Trump: the one man crime spree

A lot of hay has been made over Trump’s felony convictions, his being held liable for sexual assault, his aiding and abetting of insurrectionists, and the countless other ways he has broken, skirted, demeaned, exploited, and made mockery of our laws and Constitution. Holler all you want, and I will certainly do the same. But this post is about something different. It’s about how Trump, the man who spends a lot of time shouting about law and order, will go down in the history books (should we be allowed to have them) as a one man accelerant of crime and violence nationally.

Allow me to explain.

People cannot be safe and well unless they have the resources they need to be safe and well. While in no way scientific, that is the working definition I have always used when I think about prevention. For me, it’s the bottom line for public health, and it’s also the bottom line for public safety. You want safe communities? The people in those communities need to be safe in order to accomplish that. You want people to be safe? That can only happen if their basic needs are met: financial stability; adequate nutrition; access to education and recreation; and of course, a safe place to lay their head at night. A dear friend taught me that the opposite of violence is access to opportunity. My work in gun violence prevention is absolutely guided by that teaching.

While that is my unscientific approach to prevention, there is plenty of data to back up that premise. I can cite multiple article and sources, but I will refer you to one of my primary source materials. Dr. Daniel Kim of Northeastern University studied the social determinants of health related to firearm homicide, and found that variables such as economic stratification, levels of citizens’ trust in institutions, economic opportunity, and public welfare spending are all associated with firearm-related homicide rates. Essentially, poverty and society’s willingness to invest in eradicating it are all closely related to rates of gun violence. A history of racist policy making is also a driver of current gun violence. As my friend and colleague Dr. Jonathan Jay of the Boston University School of Public Health outlined in this article, research demonstrates that redlined neighborhoods, as in the places with the most racially discriminatory housing practices, experienced the highest increases in firearm violence during the pandemic.

On crime more broadly you can also find much research on how poverty, chronic disinvestment, and trauma drive higher rates of crime. But here I offer you a source that I have gone back to more times than I can possibly count. This compilation from the Marshall Project and Slate asks incarcerated people to reflect on what services and programs could have changed the trajectory of their lives and possibly prevented the circumstances that led to their incarceration. The piece is both a blueprint and a call to action. It reads like a laundry list of needed but inaccessible resources that would have made a profound difference for them. Not surprisingly, housing, therapy, and economic resources top the list.

This all brings us back to the same themes. When communities are deprived of economic power and broader opportunity due to inequitable policies and chronic disinvestment, rates of violence rise. When people do not have access to the services and supports they need, crime escalates.

Enter Trump and his army of enablers, who seem hellbent on dismantling every public good and the entire social welfare infrastructure. Who are laser focused on ensuring that access to services are limited to only those who possess the meritorious qualities of whiteness and maleness. Who are insisting that folks pull themselves up by the bootstraps they are concurrently yanking away.

Who holler about law and order while they create the very conditions that will inevitably and exponentially drive more crime and violence.

This is the part of my essay where I give examples of actions the Trump administration has taken that further destabilize the communities that have experienced the highest levels of chronic disinvestment and racist policy making. But barely eight weeks into this presidency, it’s hard to even know where to begin. The unraveling of an already frayed social safety net is well underway, with threats to everything from Medicaid to education and housing programs. The disruptions to federal funding will decimate the programs that are a lifeline to so many. I could go on and on and on. But ultimately, what we see from this administration is nothing that resembles giving people what they need to be safe and well. In fact, quite the opposite.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty. In 2025, President Donald J. Trump declared a war on people.

This war includes direct assaults on people through violent rhetoric, increased surveillance, withholding concrete resources, and of course detention and deportation. It includes the creation of hostile environments where people cannot thrive, where access to robust education, safe recreation, and gainful employment are increasingly elusive. And it promotes a society where a safe and stable place to live becomes a privilege afforded to fewer and fewer. This war may not result in bloody battlefields, but it will affect the very social determinants of health associated with higher rates of violence: more social stratification and less economic opportunity.

Trump and his army of enablers, driven by racism and hate, are deliberately building a society of haves and have nots. A society that mandates poverty and then punishes people for being poor. And one that will reverse the gains we have made in building safer communities over the past few years. It hurts my heart to see it.

Just this week, Trump escalated this war even more, using an Executive Order like it’s a sledgehammer to pulverize public education. Of course, the dismantling of the Department of Education will have the most impact on vulnerable students, and on the communities that experience the highest levels of poverty and violence. Educational institutions in those communities were already at a disadvantage, impacted by years and years of racist policy making and chronic disinvestment. Further pulling the rug out from under those school districts is a recipe for inequity. Plus, the Department of Education also funds programs that reduce the risk of violence and support school safety. Don’t we all want our kids to be safe at school??

The Trump administration took another step this week that also broke my heart. Just a few days ago the Department of Health & Human Services took down a webpage from the Office of the Surgeon General that included a report addressing gun violence as a public health issue. This report outlines the scope of the issue, names the disparate impact on Black and brown communities, and calls for a public health approach to preventing gun violence. To quote the report: “A public health approach is designed to prevent and reduce harm by changing the conditions and circumstances that contribute to risk of firearm violence…”. To put a finer point on it, we can’t just arrest our way out of gun violence, we have to invest in the practices and policies that stop the violence from happening in the first place. To that end, the report calls for more research, stronger policies, and more resourcing of community violence initiatives and trauma response programs. And the Trump administration is not only NOT doing any of those things, they are actively doing the opposite.

So what do we do? Our job now is to call this out. Push back on the narrative that crime is out of control and that the only way to address it is to build more prisons and incarcerate more people. Combat misinformation and fear mongering with data and facts. When you hear folks say something needs to be done about violence remind them that we know what needs to be done — and share the report. Advocate locally for policies and budget allocations take guns out of communities and put resources in.

Shout from the rooftops: Trump is bludgeoning the country with racist and punitive policies that exacerbate the root causes of violence. If rates of violence start to rise again during this administration, it will be because he willfully disrupted the progress of the past four years. Please, blame him and blame the policies. Don’t blame the people and the communities that have struggled the most.

Because people can’t be safe and well unless they have the resources they need to be safe and well.

Punishment isn’t prevention.