Axios changed a headline, which claimed crime dropped across major American cities despite efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to combat it, following extensive public backlash.
The outlet originally published a story with the headline, “Crime plunges in major cities despite Trump’s crackdown rhetoric,” which was quickly met with criticism from users. Axios deleted their X post of the story featuring the headline, replacing it with a new post with the headline, “Violent crime dropped sharply across America’s biggest cities in 2025, according to new data reviewed by Axios.”
Axios confirmed on X the deletion of the original post but did not give a reason as to why they had removed it or changed the headline.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a screenshot of the original headline to X, calling Axios’ original framing of the story “ridiculous” and “why Americans don’t trust the media.”
This ridiculous framing is why Americans don’t trust the media.
President Trump securing the border, mobilizing federal law enforcement to arrest violent criminals, and deporting the worst of the worst illegal aliens is EXACTLY what’s driving the massive drop in crime. pic.twitter.com/yfiC4BUHbt
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) February 11, 2026
As of early Wednesday afternoon, the Axios story made no mention of the original headline and did not explain why the news outlet decided to change it.
Critics of Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement cited Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) violent crime statistics that showed a 35% decrease before the president sent in the federal forces. However, the MPD statistics that show the violent crime decline only include homicide, sex abuse, assault with a deadly weapon and robbery, while excluding aggravated assault and felony assault without use of weapon, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported in August 2025.
Axios came under scrutiny in September 2025 when the news outlet published an article accusing Trump’s supporters of using the random fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina to suggest crime is getting worse. The article claimed the video became a “large accelerant” as a “visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.”
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