President Donald Trump says he is preparing a lawsuit against the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning think tank, after one of its researchers said National Guard deployments to several U.S. cities had no measurable effect on crime.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that a lawsuit was “being drawn now” and said he was “strongly considering adding some of the contributors to this Fake Organization” to the litigation. Trump had shared a nearly identical message on August 10.
The president’s post targeted Chandler Hall, CAP’s Associate Director of Public Safety, who had said on television that deploying the National Guard to cities, including Washington, D.C., had “NO impact on Crime.”
“Chandler Hall, representing, on Television, the foolish Center for American Lack of Progress, stated that adding the National Guard to Cities, including our now Great Again, Washington, D.C., had ‘NO impact on Crime.’ How crazy is that. Hall was met with furious dissent. The report is just another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, WellsFargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal.”
Trump also pointed to foreign funding sources for CAP, naming the Embassy of Japan, the Korea Foundation and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates as among those that have contributed to the organization.
“The Dumocrats love it, and are against anything ‘TRUMP,'” Trump wrote. “These people, and others like them, are so bad for our Country. Their stated course is anything to hate or demean ‘TRUMP.'”
What the CAP report found
The report by Hall argues that the Trump administration is trying to take credit for a nationwide drop in violent crime that began before Trump returned to office. It states that violent crime and homicides were already falling in American cities in 2023 and 2024, and that the administration has nonetheless continued to press city and state leaders while pointing to National Guard deployments as evidence its approach is working.
According to the CAP analysis, there is no evidence that National Guard deployments have reduced violent crime, and if the deployments continue through the end of 2026, they could cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion.
The report says the 11 cities where the Guard was deployed or threatened with deployment saw a 14 percent decrease in their 12-month rolling violent crime rate and a 22 percent decrease in their 12-month rolling murder rate between June 2024 and June 2025 — before the Guard was first sent to Los Angeles. The report contends this pre-existing decline is being used to falsely credit the administration’s policies.
The National Guard has been deployed to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans amid the administration’s efforts to address crime and unrest in those cities.
Separately, Breitbart News reported in August 2025 that overall violent crime in Washington, D.C., fell 22 percent in the week after Trump announced his crackdown on crime in the city, with no murders reported in the capital over that seven-day period.
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