As we mark one year into President Trump’s second term, the nation is thus unmistakably better off. Inflation is down, gas prices are down, the Dow is about to hit 50,000 and the economy is accelerating. Our borders are now secure, our military is rejuvenated, the murder rate has plummeted and our enemies now face American strength rather than softness.

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As the Trump Administration completes its first year back in office with a flawless military extraction and arrest of criminal Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, are Americans better off today than they were one year ago?  

Unequivocally yes, and there’s frankly no reasonable counterargument.  

Let’s start with matters of literal life and death.  

As even anti-Trump mainstream media conceded, the United States ended the year 2025 experiencing the largest one-year drop in murders ever recorded:  

Based on a sampling of preliminary crime statistics from 550 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a roughly 20% decrease in homicides nationwide, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News.  

“So, even taking a conservative view, let’s say it’s 17% or 16%, you’re still looking at the largest one-year drop ever recorded in 2025,” said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and New Orleans Police Department.  

Among the metropolitan areas conspicuously leading that decline?  Washington, D.C., where President Trump sent troops, with a 31% drop.  

That improvement reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to stronger law-and-order policies, which also finally brought improvement to our lawless southern border.  Contrary to the open-border permissiveness of the Biden Administration, which allowed countless millions of potential criminals and terrorists into the country undetected, Trump’s border policies redirected enforcement resources and reduced the number of illegal entries toward zero.  

We were lectured for years that securing our border required Congressional immigration reform, but the Trump Administration proved in one short year that it really only required commitment to the rule of law.  

The world is a safer place one year into the Trump Administration as well, due to its posture compelling adversaries to finally reckon with U.S. resolve.  In coordination with our Israeli allies, last year’s punishing air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities degraded Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and signaled to the world that the Biden Administration’s policy of appeasement was over.  Those military actions, paired with Trump’s tougher sanctions program, have pushed the Iranian theocracy to the precipice of revolution.  

Elsewhere, the past year under Trump brought the collapse of Hamas, release of Israeli hostages after years of captivity and ceasefire to a conflict that began under Biden’s unsteady watch.  

Domestically and economically, the Trump Administration’s first-year record is equally impressive.  

Declining gas prices offer one of the most tangible signs of economic improvement, and today the nationwide price per gallon stands poised to fall below $3 for the first time in five years.  That offers significant relief to families, but it also benefits the nation’s economy more broadly.  

Inflation, that stubborn tax on American wallets that reached alarming heights under Biden’s watch, is also down.  The latest official government data reports our annual inflation rate at 2.7%, which stands below the 3.0% rate when Biden left office.  For important context and contrast, at this point one year into the Biden Administration, inflation had already jumped from 1.4% in January 2021 to 7.0% by December, on its way to 9.1% in June 2022.  Simply put, the past year’s moderation reflects substantive progress as prices trend downward toward historical norms.  

Digging deeper, economic growth shows a similar one-year improvement.  In the third quarter of 2025, the last quarter for which official data is available, gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at a surprisingly strong 4.3%.  That follows a second quarter that showed similarly surprising expansion of 3.8% and a 0.6% economic contraction in the first quarter, which was Biden’s last.  It’s also over a full percentage point higher than the post-World War II average U.S. annual growth rate of 3.2%.  

All of that growth, of course, defied the “expert” consensus predicting doom under Trump.  

Elsewhere, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stands poised to hit 50,000, which benefits not only individual investors but the economy more broadly.  

And on another front, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military has achieved recruitment increases unseen in over fifteen years.  

Finally, as noted above, the Trump Administration just executed a masterful operation to extract and arrest Venezuela’s criminal dictator Nicolas Maduro.  The Maduro regime offered a longstanding haven for narcotraffickers and terrorists, a destabilizing force in the region and hemisphere and a threat to its democratic neighbors.  Bringing him to face American justice signals once again that dictators can no longer hide behind geography or false official title to inflict harm on the U.S. and our allies.  

As we mark one year into President Trump’s second term, the nation is thus unmistakably better off.  Inflation is down, gas prices are down, the Dow is about to hit 50,000 and the economy is accelerating.  Our borders are now secure, our military is rejuvenated, the murder rate has plummeted and our enemies now face American strength rather than softness.  

For the policy changes that brought that improvement, we should all be grateful.