Politics

Black mayors celebrate drop in crime, even if they aren’t getting any credit

Published

1 year ago

September 27, 2025

Some of the nation’s most prominent Black mayors are celebrating major drops in crime in their cities — and grumbling that President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to realize the accomplishment.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that cities, particularly those run by Democrats, are overrun with violence, despite the fact that 2025 is on track to have the fewest homicides ever recorded by the FBI. He deployed troops to Los Angeles and Washington and threatened to send them elsewhere.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said that ignores the realities in cities like his, which recorded just five homicides in April, its lowest on record.

“When we accomplish those things, then the goal post gets moved,” Scott said Friday at a forum of mayors at the annual conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “People are like, ‘well, what about stolen cars?’”

Scott’s views were echoed by other mayors at the event, including Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Oakland’s Barbara Lee and Washington’s Muriel Bowser — all targets of the president’s rhetoric about safety in American cities.

Johnson, whose city is experiencing a 30 percent drop in crime and the fewest homicides it has seen in a decade, says the focus is no accident.

“I just want to lift up the fact that the very places that are under attack are all spaces that are led by Black leaders,” he said to a mostly Black audience. “We just got to name it. I know we know that, but I want to say it out loud that it’s very intentional, because there is an extremism in this country that has not accepted the results of the Civil War and they’re fully engaged in the rematch.”

Bowser said Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington under a “fake emergency” that was cover for immigration enforcement. The federal action, she said, has “been very menacing and has disrupted … the trust that our communities have with our own police.”

The federal law enforcement presence in Washington was originally set to last for 30 days ending earlier this month, but has since been extended.

Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, said many Black mayors applaud and have taken notes from Bowser’s handling of the National Guard deployments and how to resist, but not forcefully agitate Trump in the process — all while juggling the expectations of their citizens.

“We live at the intersection of white fear and Black expectation,” said Johnson, head of the African American Mayors Association. “It’s a very, very unique intersection for us … [because the] white fear is that we’re doing too much, and Black expectation that we’re not doing enough. It is a very hard and very lonely place.”

Politics

Top GOP groups scale back North Carolina spending

Published

18 minutes ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leading Republicans are pulling back from the North Carolina Senate race, sending a clear message: What was a top-tier battleground at the start of the cycle is no longer worth the money.

The foremost Senate GOP super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, is pausing its future spending in North Carolina and instead launching a seven-figure ad buy in deep-red Kansas, according to one person familiar with the move. The news was first reported by Semafor.

The dramatic change in strategy — less than four weeks before the midterms — comes after SLF previously spent more than $30 million to boost GOP nominee Michael Whatley. It also comes as public polling has continued to show Whatley unable to close the gap against popular former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate.

Republicans are now deprioritizing a state that President Donald Trump carried in all three presidential runs, and that Democrats haven’t won in the Senate since 2008.

“We are all clear-eyed about where North Carolina stands,” said one national GOP operative working on Senate races, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

SLF isn’t the only major GOP group shifting away from North Carolina as Republicans focus on other must-win seats and deep-red states, amid the Iran war, high fuel prices and other economic fallout of the war in Iran.

Earlier Friday, the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, as POLITICO reported. Another major Republican group focused specifically on boosting Whatley — Old North Action — removed $6.5 million in ad reservations from North Carolina’s Senate race last month.

“Michael Whatley is a good man who took one for the team — but with states like Alaska, Kansas, and Texas requiring continued resource commitments, there is only so much,” said another national GOP operative working on midterm races. “Especially against a very popular former Governor in Roy Cooper.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is currently running coordinated ad reservations with six of its battleground candidates. Whatley in North Carolina is not one of them, according to data from advertising tracking service AdImpact.

NRSC regional press secretary Nick Puglia said in a statement that “Whatley will put North Carolina families first by cutting taxes and keeping criminals locked up.”

Whatley for months has struggled to boost his name ID against the much better-known Cooper. Some recent public polls show Cooper leading Whatley by double-digit margins. Private polling has also hardly budged, despite the recent influx of spending, according to a person working on the race.

In a statement, Whatley spokesperson DJ Griffin said the team feels “confident we have the resources” to win in November.

“Roy Cooper recently said about federal elections in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not,’” Griffin said. “Undecided Voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those Late-Breakers typically go Republican.”

AFP Action and Old North Action did not immediately respond to a request for comment about North Carolina. SLF declined to comment.

SLF’s decision came as a shock to some, but not all, North Carolina Republicans — mostly because Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been scheduled to be in North Carolina for an event with Whatley on Thursday night. Thune ended up joining the event virtually, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

For weeks, top Republicans acknowledged North Carolina may be slipping away. One Republican who attended a donor meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and SLF during the Dallas convention told POLITICO that holding the state would be “tough.”

“The map has shifted a little bit, and to be fair, we knew that was going to be a tough one from the beginning,” said one GOP operative working on Senate races, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.

Democrats are not letting up, recognizing that the contest in the purple state could still be close.

“A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades, and North Carolina is a 50-50 state,” Cooper campaign manager Jeff Allen said in a statement.

“We’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense,” Allen said.

One North Carolina GOP strategist said that while Whatley has been a “fine” candidate, the current political climate coupled with Cooper’s long record in the state may be too much to overcome. And while Republicans have repeatedly hammered Cooper on crime, he still has strong favorability ratings from his time as governor.

“He’s really kind of hard to paint as a radical, ’cause, you know, he’s like Aunt Martha. She’s just been there forever. And so it’s just very difficult to get any traction on that, because, you know, people say, ‘well, Roy’s okay,’” they said.

When told that SLF was moving money from North Carolina to Kansas, the strategist responded: “$6.50 diesel fuel will kick your ass.”