Newsom Attacks Republicans on Violent Crime—Data Tell Different Story
19th June 2025
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attacks on Republican states for their murder rates ignore a wealth of data on how violent crime plagues left-leaning parts of the country.
Newsom boasted in X posts throughout June that Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri had higher murder rates than California after Republican lawmakers from those states criticized him over the anti-deportation riots that rocked Los Angeles. However, statistics show California ranks above most states in overall violent crime, one of several statistics that do not fit Newsom’s narrative of conservatives failing to crack down on criminals.
The governor’s argument “lacks context and paints an inaccurate picture of crime in California,” Steve Smith, a crime expert for the Pacific Research Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Most states have lower overall felony crime rates than California,” Smith said. A study by Paper Prisons Initiative in 2020 put California’s felony rate among the top 15 in the country.