President Donald Trump expanded his crackdown on Washington, D.C., on Monday, signing executive orders that give more resources to the federalization of the city’s law enforcement and direct officials to change the city’s cashless bail policy.
He also emphasized similar federal intervention could happen in other cities — including the deployment of National Guard troops and efforts to block cashless bail.
“We’re ending it, but we’re starting by ending it in D.C.,” Trump said of cashless bail in the Oval Office.
The administration has repeatedly taken aim at cashless bail policies, which allow some defendants to be released from custody while awaiting trial, typically with exemptions for certain charges and at judges’ discretion. No-cash bail, which is permitted in multiple states, is now a flashpoint in the administration’s efforts to reshape criminal justice policies nationwide.
One of the executive orders on cashless bail directs D.C. officials to end the system that has been in place in the district since 1992. The order says that cashless bail policies in D.C. force law enforcement to release alleged criminals into the streets, leaving them “free to endanger American citizens visiting our Nation’s capital.”
Another executive order moves to end the practice in the rest of the country. The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify cities that have cashless bail systems and possibly withhold federal funding, including grants and contracts, from them.
Democratic states including Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico have moved to restrict or partially eliminate cash bail. Proponents of cashless bail say that the cash bail system “criminalizes poverty” by imposing a greater burden on people who don’t have additional income to pay for bail, forcing them to face jail time even though they might not pose a risk to others or be likely to flee law enforcement jurisdiction.
Trump also signed an executive order that would add resources for federal officials who have been overseeing law enforcement in D.C for the past two weeks. These resources include the training and deployment of specialized units to deal with “ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.”
On the national level, Trump signed an executive order to prosecute those who burn the American flag, claiming without evidence that these incidents often cause riots and other criminal activity.
“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits, no nothing,” Trump said.
The executive order instructs the Department of Justice to “prosecute those who incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country, to the fullest extent permissible under any available authority.”
It adds that the Supreme Court has “never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words’ is constitutionally protected.”
In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Texas v. Johnson that burning the American flag is a form of “symbolic speech” and is protected by the First Amendment, even though some may find it offensive. The dissent argued that the government could prohibit flag burning because the flag’s status as a symbol of unity outweighed freedom of speech concerns.
“Through a very sad court, I guess it was a 5 to 4 decision, they called it ‘freedom of speech,’ but there’s another reason, which is perhaps much more important. It’s called death because what happens when you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy,” Trump said.
“When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before,” Trump added.