Wow — you made it through Monday? Good for you. It’s Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. A week out from Election Day, and the coffee’s hot. Draw one and sit down. We have some things to discuss.
My calendar says it’s Beer Day, Civics Day, Navy Day, and World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. So brush up on the Constitution, toast a sailor, and dust off those old radio airchecks before somebody’s kid throws them out. Ideally do all four over a cold one, in that order.
Today in History:
1787: New York’s Independent Journal publishes the first of the Federalist Papers, launching Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay’s case for the Constitution.
1904: New York City opens its first subway line, the Interborough Rapid Transit, running from City Hall to 145th Street.
1922: The Navy League holds the first Navy Day, picking Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday for the honor.
1938: DuPont announces nylon, the first fully synthetic fiber, and pantyhose history begins.
1954: Walt Disney’s Disneyland premieres on ABC, bankrolling the theme park that opens the next summer.
1962: A Soviet missile shoots down a U-2 over Cuba, killing Maj. Rudolf Anderson on the most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1971: Mobutu Sese Seko renames the Democratic Republic of the Congo “Zaire.”
1978: The Nobel committee names Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin winners of the Peace Prize.
1986: The New York Mets beat the Boston Red Sox in Game 7 to win the World Series, two nights after the ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs.
1997: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 554 points, triggering the market’s first-ever trading halt.
2004: The Boston Red Sox sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918, ending the “Curse of the Bambino.”
Birthdays Today include: James Cook, explorer and navigator (charted the Pacific); Niccolò Paganini, violinist and composer (24 Caprices); Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president and Rough Rider; Dylan Thomas, poet (“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”); Ruby Dee, actress (A Raisin in the Sun, Do the Right Thing); Roy Lichtenstein, pop artist ("Whaam!"); Sylvia Plath, poet and novelist (The Bell Jar, Ariel); John Cleese, comedian (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, A Fish Called Wanda); Lee Greenwood, country singer (“God Bless the U.S.A.,” “Dixie Road”); Fran Lebowitz, writer (Metropolitan Life); Simon Le Bon, singer (Duran Duran, “Hungry Like the Wolf”); Kelly Osbourne, TV personality (The Osbournes).
If today’s your birthday, too, Lee Greenwood says you’re proud to be an American.
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Close the border. Enforce the law. Arrest criminals. Deport criminal aliens. Back the cops instead of treating them as the enemy.
Remember the warnings, though? Tougher enforcement would unleash chaos. Immigration enforcement was inherently cruel. Locking up criminals was an outdated answer to a complicated social problem.
Well, about that chaos, I've got some news for you: The United States just recorded the largest annual decline in violent crime in the FBI's statistical history. Note my words here: not a nice drop; the largest in history.
According to the FBI's official 2025 crime report, violent crime fell 9.3% from 2024, the biggest year-to-year decline since the bureau began estimating national trends in 1936. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell 18.1%. Robbery dropped 18.5%. Rape declined 7.6%, aggravated assault 7.2%, and property crime 12.4%. The murder rate came in at 4.1 per 100,000 people, tying 1955 and 1956 for the lowest in the FBI's records.
These aren't cherry-picked numbers from a think tank with an axe to grind. They're the FBI's. And the trend kept going: Preliminary figures show violent crime down another 10.6% in the first half of 2026, with murder down 23%.
You'd think the press would be asking the obvious questions: What changed, and what can we learn from it?
Well, they're asking. The answers just come with an awful lot of throat-clearing. It’s always the same. When crime rises, everybody knows why. When it falls, nobody can explain it. Watch the choreography; it's well practiced by now.
When crime exploded during the pandemic, we got endless explanations involving Donald Trump, racism, inequality, guns, and every other item on the progressive grievance menu. Crime became a morality play, and the villains came pre-cast.
But when crime falls by historic margins under a president who made enforcement a priority, the explanatory machinery suffers a mysterious mechanical failure. Now the reasons are "complicated." Experts remain "uncertain." No single policy can take credit. The Associated Press acknowledges the historic decline while stressing that experts can't attribute it to any one leader or policy.
Fair enough. Crime is complicated, and a decline during an administration doesn't by itself prove the administration caused it. But let's apply that standard consistently, shall we? I spend a lot of time in this column griping about double standards. This is one where lives hang in the balance.
If Trump can't automatically claim credit when crime improves, his opponents can't automatically blame him when it gets worse. If causation requires evidence when the news is good, it requires evidence when the news is bad. Funny how that principle goes missing during election season.
Here's what the endless fight over political credit obscures: people.
A murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000, applied to roughly 340 million Americans, works out to about 14,000 murders. That's my back-of-the-envelope figure, not an official FBI count. But an 18.1% drop means thousands fewer killings than the year before.
Thousands of people who get to grow old. Parents who see their kids graduate. Children who grow up with a mother or father. Families who never have to identify a body or open the door to a police officer with bad news.
The same goes for every robbery, rape, and assault that didn't happen. Those crimes leave people injured, traumatized, broke, or afraid to walk their own streets. Every percentage point represents real people who didn't become victims.
That ought to be good news for everybody, regardless of party. Unless, of course, your political business model depends on convincing people that America is irredeemably broken.
That will be the next objection. I've heard it a few thousand times, and it's always the same: Crime started falling before Trump returned to office, as the pandemic-era surge unwound, and trends reflect demographics, local policing, the economy, and shifts in social behavior.
All true. And anyone claiming deportations alone explain the national decline is selling a conclusion the evidence doesn't support. The Council on Criminal Justice's research points to several contributors, including easing pandemic disruption, more focused policing, and community violence intervention, and it doesn't identify immigration enforcement as a major driver of the homicide decline. That deserves acknowledgment. We shouldn't swap one set of convenient assumptions for another.
Here’s the thing, though, and somehow they never seem to touch this point: A trend can begin before an administration takes office and still accelerate during it. In short, two things can be true at once.
Recommended: No ID, No Problem? Mayor Mamdani Sparks Outrage Over Polling Guidance.
The FBI made nearly 54,000 violent-crime arrests during the reporting period, including more than 31,000 violent criminals and gang members, according to the administration's account. That's enforcement activity, not proof of cause, and an arrest total isn't the same as convictions or deportations, particularly where sanctuary jurisdictions get in the way.
But nobody should pretend that arresting violent offenders is irrelevant to public safety, either. A dangerous person behind bars can't commit the next crime. Targeting repeat offenders and gangs, and getting agencies to cooperate, are legitimate strategies worth evaluating. A government that takes those duties seriously behaves differently from one that treats enforcement as an embarrassment.
So here's my question for every reporter, pundit, and politician who spent years warning us about the consequences of tougher enforcement: If enforcing the law was supposed to make us less safe, where's the explosion in violent crime you promised?
Don't tell us the numbers are complicated. We know. Explain what the evidence actually supports. And don't confuse refusing to give Trump automatic credit with proving his policies had no effect. Those are two entirely different arguments.
If the evidence shows some policies did little, so be it. If it shows targeted enforcement helped, admit that, too. That's what serious analysis looks like. What isn't serious is demanding proof of causation when the results favor your opponents, then assigning blame without proof when they don't. And what isn't journalism is treating good news as an inconvenient footnote because it complicates the preferred narrative.
When the numbers improve, investigate why. When predictions fail, admit it. And when fewer Americans are being murdered, robbed, raped, and assaulted, have the decency to celebrate before turning it into another partisan food fight.
People are alive who might not have been. That ought to count for something. The conclusion as to why is fairly obvious, and it's something to consider when going into that voting booth.
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Thought for the Day: Good news that doesn’t fit the narrative is still news — unless, of course, it makes Donald Trump look good.
VIP members: Time to use your voice, because it matters. The comments section is yours.
Take care today, gang. Let's meet here tomorrow, OK?