.” Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give

In the battle over Texas’ redistricting plan to pick up Republican House seats, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have made competing claims. Hochul, a Democrat, said at an Aug. 4 briefing, “Congressional districts are never redrawn mid-decade as they are, but here they are, flagrantly breaking the rules so they can hold on to power.” Districts have been redrawn mid-decade many times, but that’s usually due to legal challenges — making Texas’ mid-decade redistricting without court action rare.  Abbott, a Republican, said in an Aug. 5 appearance on Fox News, “There are no states more gerrymandered than California and Illinois and New York. … I don’t think those states can gerrymander any more than they have.” Illinois is among the most skewed states for partisan congressional maps, but California and New York get favorable marks in analyses from nonpartisan organizations. A person views a map during a Texas Senate Special Committee on Congressional Redistricting hearing on Aug. 7. Photo by Brandon Bell via Getty Images. The fracas began because, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump has said he wants Texas state lawmakers to redraw congressional district lines to pick up Republican House seats. The move could touch off a redistricting arms race since some Democratic governors have threatened to counter with redistricting in their states if Texas Republicans move forward with their plan. Trump referred to the plan as “a very simple redrawing,” when reporters asked him about it on July 15. “We [Republicans] pick up five seats. But we have a couple of other states where we’ll pick up seats also,” he said. We asked the White House for more details about the plan, including which other states may be involved, but we didn’t get a response. Texas Republicans announced a redistricting proposal in July, and Democratic state representatives grabbed headlines when they left the state on Aug. 3 in order to block a vote on the proposed map. Two weeks later, those lawmakers said that they would return to Texas if California releases a redrawn congressional map of its own. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning to hold a special election on Nov. 4 to get voter approval for a redrawn map that could give Democrats five additional seats in the House. But if Texas or other states abandon redistricting plans, California’s map would stay as is under Newsom’s proposal. Hochul has also pledged to help Democrats pick up seats, but state laws in New York would likely bar any changes before the midterms. The governor has said that New York should disband its independent redistricting commission, which could allow Democrats to draw more favorable maps. We’ll explain how redistricting has been done and differences among the states as we assess Hochul’s and Abbott’s claims. When Are District Lines Drawn? Congressional districts are usually drawn at the start of the decade, but Hochul is wrong to say that lines are “never” redrawn later. Typically, lines are redrawn every 10 years, following the census. The process is meant to result in fair representation based on population. “Our modern congressional redistricting system was effectively set up in the early 1960s in a series of Supreme Court decisions that enforced a ‘one person, one vote’ standard on congressional districts,” Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told us in an email, referring to a trio of cases in 1962 and 1964. “This specified that congressional (and state legislative) districts had to essentially have equal population within states,” Kondik said. “Previously, states had allowed huge disparities in district populations, which led to rural areas being overrepresented and urban/suburban areas being underrepresented.” Since 1970, states have gotten into a more regular habit of redrawing districts every 10 years to account for changes uncovered by the census, he said. “However, starting in the 1964 congressional election cycle and going through 2024, at least one congressional district’s lines were changed in 24 of the 31 two-year election cycles since then. This cycle will make it 25 of 32, assuming a map officially changes,” Kondik said. “So, mid-decade redistricting is common. Now what is uncommon about Texas (and states that may follow) is that mid-decade redistrictings almost always include some sort of court action.” Sam Wang, director of Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project and president of the Electoral Innovation Lab, told us the same thing. “In recent decades, the only times that mid-decade redistricting has occurred are (a) when a court or the law requires it (PA, NY, MD, NC, OH…), or (b) when it’s Texas – they did it in 2003,” Wang said in an email. Following the decennial redistricting process, civil rights and good government organizations often file lawsuits challenging the new maps — usually alleging gerrymandering or race discrimination. The Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks these cases, says that the courts “play an important role” in determining where the lines will eventually fall. According to a 2021 paper that collected about 60 years’ worth of data, there had been more than 900 challenges to various redistricting plans — for local governments, school boards, statewide offices and congressional districts — in federal courts. A Brennan Center analysis of challenges brought following this decade’s redistricting found 90 cases, “split roughly evenly between state and federal court, a change from last decade when the overwhelming bulk of challenges to maps were in federal court.” “What Texas is doing is different than the norm in that there’s no court action,” Kondik said. It’s not completely unprecedented, though. As both Wang and Kondik pointed out, in 2003, Texas redrew its congressional map, replacing the one that had been adopted following the 2000 census. That redistricting led to a lawsuit that was eventually decided in 2006 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that part of the map violated the Voting Rights Act but did not find that the state was prohibited from redrawing its electoral maps at will. Redistricting is largely handled by the states, and there is no federal prohibition on

In the battle over Texas’ redistricting plan to pick up Republican House seats, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have made competing claims. Hochul, a Democrat, said at an Aug. 4 briefing, “Congressional districts are never redrawn mid-decade as they are, but here they are, flagrantly breaking the rules so they can hold on to power.” Districts have been redrawn mid-decade many times, but that’s usually due to legal challenges — making Texas’ mid-decade redistricting without court action rare.  Abbott, a Republican, said in an Aug. 5 appearance on Fox News, “There are no states more gerrymandered than California and Illinois and New York. … I don’t think those states can gerrymander any more than they have.” Illinois is among the most skewed states for partisan congressional maps, but California and New York get favorable marks in analyses from nonpartisan organizations. A person views a map during a Texas Senate Special Committee on Congressional Redistricting hearing on Aug. 7. Photo by Brandon Bell via Getty Images. The fracas began because, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump has said he wants Texas state lawmakers to redraw congressional district lines to pick up Republican House seats. The move could touch off a redistricting arms race since some Democratic governors have threatened to counter with redistricting in their states if Texas Republicans move forward with their plan. Trump referred to the plan as “a very simple redrawing,” when reporters asked him about it on July 15. “We [Republicans] pick up five seats. But we have a couple of other states where we’ll pick up seats also,” he said. We asked the White House for more details about the plan, including which other states may be involved, but we didn’t get a response. Texas Republicans announced a redistricting proposal in July, and Democratic state representatives grabbed headlines when they left the state on Aug. 3 in order to block a vote on the proposed map. Two weeks later, those lawmakers said that they would return to Texas if California releases a redrawn congressional map of its own. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning to hold a special election on Nov. 4 to get voter approval for a redrawn map that could give Democrats five additional seats in the House. But if Texas or other states abandon redistricting plans, California’s map would stay as is under Newsom’s proposal. Hochul has also pledged to help Democrats pick up seats, but state laws in New York would likely bar any changes before the midterms. The governor has said that New York should disband its independent redistricting commission, which could allow Democrats to draw more favorable maps. We’ll explain how redistricting has been done and differences among the states as we assess Hochul’s and Abbott’s claims. When Are District Lines Drawn? Congressional districts are usually drawn at the start of the decade, but Hochul is wrong to say that lines are “never” redrawn later. Typically, lines are redrawn every 10 years, following the census. The process is meant to result in fair representation based on population. “Our modern congressional redistricting system was effectively set up in the early 1960s in a series of Supreme Court decisions that enforced a ‘one person, one vote’ standard on congressional districts,” Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told us in an email, referring to a trio of cases in 1962 and 1964. “This specified that congressional (and state legislative) districts had to essentially have equal population within states,” Kondik said. “Previously, states had allowed huge disparities in district populations, which led to rural areas being overrepresented and urban/suburban areas being underrepresented.” Since 1970, states have gotten into a more regular habit of redrawing districts every 10 years to account for changes uncovered by the census, he said. “However, starting in the 1964 congressional election cycle and going through 2024, at least one congressional district’s lines were changed in 24 of the 31 two-year election cycles since then. This cycle will make it 25 of 32, assuming a map officially changes,” Kondik said. “So, mid-decade redistricting is common. Now what is uncommon about Texas (and states that may follow) is that mid-decade redistrictings almost always include some sort of court action.” Sam Wang, director of Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project and president of the Electoral Innovation Lab, told us the same thing. “In recent decades, the only times that mid-decade redistricting has occurred are (a) when a court or the law requires it (PA, NY, MD, NC, OH…), or (b) when it’s Texas – they did it in 2003,” Wang said in an email. Following the decennial redistricting process, civil rights and good government organizations often file lawsuits challenging the new maps — usually alleging gerrymandering or race discrimination. The Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks these cases, says that the courts “play an important role” in determining where the lines will eventually fall. According to a 2021 paper that collected about 60 years’ worth of data, there had been more than 900 challenges to various redistricting plans — for local governments, school boards, statewide offices and congressional districts — in federal courts. A Brennan Center analysis of challenges brought following this decade’s redistricting found 90 cases, “split roughly evenly between state and federal court, a change from last decade when the overwhelming bulk of challenges to maps were in federal court.” “What Texas is doing is different than the norm in that there’s no court action,” Kondik said. It’s not completely unprecedented, though. As both Wang and Kondik pointed out, in 2003, Texas redrew its congressional map, replacing the one that had been adopted following the 2000 census. That redistricting led to a lawsuit that was eventually decided in 2006 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that part of the map violated the Voting Rights Act but did not find that the state was prohibited from redrawing its electoral maps at will. Redistricting is largely handled by the states, and there is no federal prohibition on