By Stefani E. Buhajla |

The Trump administration’s recent deployment of National Guard troops and federal resources to major U.S. cities reflects a growing majority of Americans who are fed up with inaction on public safety. After years of unchecked violence and open-air drug use, many see these moves not as overreach but as long overdue. 

Fueling much of this primordial decay is a Fentanyl epidemic, which is now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. Meanwhile, other rampant street drugs like meth and bath salts are inducing or worsening levels of psychosis, unlike anything in history. The result has been broken people, broken homes, broken cities, and unspeakable violence. Tents and waste sprawl across once beautiful urban centers while needles litter children’s playgrounds, and women avoid pumping their own gas after dark. 

The United States’ rate of violent crime, such as rape, robbery, and assault, is nearly three times higher than Europe’s. And the homicide rate? That’s seven times higher. Worse still, an alarming number of these crimes are perpetrated by repeat offenders. Our criminal justice system is failing to carry out the duties of its most basic requirement: to protect the public from career criminals. A quick glance at any morning paper on any given day in any city across America will tell the story.

In Charlotte, NC, Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska survived war only to be brutally stabbed to death on a train by a career criminal who never should have been free. The video of this horrific tragedy plays back in our nightmares over and again. We have seen enough.

The Cicero Institute’s new national poll puts numbers to this sadness and frustration:

• 82% support life in prison or the death penalty for aggravated murder, even when mental illness is involved.
• 63% want lenient judges removed from the bench.
• 75% support electronically monitoring transient sex offenders.
• 60% want automatic federal investigations into states that repeatedly release violent criminals, something the White House is already looking into.

But nothing captures the stakes more vividly than the testimonies of those who have to live with the consequences of failed policy. Stephen Federico, father of 22-year-old Logan Federico, gave emotional testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee in Charlotte. He recounted how his daughter was “executed … on her knees begging for her life … begging for her hero, her father. Me. And I could not protect her.” He did not lean on political ideology. He called out a broken system that allowed a man with at least 39 arrests and 25 felonies to remain on the streets, serving little time despite a decade of violent and property crime. “There is only one thing that would have kept my daughter alive,” he said. “Putting a career criminal in prison.”

And if you think it ends there, it doesn’t.

In Kentucky, the anguish of one father has come to embody a nation’s rage. Years after his six-year-old little boy was stabbed to death by a man deemed “criminally insane,” that man was granted parole “good behavior.” Dean Tipton has vowed that if the system will not deliver justice for his son, he will. His words are not a threat born of malice, but of despair. Thankfully, proactive law enforcement officials in Florida picked up the murderer on a parole violation, sparing Mr. Tipton further trauma.

But Americans should not have to wait for a technicality to get violent predators off the street. The voice of America is saying, “Enough.”

While we face rising crime, record overdose deaths, and exploding homelessness, bickering and posturing dominate from the local to the federal level by those who are content with the status quo of death, disease, and despair. The average family does not care about partisan brinkmanship. They care about being safe in their own neighborhoods.

In Athens, GA, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was dragged off her morning jog, beaten, and murdered by an illegal alien who had already been arrested in the U.S. and released back onto our streets. This was not an accident or a tragedy of circumstance. It was the predictable result of a government that refuses to protect its citizens, releasing violent men again and again until they finally kill one of our daughters. Riley’s blood, like Iryna’s and Logan’s, cries out against a broken system that values ideology and excuses over human life.

Yet instead of focusing on these failures, Leftists consumed by political theater are eager to offer aid to our enemy rather than save our cities from this terror. America is not asking for cruelty but for safety. Voters are not asking the government to shrug at addiction or mental illness. They want public spaces reclaimed for families and small businesses, not surrendered to chaos. 

That is what the poll numbers capture: a public demand for strong consequences that bring peace to our streets. People want dangerous offenders confined and controlled, drug dealers punished, transient sex offenders tracked, and public spaces cleared of disorder.

The new federal deployments mark a turning point. From state houses to our national capital, citizens are signaling to their elected officials that the duty of government is to protect them. And if current leaders cannot find the gumption to deliver security and justice, they should resign and make way for those who will. 

Americans have seen enough. The public’s patience has expired. They are eager to support leaders who will match words with courageous action.

Stefani E. Buhajla is a pollster, political strategist, and Sr. Director of Communications at the Cicero Institute.