The 2020-era defund the police movement is echoing across the nation yet again as Democratic lawmakers and activists decry the Trump administration’s efforts to snuff out crime in cities such as Washington, D.C., while readying similar efforts in jurisdictions long notorious for violent crimes. 

Democrats in blue strongholds such as Chicago and Baltimore have bucked President Donald Trump’s plans to send in National Guard troops to help deter crime, including calling plans to incarcerate criminals a lost cause that would not lead to a more peaceful community.

Fox News Digital spoke with Crime Prevention Research Center founder John Lott, who said resistance to Trump’s anti-crime blitz echoes the defund the police movement since both narratives reject the idea that tougher consequences for criminals leads to fewer crimes.

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«I think they’re the same type of argument. Maybe it’s a matter of degree in terms of the difference,» Lott said in a phone interview Wednesday. «But the notion is: Will higher arrest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, will that make it riskier for criminals to commit crime and deter crime? 

«You have people like Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, saying that prison doesn’t work, that that doesn’t deter crime. He just calls it racist to go and put people in jail for committing crimes.

«The attorney general for (Washington, D.C.) says that having more police is unneeded, and it’s unnecessary for that. And so they don’t see a connection between making it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime and the amount of crime that’s occurring,» he continued, explaining the similarities between the 2020 defund movement and 2025’s opposition to Trump’s anti-crime initiative. 

Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign heavily focused on cleaning up crime-riddled cities after the violent wave of 2020 that left an excess of Americans dead as anti-police and Black Lives Matter protests and riots broke out in cities nationwide.

After roughly seven months back in the Oval Office, those campaign promises are becoming reality, with Democrat lawmakers and liberal activists decrying the crime crackdowns with protests and legal challenges along the way. Fox News Digital took a look back at the 2020 defund narrative and its consequences and how the era stacks up compared to the recent rhetoric against Trump’s crime crackdown. 

‘An obligation’ 

Trump federalized Washington, D.C.’s police department in August, which included the National Guard flooding the capital’s streets to patrol the area and federal law enforcement agents from departments, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisting in arrests. 

Trump is in the midst of determining when to send the National Guard to help patrol chronically crime-addled Chicago, he said Tuesday, while other cities such as Baltimore are anticipated to see similar crackdowns. 

Armed National Guard members patrol near the U.S. Capitol as security tightens following President Trump’s deployment order. (Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)

«I have an obligation,» Trump said Tuesday of his law and order initiative in crime-filled cities. «This isn’t a political thing.»

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Democrats have resisted Trump’s crime plan, with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker scoffing at the idea of sending the National Guard to Chicago and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore inviting Trump to walk the streets of Baltimore to ostensibly show him the city is safe. 

«I would love to have Gov. Pritzker call me. I’d gain respect for him. And say, ‘We do have a problem, and we’d love you to send in the troops because, you know what, the people, they have to be protected,’» Trump said Tuesday while fielding questions from the media at a White House event. 

Chicago and Baltimore are two of the nation’s most notoriously violent cities, with Baltimore ranked as the fourth most dangerous city to live in the U.S., according to a U.S. News and World Report study published in 2025. Chicago is reeling from a bloody Labor Day weekend that left at least 58 people shot and eight killed. In 2021, Chicago recorded its deadliest year since 1996, with data published by the city showing crime has ticked down in the Windy City since about 2023. 

«No, I will not call the president asking him to send troops to Chicago,» Pritzker said Tuesday. «I’ve made that clear already.» 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson argued locking criminals up is «racist» and «immoral.» 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson argues locking criminals up is «racist» and «immoral.»  (Charles Rex Arbogast/The Associted Press)

«We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence; we’ve already tried that, and we’ve ended up with the largest prison population in the world without solving the problems of crime and violence,» Johnson said during an August press conference, the New York Post reported. 

«The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country, we’ve moved past that,» he said. «It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and it is not the way to drive violence down.»

The sentiment echoes the rhetoric of 2020, when activists and supporters of the defund the police movement championed cutting police budgets and redirecting the funds to community services such as housing, education, mental health services and community-based responders who would manage certain emergency calls such as a mental health crisis instead of police officers. Proponents of the movement argued such reallocation of police funds would wipe out crime and foster peace, as opposed to arresting and prosecuting criminals. 

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The year 2020 was a whirlwind underscored by a massive federal election, the COVID-19 pandemic that upended society with unprecedented government-mandated lockdowns that kept American workers and school children at home and a bloody crime wave that rocked the nation from coast to coast as activists heralded the «defund» narrative. 

A 2025 sentiment is echoing the rhetoric of 2020, when activists and supporters of the defund the police movement championed cutting police budgets and redirecting the funds to community services.  (Getty Images)

Nationwide, murders increased by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to 2019, which notched the largest single-year increase in killings since the FBI began tracking the crimes, according to agency data at the time. The spike in murders came as activists nationwide took to the streets that summer to protest police departments in response to the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020. 

Floyd’s death, as well as the deaths of other Black Americans during police stops or interactions, reignited the Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2013, which has called for defunding police departments stretching back more than a decade concerning claims the U.S. justice system and policing overall are rooted in systemic racism. 

Cities from Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco to Atlanta saw repeated protests demanding police departments be defunded, while riots broke out amid the protests that led to businesses being destroyed and an increase in attacks on police officers as the sentiment in the U.S. toward the officers in blue soured. 

Portland, Oregon, saw 100 nights of protests and riots that summer, while Seattle rioters took over a police precinct and declared it the «Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,» which was fortified by barriers and established as a cop-free zone. At least two teenagers were shot dead and others were injured as violence broke out that summer. 

Lawmakers such as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats like New York Sen. Chuck Schumer voiced support for police reforms and others took a knee on the Capitol’s floor while wearing Kente cloth stoles in support of a police reform package introduced in response to Floyd’s death. 

Other lawmakers openly called for police departments to be defunded, most notably members of the House’s left-wing faction of the party known as the «Squad.» 

«The ‘defund the police’ movement is one of reimagining the current police system to build an entity that does not violate us, while relocating funds to invest in community services,» Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the «Squad,» posted to X in June 2020. «Let’s be clear, the people who now oppose this, have always opposed calls for systematic change.» 

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«Defunding the police has to happen,» former Democratic «Squad» member and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush told CBS News in August 2021. «We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets because we’re trying to save lives.»

People walk in Washington, D.C., after «defund the police» was painted on the street near the White House June 8, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Cities such as New York and Seattle slashed police budgets in response to the calls, with local leaders soon after reversing course as violent crimes such as carjackings and murders soared. 

Amid the defund the police rhetoric and protests, police morale cratered as lawmakers and locals backed away from supporting them. Cops retired en masse, while others moved from cities witnessing repeat protests to departments in states offering continued support for the police. 

Departments nationwide were left with persistent understaffing issues, including in large departments such as Philadelphia and Chicago. 

‘Unprecedented’

In 2025, in response to Trump’s anti-crime initiative in cities such as D.C., protests have formed to denounce the mission, in addition to some Democratic lawmakers vocally rejecting National Guard members from patrolling the streets. 

Protesters have marched from DuPont Circle to the White House in opposition to the federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and held «Free DC» gatherings aimed at removing the National Guard from the capital and ending the current federal control of the police department. 

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb additionally filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for federalizing D.C. under Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act and against Attorney General Pam Bondi’s order to install the DEA head as the emergency commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force. Schwalb called the moves «brazenly unlawful» that could «wreak operational havoc» on the Metropolitan Police Department.

Washington, D.C., leaders initially disapproved of Trump federalizing the local police department Aug. 11, with Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser calling the move «unprecedented,» «an intrusion on our autonomy» and characterizing it as an «authoritarian push» before changing her tune and earning the praise of the president. 

The city saw a 13-day period free of homicides after Trump’s crackdown, with Bowser rattling off how other crimes have dropped since Aug. 11 during a press conference Tuesday supporting the president’s mission to clean up the city. 

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«For carjackings, the difference between this period, this 20-day period of this federal surge and last year represents an 87% reduction in carjackings in Washington, D.C.,» she said. «We know that when carjackings go down, when use of gun goes down. When homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer. So, this surge has been important to us for that reason.

A group of protesters on electric unicycles rode through Lafayette Park near the White House carrying the Chicago flag after President Donald Trump alluded to sending the National Guard to Chicago and other major U.S. cities.  (Fox News Digital/Emma Woodhead)

«This is what we think in just a couple of weeks of experience has worked,» Bowser added. «Having more federal law enforcement officers on the street — we think having more stops that got to illegal guns has helped. We think that there is more accountability in the system, or at least perceived accountability in the system, that is driving down illegal behavior. We know that we have had fewer gun crimes, fewer homicides, and we have experienced an extreme reduction in carjackings.»

She did take issue with facets of the federalization, such as the use of masked ICE agents in neighborhoods and said relying on out-of-state National Guard troops in D.C. communities was inefficient. 

Trump on Tuesday lauded Bowser for her assistance, calling her and other local leaders such as the police commissioner a «great team.»

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Lott told Fox Digital that even if the federalization of D.C. ends Sept. 11, after the predetermined 30-day time period runs dry, the initiative will have lasting effects as many criminals have already been removed from the streets. There have been at least 1,669 arrests in D.C. since the federal crackdown began.

National Guard members stood among protesters at Union Station in Washington Aug. 31, 2025. (Fox News Digital/Emma Woodhead)

«It’s a mystery to me how Democrats can take that side of that issue, given that even Mayor Bowser now is saying what a success it’s been,» Lott said. «But you do have some longer-lasting effects that will be there, and one of them is the fact that you’ve already arrested and taken off the street a lot of these criminals. You’ve also arrested and caught, you know, a lot of illegal aliens that were there committing crimes.

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«I assume some of the illegals have moved out of the area, because it’s no longer effectively, or at least for a period of time, been a sanctuary area,» he said. «Now, whether some of them move back again when these, if these policies are allowed to change back, I don’t know. But at least you’re going to have some longer run impact from from this, even if, even if it were to end» Sept. 11. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Diana Stancy contributed to this report.