Trump says murders are up in Democrat-run cities. They’re up in Republican-run cities, too.

President Donald Trump at the first presidential debate. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

Trump’s comments at the presidential debate paint a misleading picture about crime and violence in the US.

President Donald Trump at Tuesday’s presidential debate claimed that crime is up in Democrat-run cities. “I think it’s a party issue,” Trump said, repeating a claim he’s made in the past, and citing recent increases in the murder rates in Chicago and New York City.

The argument, in short, is that if you can’t trust Democrats to run cities, you shouldn’t trust Democratic candidate Joe Biden with the presidency.

But Trump’s underlying claim — that Democrat-run cities are unique in their crime spikes — is wrong.

For one, crime isn’t actually up this year. Based on the latest reports, violent crime overall is flat, and property and drug offenses are actually down.

What is up is the homicide rate. A report by the Council on Criminal Justice found that the homicide rate increased sharply this summer across 27 US cities: “Homicide rates between June and August of 2020 increased by 53% over the same period in 2019, and aggravated assaults went up by 14%.” Other data, from crime analyst Jeff Asher, found that murder is up 28 percent throughout the year so far, compared to the same period in 2019, in a sample of 59 US cities. A preliminary FBI report also found murders up 15 percent nationwide in the first half of 2020.

But this is true in both Democrat-run and Republican-run cities. According to Asher, the murder rate in cities with Democratic mayors is up 29 percent so far in 2020. In those with Republican mayors, the murder rate is up 26 percent, a statistically negligible difference.

Consider Miami, a city overseen by a Republican mayor and Republican governor: The murder rate there is up by more than 28 percent, with 77 murders in 2020, up from 60 last year. Asher reported that increases in the murder rate were recorded in several Republican cities across the country, from Jacksonville, Florida, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Fort Worth, Texas.

Not to mention all these increases are happening under Trump’s watch.

All of that is to say that whatever is causing murders to spike this year, political party isn’t it.

So what’s going on? Criminologists and other experts caution that they don’t really know yet. But they’ve offered several potential explanations: The Covid-19 pandemic, and all the chaos that it’s wrought, could have led to more homicides — by hurting social support programs that can prevent escalating violence, damaging the economy, and overwhelming hospitals that treat violent crime victims, among other possibilities. The protests around police brutality and systemic racism may have led cops to back off proactive policing, or caused the general public to trust the police less and subsequently work with the cops less often, both of which could have led to more unchecked violence. A surge in gun purchases this year could have fueled more gun violence.

Or maybe none of this is right. With limited data in very strange times, it’s entirely possible we have no idea what’s going on. “We can bet on it being unpredictable,” Jennifer Doleac, director of the Justice Tech Lab, previously told me.

Such uncertainty isn’t strange in criminology. Over the past three decades, America has seen a massive drop in violent crime and murder — a decrease that the current surge hasn’t erased. Though there are many theories about what’s caused the decades-long crime drop, there’s still no consensus among experts.

But, at least for 2020, we can say one thing: The year’s spike in murders transcends political parties.

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Key moments from Trump and Biden’s first primetime showdown

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have spent months sparring from afar, laying the groundwork for an intense showdown on Tuesday night.

Here are the key moments so far from their first primetime debate:

Trump tries to steamroll the moderator

President Donald Trump tangled with debate moderator Chris Wallace early in the night, repeatedly interrupting a question about why he hasn’t released a comprehensive health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

“If I may ask my question, sir,” Wallace, the Fox News journalist, pressed as Trump kept cutting him off as he tried to ask the question.

“First of all, I guess I’m debating you, not him,” Trump shot back at Wallace. “I’m not surprised.”

Biden tells Trump to 'shut up'

Biden snapped at Trump just about 20 minutes into the debate after a line of questioning on the Supreme Court went off the rails.

“Will you shut up, man?” Biden said after Trump repeatedly talked over him. “This is so unpresidential.”

At times, the debate was an unintelligible jumble of the two candidates and Wallace talking over each other. As Wallace tried to move to the next topic area, Biden quipped “that was a really productive segment, wasn’t it? Keep yapping, man.”

While talking about the future of universal healthcare, Biden asked “do you have any idea what this clown is doing? I tell you what, he is not for any help for any people needing health care.”

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Trump's big tax breaks could make it easier for Biden to sell tax hikes on wealthy

Revelations that President Donald Trump paid no federal income taxes for years could energize Democratic efforts to hike taxes on the wealthy, should former Vice President Joe Biden capture the White House in November.

But Democrats on Capitol Hill don’t plan to go after the tax provisions that allowed Trump to pay virtually no taxes — instead they plan to focus on using Trump as the poster child for why Washington needs to hike taxes on the rich, and to push the IRS to crack down on the president and other wealthy taxpayers who they believe are clearly abusing the system.

“One of the key lessons that has to come out of this is about the need for enforcement to prosecute precisely this kind of avoidance, which probably slides into evasion,” said Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who was Biden’s top economic adviser when he was vice president and is now a campaign adviser.

A debate over a particular preference Trump has used to escape taxes “is a distraction,” Bernstein said.

Top Democrats on the Hill have largely echoed those thoughts, pointing to years of budget cuts at the IRS forced by Republicans, particularly during the Obama administration.

“Funding key priorities for middle-class families like health care depends on cracking down on wealthy tax cheats like Donald Trump, and that will be one of my top priorities if Democrats retake the Senate,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said after the New York Times’ disclosures about Trump’s taxes.

Wyden’s statement notably didn’t delve into any tax policy changes he would seek because of the revelations that Trump paid little or nothing in taxes for most of this century.

After decades of largely playing defense on tax policy, Democrats have been pushing aggressive plans to boost taxes on the wealthy to fund programs for lower- and middle-income people, and they’re betting that Trump’s tax practices will allow them to press that message.

Biden has floated trillions of dollars in new taxes on the rich to pay for policies like student debt forgiveness and expanded childcare for middle- and lower-income people. His biggest-ticket items include boosting the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent, from 37 percent, for those earning more than $400,000, and the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent.

He also wants to boost payroll taxes for higher earners and tax capital gains and dividends at the same rate as ordinary income for those making more than $1 million.

In all, the conservative Tax Foundation says that Biden’s tax plan would raise around $3 trillion over a decade.

Still, there are some Democrats itching to piggyback on the news about Trump’s tax practices to roll back the ability of businesses to use losses from one year to offset profits in another — a tactic that Trump has leaned on heavily.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, both Democratic tax writers, were the loudest critics of provisions in March’s bipartisan coronavirus relief package that gave businesses a greater ability to use losses to lower their tax bills.

Doggett successfully pushed to include a repeal of those preferences in the House’s latest pandemic response measure, and both he and Whitehouse now say that the new details about Trump’s tax history only add urgency to their efforts.

“In addition to learning that President Trump was a failed businessman, his tax returns show he’s exploited loopholes to avoid paying taxes while maintaining a life of luxury,” said Whitehouse. “In particular, he used a loophole to use his enormous business losses in certain years to cancel out the taxes he owed in the few years he made money.”

But there are plenty of tax experts who believe that it would be a policy mistake for Democrats to go after the tax provisions employed by Trump, which are a long-standing part of the tax code and help businesses even out profits and losses from one year to the next.

“I don't think there is anything too obvious one could change about the income tax that would have a meaningful impact on Trump's taxes or taxpayers in a similar situation,” said Kyle Pomerleau of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

It’s perfectly reasonable to give companies more latitude to spread around their losses, he said, especially in down times like after the 2008 financial crisis and during the current pandemic.

Trump, in fact, did benefit after the 2009 stimulus, which Biden played a big role in crafting and gave businesses more ability to use red ink to get a break on their taxes.

For many of the party’s tax writers, the stories about Trump’s low tax bills and questionable accounting methods also point more to the failures of IRS enforcement than any particular holes in the tax code. Democrats and a range of experts believe more funding for the IRS would help to squeeze more revenue out of rich people who might be too aggressive with their tax planning.

“There’s no magic formula to stop people from putting in fake [deductions] that are personal” expenses, said Daniel Shaviro, a law professor at New York University. “Auditing is the response to that.”

“The systemic scandal here is that people just aren’t being audited,” he added.

In fact, the IRS’ audit rate has plunged in recent years, falling to 0.33 percent for individuals in 2017 from 1.01 percent in 2010. For corporations, the rate dropped to 0.44 percent from 1.55 percent.

The amount of revenue agents has tumbled as well, down from almost 14,000 in 2010 to 8,500 in 2019.

Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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