Analysis: Crime Overall Is Not as Low as Biden-Harris Say, and Murder Rates Are Troubling

Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, media outlets, and so-called “fact checkers” are claiming that “violent crime is near a 50-year low.” In contrast, Donald Trump is alleging that “crime is worse than it’s ever been.” The reality is that all of them are wrong. There are three key measures of violent crime with various strengths and weaknesses, but the most reliable and severe one shows that the murder rate in 2023 was 36 percent higher than the modern low in 2014 but 14 percent lower than the modern peak in 2021. The statistics cited by Harris and others who declare that violent crime is extraordinarily low come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which is based on voluntary reports of crimes by state and local law enforcement agencies. As explained by the FBI, this report “excludes” crimes like “sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “attempted robberies,” and “crimes not reported to law enforcement.” Regarding the last of those exclusions, the FBI discloses that “changes in police procedures, shifting attitudes toward crime and police, and other societal changes can affect the extent to which people report and law enforcement agencies record crime.” Thus, the FBI cautions against “making any direct comparison between data in this publication and those in prior” years. If one ignores that warning — and all of…

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Analysis: Sweeping Measure Shows the Real Scale of Border Insecurity Under Biden and Harris

CBP Officer chasing illegal border crossers

For more than half a century, the number of immigrants apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol at the Southwest border has served as a rough proxy for illegal entries. However, this measure has become much less informative in recent years because it doesn’t account for other aspects of border insecurity that have exploded during the Biden/Harris administration. These include:

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Study Finds Up to a Third of All Non-Citizens in the United States are Illegally Registered to Vote

Illegal migrants at border

Based on the latest available data and an enhanced version of a stress-tested methodology from a scholarly journal, a new study by Just Facts has found that about 10 percent to 27 percent of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote.

The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022. Given their voter registration rates, this means that about two million to five million of them are illegally registered to vote. These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including congressional seats and the presidency.

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James Agresti Commentary: Voters of All Parties, Ages, and Genders Are Broadly Misinformed

by James D. Agresti   At a recent “get-out-the-vote” rally in Las Vegas, former first lady Michelle Obama declared that people don’t have to be informed in order to vote. All they need, she said, is to “be a citizen,” “have opinions,” and want “a say in what happens.” She emphasized, “I’ve been voting since I was 18 years old—and trust me—I didn’t know nothing about nothing at 18 years old.” In contrast, James Madison—the father of the Constitution and primary author of the Bill of Rights—stressed that voters “must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” Failure to do this, he said, will produce government that is “a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” The results of a new scientific survey indicate that voters of all ages, political parties, and genders are following Obama’s lead instead of Madison’s. Moreover, the survey shows that many voters are not only uninformed about major issues—they are positively misinformed. Those are the findings of an annual, national poll commissioned by Just Facts, a non-profit research and educational institute. The poll was conducted by an academic research firm that used sound methodologies to assess U.S. residents who regularly vote. While most surveys…

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