U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One for travel to Norfolk, Virginia, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., October 5, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Nine months into the second Donald Trump presidency, a majority of Americans strongly oppose his hard-line crime-crackdown policies, including sending military forces into U.S. cities. Americans also, for the second year in a row, see crime as less serious.
“Americans as a whole lean toward moderation in the use of law enforcement to combat crime,” and “now view national crime conditions more favorably than at any point in recent years,” according to two Gallupstudies published Thursday.
President Trump ran on reducing crime during the 2024 campaign, and, despite tremendous opposition from the left, and rather than funding initiatives to address the causes of crime, he has deployed the National Guard to several Democratic-led cities, while battling in court for the right to do so. The President repeatedly, and increasingly, cites the Insurrection Act, claiming he has the right to invoke it and saying that the courts would do nothing to stop him.
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“The clearest indication of Americans’ approach to crime fighting comes from a question asking whether more government money and effort should go toward addressing some of the societal problems that may lead to crime or toward strengthening law enforcement,” Gallup reported. “Currently, 67% favor focusing on ‘addressing social and economic problems such as drug addiction, homelessness and mental health,’ while 29% believe more resources should be devoted to ‘strengthening law enforcement.'”
Gallup also reported that “Americans’ resistance to vigorous law enforcement is also evident in their opposition to deploying troops from either the National Guard or the U.S. military to control crime in U.S. cities.”
Trump, in recent days, has threatened to send into U.S. cities not only the National Guard, but other branches of the Armed Forces.
“I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, I could, say, send anybody I wanted,” Trump said on Wednesday.
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On Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “You know, people don’t care if we send in our military, if we send in our National Guard, if we send in Space Command, they don’t care who the hell it is.”
“Really, we could do as we want to do,” he insisted.
But according to Gallup, most Americans say the issue does matter to them.
Reporting that “most U.S. adults oppose militarized responses to urban crime,” Gallup found that 60% of Americans “are against sending military troops to cities to control crime,” and “56% oppose sending National Guard troops to U.S. cities.”
Gallup found a “broader public inclination toward moderate, preventive approaches to crime reduction over stringent sentencing and enforcement at a time when Americans are less concerned about the U.S. crime problem than they’ve been in recent years.”
And Gallup is not alone in its reporting.
Earlier this month, CNN reported that a CBS News-YouGov poll showed Americans “opposed Trump’s decision to deploy the Guard to US cities, 58%-42%. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed they disapproved of Trump’s use of the Guard and federal law enforcement to reduce crime, 55%-42%. And NPR-Ipsos polling in recent weeks showed fewer than 4 in 10 Americans supported Trump’s decisions to deploy the Guard to Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee.”
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