(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Thursday seemed to hold up Illinois as a model for Democrats nationwide, despite Chicago being one of the deadliest cities in America.
The top Democrat leader made the comparison when asked by a reporter about Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s downplaying polls showing Democrats are concerned about crime.
The reporter asked whether Pritzker was “out of touch?”
Jeffries replied: “I think Governor Pritzker is doing a tremendous job on behalf of the people in the great state of Illinois and is committed to continuing to drive crime down in Chicago as Democrats are committed to driving crime down all across the United States of America.”
🚨 JUST IN: Hakeem Jeffries DEMANDS the United States adopt Illinois' "crime-fighting model," an example city of which is Chicago, where he says crime is quickly being brought under control as a result of Democrat policies.
Spoken with a straight face. pic.twitter.com/I1poWl8vmP
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 10, 2025
Jeffries’s conflation of Pritzker’s policies with those of Democrats was shocking, given that Chicago has led the country in murders for a staggering 13 years.
Democrats have long dismissed this fact by pointing to population numbers to explain away the homicide rate.
It comes as Trump continues to call out Illinois Democrats for failing to address Chicago’s murder problem.
“Chicago is the murder capital of the world,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sept. 2. Earlier, he had said, “Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far.”
The White House released an article fact-checking some of the Democrats’ defenses of Chicago.
“For 13 consecutive years, Chicago has had the most murders of any U.S. city,” the White House wrote. “For seven consecutive years, Chicago has had the highest murder rate among U.S. cities with more than one million people.”
It added, “In 2024, Chicago’s murder rate per capita was three times higher than Los Angeles and nearly five times higher than New York City. That’s more than double the murder rate in Islamabad and nearly 15 times more than Delhi.”
