Trump signs order aimed at ending cashless bail, flag burning
President Donald Trump moved on two issues important to his conservative base Monday, signing executive orders aimed at ending cashless bail across the country and pushing courts to reconsider the legality of burning the American flag.
Under cashless bail, the system now in place in Illinois, a judge can decide to release people accused of crimes.
One order from Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify federal funds that could be suspended or eliminated in states and local jurisdictions with cashless bail policies. He and his administration sees such policies as overly lenient; others view them as central to preventing discrimination in the criminal justice system based on wealth.
Trump instructed specific focus on D.C., where his administration is exerting unprecedented federal control. His order told law enforcement officials to pursue pretrial detention whenever possible and withhold money and federal services if the city continues to allow defendants to be released without posting bail.
The U.S. does not have a single bail system. A patchwork of state laws and local court rules regulate who is eligible for pretrial release and when. The District, for example, has prohibited cash bonds for decades and releases some defendants without requiring any future promise of financial payment.
A recent analysis by D.C.'s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council examined rearrest rates for people accused of violent or dangerous crimes. It found that between August 2024 and January 2025, three percent of those defendants - or seven people - were rearrested while on pretrial release. None of those rearrests were for crimes categorized as violent or dangerous, the report found.
Under the Constitution, people charged with crimes are presumed innocent. Specific laws determine to what extent a person’s liberty can be restricted pretrial.
Trump’s planned order on flag burning directs his administration to prosecute people who “desecrate” the American flag and to detain and remove immigrants who have been accused of such behavior.
The Supreme Court in 1989 in a 5-4 ruling found that burning the U.S. flag is protected by the First Amendment, but Trump in the executive order asked Bondi to find a case that could challenge that ruling. The majority of the justices now are significantly more conservative than the court was then.
A White House official cited images of flag burning “alongside violent acts” from recent protests as a justification for the order. Trump, a president particularly attuned to imagery, took great issue with pictures of demonstrators in Los Angeles waving Mexican flags and burning the American flag amid protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action this summer.
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