Ground Game: The issue Americans agree on and Trump says Republicans should vote to release Epstein files

Despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that crime is out of control in big cities, residents of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers are less likely to list crime and gun violence among the chief concerns facing their communities. 

The common denominator across the communities? A gnawing worry about daily household costs.   

Welcome to this week’s edition of AP Ground Game. 

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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach Fla., on his way back to the White House, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) 

The issue that people in big cities and rural areas agree on 

A new American Communities Project/Ipsos survey offers a nuanced look at local concerns by breaking the nation’s counties into community types, using data points like race, income, age and religious affiliation. The survey evaluated moods and priorities across the 15 different community types, such as heavily Hispanic areas, big cities and different kinds of rural communities. 

The survey showed pessimism about the country’s future has risen in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about what’s ahead for the U.S. — even though most aren’t seeing Trump’s promised economic revival. 

By contrast, the share of big-city residents who say they are hopeful about the nation’s future has shrunk, from 55% last year to 45% in the new survey. 

After Hispanic voters moved sharply toward Trump in the 2024 election, the poll also showed residents of heavily Hispanic areas are feeling worse about the future of their communities than they were before Trump was elected. Read more.

Of note:

Trump threatens to deploy the National Guard to metropolitan centers, to fight what he said was runaway, urban crime.  

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places, and around the country, has declined in recent years. That tracks with the poll, which found that residents of America’s Big Cities and Middle Suburbs are less likely to list crime or gun violence among the top issues facing their communities than they were in 2023 – noting immigration and health care, instead. 

Of note:

Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing a measure that would force the Justice Department to make public more documents from the case. The president’s shift is an implicit acknowledgement they have enough votes to pass the House.

Foreign students flock to US colleges despite visa crackdown 

Foreign students enrolled at U.S. colleges in strong numbers this fall despite fears that a Trump administration crackdown would trigger a nosedive, but a new report shows signs of turbulence, as fewer new, first-time students arrived from other countries. 

Overall, U.S. campuses saw a 1% decrease in international enrollment this fall compared with last year, according to a survey from the Institute of International Education. But that figure is propped up by large numbers of students who stayed in the U.S. for temporary work after graduating. The number of new students entering the United States for the first time fell by 17%, the sharpest decrease since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Trump administration has sought to reduce America’s reliance on foreign students, with the White House pushing colleges to cap enrollment of foreign students and enroll more from the U.S. In June, the State Department began screening visa applications more closely after temporarily halting all interviews. Read more. 

Of note:

Foreign students make up about 6% of America’s college students but play an outsize role in campus budgets. Most pay higher tuition rates and don’t get financial aid, effectively subsidizing U.S. students.