President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and list states and local jurisdictions that have “substantially eliminated cash bail” for offenders who pose a clear threat to public safety. The administration further directed federal agencies, in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, to suspend or terminate federal funding, grants, or contracts for those jurisdictions, signaling a forceful federal pushback against cashless bail reforms.
Cashless bail policies, the order says, enables repeat offenders to return to the streets, jeopardizing law-abiding citizens and taxing law enforcement resources. “Maintaining order and public safety requires incarcerating individuals whose pending criminal charges or criminal history demonstrate a clear ongoing risk,” the order states.
Under its provisions, the Attorney General has 30 days to submit to the President a list of jurisdictions where cash bail has largely been eliminated for violent or high-risk offenders. Federal funding, including grants and contracts, to those identified jurisdictions may then be suspended or terminated “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
President Trump has made eliminating cashless bail policies a central focus of his crime-fighting agenda, arguing that such reforms have directly contributed to public safety crises across American cities.
“Every place in the country where you have no-cash bail is a disaster,” Trump said earlier this month, specifically citing New York and Chicago as examples. “Somebody murders somebody and they’re out on no-cash bail before the day is out.”
As a candidate in 2024, Trump highlighted what he sees as the broader consequences of these policies. “When I’m re-elected, I will crack down on the left-wing jurisdictions that refuse to prosecute dangerous criminals and set loose violent felons on cashless bail. If you kill somebody, there’s no bond. Don’t worry about it. Go ahead. Kill somebody else.”
Trump pointed to early results from his D.C. crime crackdown as evidence of his approach’s effectiveness. “We are at a point where Washington is booming again. People are pouring in like we haven’t seen for years,” he told reporters in the Oval Office at the Monday signing ceremony. He noted that over the past 11 days since his D.C. safety plan took effect, there have been zero murders, while authorities have “arrested a total of well over a thousand people” and “took hundreds of guns away from young kids that were throwing them around like it was candy.”
Washington, D.C.’s experience with cashless bail since the early 1990s presents a complicated picture. While official statistics suggest crime has not increased significantly, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is currently under federal investigation for allegedly manipulating crime statistics, raising questions about the reliability of the reported data.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
President Trump’s request for use of “common sense” can be a mighty big problem for some judges in this country, as they even find it difficult to follow rulings of SCOTUS.