5 Jul 2024

A beginner’s guide to homemade cheese ravioli

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Gretchen McKay | (TNS) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Making Italy’s favorite dumpling from scratch can give even practiced home cooks reason to pause.

Homemade ravioli requires mixing and rolling a mixture of egg and flour into delicate, almost translucent dough sheets, which can prove an exercise in frustration if you don’t have a nonna lending an experienced hand.

But as TikTok phenom and pasta chef Ryan Peters sees it, the key to nailing the process usually boils down to two things: using quality ingredients and being willing to practice — sometimes again and again — until you get good at it.

“At its core, it’s two simple ingredients,” he says. “If my 3-year-old can do it, so can you! And if you mess it up, I’m sure it will still be an edible mistake.”

He’s got evidence of both in the hundreds of photos and how-to videos he started posting on social media a couple of years after graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Academy of Culinary Arts in 2012, and in the years since has racked up millions (and millions) of views. In his words, “mind blowing!”

From the start of his career, which has included stints at now-closed Salt of the Earth in Garfield and Brunoise in Smallman Galley, along with club jobs in Florida, the Reading, Pennsylvania, native has always been good about documenting his journey as a chef through journals and iPhone photos. But his occasional posts to Instagram and Facebook never got much traction, he recalls.

It wasn’t until he finally created a TikTok account in July 2019, when he was helping to build out the pasta program at Iron Born Pizza in the Strip District, that his career as a pasta chef really took off.

He’d started honing his pasta game in earnest the year before, after making it one night after work for his wife, Caroline. Though he’d made the dish a million times before as a chef, fresh pasta was never his thing. But that night, it wasn’t just great — it was so fantastic that he made another pound of pasta the next day, and then again for the next 63 days in a row.

“I’d come home, make dough, roll it out and make different shapes to understand it,” he says. “And that’s when I decided to become a pasta chef.”

Cheese ravioli ingredients. (Sebastian Foltz/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Part of the appeal was the simplicity of the dish — how just a handful of everyday ingredients can turn into something very delicious. “And I just love that everyone in the world relates to pasta,” Peters says. “Everyone eats noodles at some point in their life. It’s a very universal thing.”

As far as his TikTok launch: “I was hearing about it from everybody and especially my younger brother, Matthew,” he recalls with a chuckle. “And I was like, ‘What is this? It’s ridiculous. I’m not getting it.’”

Matthew, though, was persistent and soon after Peters joined the platform, he posted a five-second video of him rolling cavatelli to the Trey Songz tune “Slow Motion.” To everyone’s surprise, it went viral, chalking up a half-million viewers in just 24 hours. “And I thought, ‘This is insane!’”

Before too long, the chef was posting several times a day and had earned 300,000 followers on the platform. “I got to the point where I was almost juggling two full-time jobs,” he says. “I’d do my thing at Iron Born then be up to 2 or 3 a.m. creating content,” in his home studio.

Still, it wasn’t until he took a month off from his restaurant job in November 2020 after the birth of his son, Gavin, that he realized his TikTok work wasn’t just a hobby — it was a business with potential to make money and be sustainable if he put work into it.

Five months later, he left Iron Born to become a full-time TikTok creator under the handle @peterspasta. Today, the 30-year-old counts more than 5 million followers and more than 1 billion views on the platform, with 8 1/2 million followers across all of his social platforms. On YouTube alone, he has more than 1.4 billion views.

Peters credits his success to the fact he got “lucky.” He hit his stride in 2021 right as the COVID-19 pandemic was ending and things were opening up again. Or as he puts it, “I had a pretty decent following when the nworld shut down and I thought, ‘What can I do to take advantage of this?’”

He started by reaching out to the Steelers to see if he could make pasta at Heinz Field, and from there, “it just snowballed,” he says.

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In the years since, Peters has traveled across the U.S. to make thousands of pounds of fresh pasta using thousands of eggs in a multitude of locations with sponsorships from various brands — at other major sports stadiums, aboard cruise ships, on the top of the Empire State Building in New York City and even in the middle of an aisle at Walmart. Celebrity helpers include everyone from the Pirate Parrot to Mr. Peanut.

Last year’s “Double Batch” series, in which he doubled the number of eggs in a batch each day for two weeks, was his largest pasta project to date. It ended on Day 14 with Peters and YouTuber MrBeast (and a crew of other helpers) cracking 10,000 eggs into 600 pounds of flour in a warehouse in North Carolina to make “a lot of pasta dough.” Some of it was handed out for free afterward by a food truck to local residents, and the rest went to a neighborhood food bank.

Most of Peters’ big batches, in fact, are donated. One favorite charity is Outreached Arms, which works to get food to the homeless community. Bread of Life and the Community Free Fridge in Etna have also been beneficiaries.

While he started just wanting to entertain his online audience, Peters says one of main goals today is to try to get more people in the kitchen making homemade pasta. To that end, he’s getting ready to launch a summer cooking podcast wherein he’ll cook a dish or meal for a celebrity guest as they sit at a kitchen counter. “And we’ll have a conversation that will show them in a different light,” he says.

He also hopes to start dried pasta and pasta sauce lines, though both projects are on the back burner for the moment because he’s so busy.

In the meantime, Peters — who has never wanted to do anything but cook since he was in the second grade — will keep creating content for his food-obsessed audience.

For those who want to try to make homemade pasta themselves, and turn it into ravioli, he offers these tips:

Mix on low speed until a ball of dough just comes together. (Sebastian Foltz/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

—Because pasta is so simple — ingredients include just eggs and flour and maybe water — use the best you can because “there’s nothing to hide behind.” In his opinion, that includes super-fine white “00” flour (available at Italian markets such as Pennsylvania Macaroni Co.). He also recommends free-range eggs, which tend to have a deep yellow-orange yolk.

—He only uses egg yolks for a richer dough, but it’s perfectly fine to use the entire egg if you don’t have a use for the whites.

—Making pasta the old-fashioned way like he does on camera — adding yolks to a well of flour and mixing it together with a fork and bench scraper — is fun, but it’s also challenging. There’s no shame in using a food processor to mix and knead the dough. “Whether you’re forming it by hand or in a mixer, you’re doing the same thing — incorporating air into the dough to create texture.”

—To recreate his recipe, mix 100 grams (a little more than 3/4 cup) of flour for every 1 egg yolk and plan on 1 egg per person.

—Let the dough rest for 35-45 minutes before rolling. You’ll know it’s ready to go when it’s smooth, and the dough bounces back when you press it with a finger or thumb.

—In a rush? If you place the dough in a vacuum sealer, Peters says, you can roll it out right away because it will immediately hydrate the dough.

—If you pre-roll or stretch a piece of dough into a perfect rectangle before running it through the pasta machine, you usually will get a perfectly straight sheet.

—When rolling, don’t be afraid to go pretty thin; you should almost be able to see through it on a wooden board. Because the filling will be sandwiched between two pieces, “You want nice and delicate,” says Peters.

—Experiment with different fillings and seasonings. Peters loves to add a little lemon zest along with herbs to his ricotta cheese filling for a bright, citrusy touch.

Spoon cheese ravioli onto the dough. (Sebastian Foltz/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Three Cheese Ravioli

PG tested

For dough

Pasta recipes vary depending on the cookbook. Some include only egg yolks, others use whole eggs and still others add water or olive oil. After trying many, my go-to recipe comes from Linda Miller Nicholson’s “Pasta, Pretty Please: A Vibrant Approach to Handmade Noodles” cookbook. It works every time!

I used a hand-cranked pasta rolling machine to roll out the dough, but in a pinch you could also use a rolling pin. Kneading the dough before it rests is essential to create pasta dough that is smooth and elastic, so put some muscle into it. Always let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes after you make it to allow the gluten strands to relax.

Fresh pasta will keep up to three days in the refrigerator wrapped in plastic. Oxidation may cause it to turn gray, but the taste won’t be affected. It also freezes beautifully and will last up to a month in the freezer.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
For filling
8 ounces fresh ricotta cheese, drained
8 ounces shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg, beaten
Pinch red pepper flakes
Pinch grated nutmeg
Chopped parsley, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste

To serve

Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce (recipe follows)

Grated Parmesan cheese

Prepare pasta dough: Combine flour and eggs in bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, and mix on low speed until a ball of dough forms. Continue to knead for 3 minutes, either by hand or in the mixer, so that the dough develops elasticity and silkiness.

Cover the ball of dough in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes before using. Alternatively, you can let the dough rest for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator.

While dough is resting, make filling: In large bowl, stir together ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan, beaten egg, red pepper flakes, grated nutmeg and chopped parsley until well combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Roll pasta dough: Using a bench scraper, divide the dough into six equal portions. Lightly dust a parchment-covered baking sheet with cornmeal or flour and set it aside. (This is where you will place pasta after it’s rolled.) Lightly dust your work area with flour.

Pat dough into a small rectangle and dust with flour. Set pasta maker to widest setting and pass dough through the machine.

Place dough on a lightly floured work surface. Fold both ends in so that they meet at the center of the dough, and then fold the dough in half where the end points meet, trying not to incorporate too much air into the folds. Pass through the rollers 3 additional times.

Narrow the setting by 1 notch and repeat putting pasta through the rollers 2 or 3 more times. Continue working your way down the settings until pasta reaches the desired thickness. It should now be very delicate, elastic to the touch and slightly translucent. (Trimming the ends into a straight line will make it easier to feed through the roller.)

Place rolled pasta sheet on floured work area. Dollop the cheese filling (in rounded teaspoons) down the center of half the sheet, spaced 2 inches or so apart. Fold the empty half over the top of cheese dollops and, with your fingers, smooth gently around the filing to get the air bubbles out. Press to seal the edges then, using a 2 1/2 -inch ravioli stamp cutter, cut out ravioli. (It will automatically seal at the same time.)

Alternatively, lay a matching piece of dough on top of the sheet with ricotta, then press down all around the edges to seal the shape and cut out ravioli with stamp cutter. Or, cut into small squares with a knife and press down around the edges again with your fingertips to seal.

Place finished ravioli on a baking tray and continue forming remaining ravioli.

It only takes five minutes to boil fresh cheese ravioli. (Sebastian Foltz/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add half the ravioli and cook until the ravioli float, stirring occasionally, about 3-4 minutes. Drain into a large bowl and cook the remaining ravioli.

Serve ravioli topped with tomato sauce and a generous amount of grated Parmesan.

Serves 6.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce

2 cups tomatoes, in addition to their juices
5 tablespoons butter
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt

Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter and the onion halves in a saucepan. Add a pinch or two of salt. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with a spoon. Add salt as needed.

Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta. This recipe makes enough sauce for a pound of pasta.

©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

5 Jul 2024

Barrett sought middle ground in Trump immunity case. This time Roberts said no

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David G. Savage | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ended its term divided into partisan blocs, with the Republican appointees ruling in favor of former President Trump’s claim of immunity while the three Democratic appointees voiced a bitter dissent.

It’s exactly the result many critics of the court might have expected, with politics driving the law. It’s also what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has tried hard to avoid—at least most of the time.

For much of this year, Roberts and the justices succeeded in defusing partisan splits with narrow or procedural rulings.

By a 9-0 vote, they threw out a Texas lawsuit seeking to block millions of American women from obtaining abortion pills. They denied gun rights to people who are under a domestic violence restraining order in a 8-1 decision.

But the chief justice did not seek to bridge the partisan divide in the case of Trump vs. United States. He passed up the chance for a narrow, consensus ruling offered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that could have won over the court’s liberals.

A former Notre Dame law professor,

Barrett saw no need for a broad ruling on presidential immunity in Trump’s case.

“Properly conceived, the president’s constitutional protection from prosecution is narrow,” she wrote in a concurring opinion. “The Constitution does not insulate presidents from criminal liability for official acts.”

Yes, the president cannot be prosecuted for the exercise of his “core” constitutional powers, she said, agreeing with the conservative majority on that point.

But she said the indictment before the court focused on Trump’s effort overturn his election defeat by, for example, encouraging Republican state legislators to create false slates of electors claiming that Trump, not Biden, won in their state.

This is “private conduct,” Barrett said. “The president has no authority over state legislatures,” and the Constitution offers Trump “no protection from prosecution of acts taken in a private capacity.”

That was just the kind of middle-ground position that Roberts usually seeks. Instead, he dismissed it.

The court must uphold “enduring principles” involving the “separation of powers and the future of our Republic…We cannot afford to fixate exclusively, or even primarily, on present exigencies,” he said, referring to the case before the court.

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It wasn’t the first time Barrett split with Roberts this year in a high-profile case involving Trump. One week ago, Barrett disagreed with Roberts and said she would have upheld the obstruction charges against the Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 of 2021. She said Roberts did “textual backflips” to ignore what the law said.

Why did Roberts and the four conservatives on his right insist on a broad ruling on presidential immunity?

Unlike Barrett, all five have worked in Washington in Republican administrations and are attuned to how politics drives most investigations that involve presidents and their administrations.

Roberts and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh worked as White House lawyers for Republican presidents.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was in high school when his mother, Anne Gorsuch, was forced to resign as President Reagan’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. House Democrats had voted to hold her in contempt for refusing to turn over documents at the behest of the White House involving hazardous waste dumps.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. came to the court after tough confirmation hearings where they clashed with then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) More recently, they have been steady targets of Democrats for their undisclosed vacation trips paid for by billionaires. They were the most likely to vote for Trump’s broad claim of immunity.

Many Republicans, not just Trump’s supporters, saw the prosecutions of the former president through a political lens. Never before, they said, had a former president from one party been indicted for crimes by the administration of the party that replaced him.

Moreover, the Trump case took shape in the past year as the former president prepared to run against the Democratic president who ousted him.

In November 2022, Trump announced he would seek the presidency again. Biden said he too would run. Biden’s Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland then appointed Jack Smith, a hard-charging prosecutor, as a special counsel to pursue the investigation of Trump for his actions following the 2020 election.

Last August, Smith indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn his election loss, and he sought a fast-track jury trial for early this year. He also indicted Trump in Florida for mishandling secret and highly classified documents.

Meanwhile in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump on 34 felony counts for false booking keeping entries intended to hide payments to a porn star. New York’s state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sought and won a $355 million civil penalty against Trump for allegedly inflating his assets. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump and 18 others on state racketeering charges involving the 2020 election.

Democrats and progressive groups cheered the indictments as signs that Trump was finally being held to account in the courts for his misdeeds. They were not prepared for what happened when Trump’s case reached the Supreme Court.

In early December, the special counsel petitioned the justices to take up Trump’s claims immediately. It is of “imperative public importance” the case move promptly toward a trial, he said. Two weeks later, his appeal was turned down without comment.

In February, the U.S. appeals court in Washington said the case may move forward, but the Supreme Court put it on hold and scheduled arguments for the end of April on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.

Those arguments and this week’s opinion made clear that Roberts and the conservative justices saw the issue through an entirely different prism than the liberals and Democrats.

“No president has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office,” Roberts said. Responding to the fierce dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he said she was engaged in “fear mongering” which ignores the “more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors.” He foresaw “the enfeebling of the presidency” and “a cycle of factional strife.”

Roberts concluded by noting the newly declared immunity for presidents “applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”

Which poses the greater danger to the nation: a president who can break the law knowing he is forever shielded from prosecution or a presidents under constant threat that they may face prosecution after leaving office by partisan opponents?

Georgetown law professor Irv Gornstein, director of its Supreme Court Institute, said that question explains much about the outcome.

“If you think that tit-for-tat prosecution of ex-presidents poses a greater risk to the presidency and democracy than Trump, you probably think that presumptive immunity for all official acts makes sense,” he said. “But if you think that Trump is the greater threat, as many Americans almost certainly do, you probably think the court cares more about Trump and his reelection prospects than it does about democracy and the rule of law.”

“When a sizable portion of the public has already lost confidence in the court, that is something the court ought to worry about,” he added.

Many critics on the left said the chief justice had made a colossal error of judgment that will overshadow his career.

Quinta Jurecic and Ben Wittes, writing in the Lawfare blog, called it a “decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times.”

The “court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves—if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale,” the pair said. “In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume the executive power of the United States.”

Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, a top Justice Department attorney under President George W. Bush, said in response that it will not be clear for some time whether the court made the right call. But he said the Democratic lawyers made a mistake by relying on the courts to stop Trump.

“It has been a fantasy for many years now to think that courts and prosecutors can purge the nation of a law-defiant populist demagogue,” he said. “Only politics, not law, can do that.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

5 Jul 2024

Lost in the presidential race? These are the issues that matter to voters

by | posted in: Politics | 0

Michelle Baruchman and Caleb Groves | (TNS) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ATLANTA — Since the presidential debate in Atlanta last Thursday, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have faced a barrage of criticism about their performance.

For Biden, it’s been framed around his age, with polls showing many voters consider him too old to serve another term. For Trump, his responses led some to consider him too dangerous to retake command.

The focus on the candidates’ personalities and defects have meant that key topics important to voters in Georgia have flown under the radar.

After Patrick Delisle, a 55-year-old physical therapist from Cherokee County, watched the televised debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, he said neither candidate addressed some of the biggest issues he’s worried about, such as the economy and immigration.

“Both candidates, in my opinion, didn’t really answer questions a lot of times, but what did you expect from these two guys?” Delisle said.

Here are the issues that ranked highest in importance to Georgia voters, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll published ahead of the debate:

Inflation/cost of living

By far, the issues that reigned supreme on voters’ minds are those discussed at the kitchen table: gas prices, paying for groceries, housing. More than one-quarter of respondents, 26%, said inflation and cost of living will have the largest impact on their vote in November. The issue also ranked as the top concern when cutting across demographic lines, such as race, gender, age and income level.

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation rose globally. But since recovery efforts began, the U.S. has seen its inflation figures reduced as compared with other developed countries. Still, many voters believe their dollar is not going as far as it used to.

“I used to be able to save a ton more money,” said Carly Loggins, a 23-year-old real estate agent from Athens. “I’m not able to save hardly anything now. I just live paycheck to paycheck.”

Economy/jobs

Concern about the nation’s economy and growth of jobs was also high on the list, with 16% ranking it their chief priority, despite data suggesting the economy is improving.

It can feel like whiplash to get a fair picture of the economy. On one hand, the unemployment rate is at an all-time low; Georgia added 9,200 jobs in May alone, a better-than-average record. The nation’s stock indexes — while volatile at times — have reached record highs during the Biden administration.

But on the other, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in an effort to fight against inflation, increasing the cost of borrowing.

Preserving democracy

Aside from pocketbook worries, 15% of voters in the AJC poll said they’re concerned about “preserving democracy” in the upcoming election. About 1 in 5 voters who are 65 years or older listed it as the most important issue. But there is a partisan divide: 25% of Democrats said it was their top priority, compared with 4% of Republicans.

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In Georgia and in the District of Columbia, Trump faces criminal charges involving his efforts to overturn the election results in 2020. He’s also charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents after he left office. That’s on top of his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a New York trial stemming from payments his campaign made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

In the debate, Trump said the prosecutions against him are politically motivated. He also declined responsibility for his supporters breaching the U.S. Capitol while Congress counted electoral votes in hopes of reversing his reelection defeat.

But all the cases against Trump are in some jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court released a ruling Monday that held presidents are partially immune from prosecution.

Karen Williams, who lives in DeKalb County, said preserving voter rights was her top issue this election.

“I am very, very focused on the preservation of democracy and the preservation of freedom,” Williams said. “The Biden-Harris administration personifies that. The opposing candidate, not so much.”

Immigration

Whether it was health care, jobs or the opioid epidemic, the conversation throughout the debate seemed to drift back toward immigration. It’s an issue that resonates with Georgia voters: 13% listed it as their primary concern in the AJC poll.

Jake Shanahan, a 77-year-old retiree from Sandy Springs, said he has been disappointed in Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You look at the news, and he says it’s secure,” Shanahan said. “It’s obvious that, if what’s on TV is true, it’s not secure. I think he should take action to correct that.”

That issue, however, varied across demographic lines. Just over 1% of Black respondents said it was their highest concern, compared with 17% of white respondents. And along party lines, 24% of Republicans said immigration was their main focus, compared with 4% of Democrats.

Under the Biden presidency, unlawful border crossings have reached historic highs, although they dropped to a three-year low in June. His administration has expanded some pathways to come to the U.S. legally, including protections for unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, when asked whether he would deport people who are in the country illegally, including those who are married to citizens, have jobs or have been in the U.S. for decades, Trump said: “We have to get a lot of these people out. We have to get them out fast.”

Abortion

Georgia was mentioned almost instantly during the presidential debate, with Biden highlighting the state’s abortion law that bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant.

It’s a subject that has remained on voters’ minds, with 8% of voters in the AJC poll indicating abortion would determine their presidential preference. Among age groups, abortion was the biggest concern for those between 18 and 29 years old, at 14%. It also ranked as a higher concern for women (12%) than men, (2%).

Shana Williams, a 39-year-old health care worker from Decatur, said neither candidate at Thursday’s debate addressed issues in a nuanced way. But she sided with Biden’s stance on abortion.

“I think that it’s each person’s right to choose. For example, I was on birth control when I got pregnant,” Williams said. “Some people think, ‘Oh, you’re getting an abortion because you’re irresponsible; just practice safe sex.’ That’s not necessarily the case.”

Trump took credit for the three U.S. Supreme Court justices he nominated who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed a nationwide right to abortion. The decision striking down Roe allowed states to set their own restrictions.

Staff writers Lautaro Grinspan, Zachary Hansen, Michael E. Kanell, Mark Niesse, Maya T. Prabhu, J. Scott Trubey and David Wickert contributed to this article.

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

5 Jul 2024

Despite what some politicians say, crime rates are decreasing

by | posted in: News | 0

Amanda Her | (TNS) Stateline.org

Violent crime in the United States dropped significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released in June.

The FBI’s data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the country’s population, suggests violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023.

The data, which covers reported crimes from January to March, shows a 26.4% decrease in murders, a 25.7% decrease in rapes, a 17.8% decrease in robberies, and a 12.5% decrease in aggravated assaults. Reported property crime also fell by 15.1%.

Nevertheless, the widespread public perception that crime is rising — a perception reinforced by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could figure prominently in November’s election. And state legislative and gubernatorial candidates from both parties likely also will cite crime statistics on the stump.

In a Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described the crime problem in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious. This is the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

In May, Trump wrongly called FBI data showing a decline in crime “fake numbers.” In June, he erroneously claimed that the FBI’s crime statistics exclude 30% of cities, including the “biggest and most violent.”

He could have been referring to the fact some departments couldn’t report data in 2021 because the FBI switched data reporting systems, but experts say the overall numbers remain valid.

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President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political gain. In a May campaign email, Biden said that Trump “oversaw the largest increase in murder in U.S. history.” While this is not entirely inaccurate — the country did see the largest one-year increase in murders in 2020 — it omits context regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

The latest FBI crime statistics align with other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released first-quarter data from a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments showing a 17% drop in murders compared with the same period last year.

The FBI’s latest data is preliminary and unaudited, which means it will change as more law enforcement agencies refine their numbers throughout the year. National crime data is incomplete, as it only includes crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.

Despite the data’s limitations, some criminologists and crime data experts say the data is reliable. Some say the FBI’s data likely overstates the decreases, suggesting the drop in violent crime is likely less dramatic but still trending downward.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data, so it matches but probably overstates what the trends are,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that specializes in crime data, told Stateline in an interview. “In theory, everything will get more accurate as the year goes on.”

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some criminologists caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It looks good for the nation as a whole, but even with these great reductions, there are cities in the United States that have likely experienced increases that bucked the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.

The average American’s understanding of crime and crime statistics is heavily skewed by media coverage that focuses largely on when crimes are committed and by misleading political rhetoric, according to criminologists and crime data experts.

Instead of relying on statistics, which can feel impersonal, people tend to cling to anecdotes that resonate more emotionally. Politicians take advantage of this, Dan Gardner, author of the book “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.

“If you are a political operative, capitalizing on fear of crime is incredibly easy to do,” Gardner said.

Telling a tragic story and framing it in a way so that voters feel they or their families could become victims of similar crimes unless they vote for a specific politician is a common, highly effective tactic, he added.

This use of fear as a motivator can drive people to the polls, Gardner said, but it also distorts public perception of crime.

“It’s a lousy way to understand the reality of personal safety and society, but it’s a very compelling form of marketing,” Gardner said.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released a report in June urging police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report emphasizes that crime data, especially national data, often lags up to a year, which hampers public understanding of crime trends and limits officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.

“We need to accelerate improvements in our [crime] data,” John Roman, a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Stateline. “The democratization of this data is really critical to more effective policy and programming.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

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