- Minneapolis: A veto-proof majority of the City Council publicly pledged to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a new public-safety system. The council advanced a charter amendment for a ballot measure.
- Camden, New Jersey: The city council dissolved the municipal police department.
- Other Blue cities: Places such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, and Austin implemented budget cuts, reallocations, or endorsed “reimagine public safety” rhetoric. Ithaca, New York, explored plans to replace its police department.
Activist groups and progressive politicians endorsed abolitionist language or platforms (e.g., Democrat Socialists of America framing defunding as a step toward eliminating police/prisons).
The police abolitionist movement remains active in 2025–2026.
It continues to advocate for reducing or eliminating reliance on traditional policing in favor of "community-based alternatives".
- Organizations tied to longtime abolitionist thinkers (e.g., work associated with Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie via Interrupting Criminalization) publish materials, toolkits, and analyses framing abolition as a long-term project against the “carceral state.” Recent output includes guides on crisis response outside policing and critiques of reforms as insufficient.
- Critical Resistance and similar groups continue campaigns around prison closures, budget fights, and anti-policing education.
- Events persist, such as the Care Not Cops Conference (June 2026 in Sacramento, hosted by the Anti-Police Terror Project/Justice Teams Network). It focuses on "healing justice", "community alternatives to policing", and building "non-police infrastructure".
- Local and issue-specific efforts include pushing to remove police from schools/mental-health responses, opposing expansions of police power, and linking police abolition to broader goals (e.g., Abolish ICE arguments that treat local policing and federal immigration enforcement as connected).
The Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) maintains explicit language in its platform calling for "demilitarizing" police, weakening unions, redirecting funds, and taking steps “towards fully abolishing the police and prison system.”
This was reaffirmed or highlighted in recent platform updates and public statements by co-chairs.
- Some candidates and elected officials with DSA ties have past or ongoing statements supporting defund-as-step-to-abolish framing. Examples include Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong (who said “Defund then abolish” and tensions around NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
- Advocacy often appears in academic writing, progressive media, and activist circles framing abolition as the "only real solution to systemic issues".
