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President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Monday aimed at ending cashless bail and criminalizing flag burning protests — as reports say that the administration is arming national guard troops patrolling Washington, D.C., in a major escalation.
The order regarding cashless bail declares that states and local governments that do not suspend their cashless bail policies will lose federal funding. It instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi to report on states and jurisdictions that have eliminated cash bail within the next 30 days.
Trump has specifically instructed his administration to focus on D.C., which has had a cashless bail system for decades. He and his administration have spent months spreading disinformation claiming that cashless bail — implemented predominantly in liberal-leaning areas — contributes to crime rates.
But there is no evidence to back this claim. Numerous analyses have found that there is no correlation between cashless bail policies and crime rates in places where it’s been implemented. D.C.’s own Criminal Justice Coordinating Council recently found that only seven people, or 3 percent, of defendants were rearrested on pre-trial release between August 2024 and January 2025. None of them were rearrested for violent crimes.
Nonetheless, Trump has repeated this narrative numerous times. “Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL,” Trump said in a Truth Social post in July. “It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!”
Cashless bail allows people facing charges to be released while they await trial, as long as a judge does not view them as dangerous or a flight risk.
Cash bail systems, which are widely used across the country, are frequently criticized for deepening inequality and supercharging the two-tiered criminal legal system, especially among Black communities. The average bail for felony charges is $10,000, and many people are roped into predatory bail bond schemes. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world allowing for a commercial bail industry that profits from people’s inability to post bonds on their own.
Trump also sought to widen the scope of what constitutes a crime on Monday. He signed a separate order ordering Bondi to “prioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible” of criminal and civil laws regarding “desecration” of the American flag, “consistent with the First Amendment.” Notably, the Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the burning of the U.S. flag is protected under the First Amendment.
The order says that immigrants must be subject to punishment like revocation of visas or other immigrant statuses if they have engaged in “American Flag-desecration activity.”
The orders come after the National Guard announced on Sunday that troops in D.C. are now carrying weapons and will start carrying out detentions, in a major escalation of Trump’s militarization of the capital city. Trump has said that he may target Chicago with troop deployments next.
“I have a slob, like [Illinois Gov. J.B.] Pritzker, criticizing me. They say he’s a dictator, he’s a dictator. A lot of people are saying maybe we’d like a dictator,” Trump opined as he signed the orders Monday morning, before adding, “I’m not a dictator.”
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