When you read headlines in many right-wing or more conservative-leaning publications, crime stories are often led with the immigration status or previous bail states of the person alleged to have committed that particular crime.
This has made no-cash bail a contentious issue in this country, and that conversation is about to become even more lively.
President Donald Trump just announced a new executive order that will be signed today to eliminate no-cash bail policies in DC.
Cash bail is something that Democrats and liberal activist groups have been using against the GOP for years.
They love to claim that cash bail criminalizes poverty, stating that people who commit crimes and cannot afford to pay bail are then stuck in prison until their trial date.
Their point is that if you are locked up, then you cannot go to work or take care of your children. This could lead to them losing their jobs or even losing custody of their children.
I would counter that with, if you don’t commit a crime in the first place, you don’t have to have those worries, but I digress.
This policy has been challenged many times, with requests for hearing making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court on occasion.
However, to this point, the Supreme Court has refused to hear the cases.
A recent example was a January 2024 controversy, Daves v. Dallas County, which dated back to 2018 and had been kicking around in the courts ever since.
Lower courts had ruled that the court did not have the authority to rule on the constitutionality of a local county’s pre-trial process. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, so the no-cash bail rule was able to stand. Honestly, this particular ruling is the only ruling by the Court that has me worried about the fate of sanctuary cities when cases surrounding that issue eventually go before the Supreme Court.
In his effort to continue to try to clean up Washington, D.C., Trump announced an executive order that would eliminate the no-cash bail policy in the capital city.
Trump has never been a fan of the contentious policy, having previously stated, "Every place in the country where you have no-cash bail is a disaster.”
He continued, "I mean, bad politicians started it, bad leadership started it. But that was the one thing that's central. No-cash bail. Somebody murders somebody and they're out on no-cash bail before the day is out."
This order will surely be challenged by Democrats, but this is a bit of a different situation due to D.C. technically falling under the purview of Congress. If and when this order is challenged, I am very curious to see how the Supreme Court rules based on that factor alone. Trump may not be able to order this in other cities, but I think he may have a very good chance of making this stick in D.C.
