Trump Scraps Cashless Bail in D.C. as Federal Takeover Intensifies

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order ending cashless bail for detained suspects in Washington, D.C. This is yet another aggressive move in his federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Cashless bail allows people who are suspected of a crime to avoid spending time in a cage before they’ve actually been convicted just because they can’t meet bail. In states with cash bail, having money determines whether or not you’ll be behind bars.

Trump and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro have framed a cashless bail system, which D.C. has had since 1992, as a “disaster” that leaves hardened criminals running rampant.

“Every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster,” Trump said at his press conference earlier this month announcing the federal takeover of D.C. “That’s what started the problem in New York, and they don’t change it. They don’t want to change it. That’s what started it in Chicago … We’re gonna end that in Chicago. We’re gonna change the statute.”

Pirro echoed Trump’s sentiments.

“I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the [heck] out of you or anyone else,” she said at the same press conference. “We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of ‘no cash bail … We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.”

The numbers don’t support this framing. There is no significant documented increase in violent crimes among arrestees out on cashless bail.

Even still, Trump’s order threatens to revoke funding from D.C. city projects if it doesn’t eliminate cashless bail, and will “work to ensure” that those detained are kept in federal custody instead of local. Trump eventually wants to force this order upon the entire country, banning cashless bail in every single state. D.C. is just the testing ground for this show of federal force.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has yet to comment on the order.

Donald Trump’s crudely covered wound is back in a birthday message to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The Trump War Room account on X shared a photograph of Leavitt and the president walking through the White House to celebrate her 28th birthday Sunday. A large pale patch was visible on Trump’s right hand, even from a few feet away.

Reporters previously spotted the dismally disguised injury while speaking to the president outside of the White House last month. One reporter zoomed in on the president’s hand, giving the public the plainest view of the painted patch so far. Since taking office, Trump has been spotted with the bruise in at least February, April, June, and July.

It’s still unclear what exactly the makeup is covering. Leavitt has claimed multiple times this year that the president’s hand was simply bruised from all of his meet-and-greets, and taking a lot of aspirin.

“President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history,” Leavitt told the Daily Beast in July. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.”

But Trump was spotted on Saturday with yet another bruise, this time on his left hand.

79-year-old Trump was recently diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, which can cause swelling in the lower limbs when the legs fail to pump blood to the heart.

Three days after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was freed from pre-trial detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him once again at a Monday immigration check-in.

Shortly after his detention on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced on X that the Salvadoran immigrant “will be processed for removal to Uganda,” and repeated disputed, still-unproven accusations of ties to MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said that the Maryland resident had been told to report to an ICE office on Monday for a routine check-in.

“As he was leaving the jail in Tennessee on Friday, he was given a notice requiring him to check in at 8 a.m. this morning. The notice stated the reason was ‘interview.’ Clearly that was false,” Sandoval-Mosheberg said. “There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshall Service and basically on house arrest. The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”

Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March, as the Trump administration scrambled to push allegations of MS-13 membership. After enduring harrowing conditions in a notorious prison, he was returned to the U.S. where he has been slapped with human smuggling charges and detained, with the Trump administration vowing that he’ll “never go free.”

But after a judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release on bond, this weekend he experienced freedom and was reunited with his family in Maryland for the first time in more than 160 days.

His release Friday came with bad news, however: Immigration officials informed his lawyers that, after Abrego Garcia had rejected a deal to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea and jail time, they now plan to deport him to Uganda. (Deportation to faraway and unfamiliar countries has become a grotesque hallmark of Trump’s deportation regime.) Monday’s news indicates that the administration is following through on this threat.

This story has been updated.

Charles Kushner—U.S. ambassador to France, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and convicted felon—has drawn the ire of French President Emmanuel Macron over his allegations of rampant antisemitism in France.

Kushner published “A Letter to Emmanuel Macron” in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

“I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it,” Kushner wrote. “Antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized.”

Kushner continued, presenting Macron with a call to action. 

“In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism—plain and simple. President Trump and I have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren. I know how he feels about antisemitism, as do all Americans.... I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies.” 

Kushner’s letter came just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a similar letter to Macron, condemning him for announcing that France would recognize Palestinian statehood. France refuted Kushner’s allegations just hours after his article was published—and summoned Kushner to appear before Macron and the French foreign ministry. 

“France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” the foreign ministry stated. “The Ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable.” 

Why is the U.S. ambassador to France more focused on lobbying on Israel’s behalf than the United States?  Does he think the so-called French “Hamas allies” are so obtuse that they can’t criticize Zionism two years into a genocide without condemning all Jewish people? Does he know that there are French anti-Zionist Jews who’ve been vocally supporting Palestine since the genocide began? 

Kushner shouldn’t even have this job to begin with—he’s a reverse nepo baby and criminal who spent two years in jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations to the Democratic Party, and witness tampering. He even retaliated against his own sister—who was a cooperating witness against him—by paying a sex worker to seduce her husband and film it, likely for blackmail material. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who investigated Charles Kushner as district attorney, described his case as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he’d encountered. Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020. 

Kushner shouldn’t be here. He’s just lucky his son happened to marry Trump’s daughter. Now, Kushner’s blatant Israeli agitprop risks further fraying an already strained relationship between the United States and France.

Inconvenient truths don’t go unpunished in the Trump administration.

It’s a lesson that Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse learned the hard way on Friday, as The Washington Post reported that he’s been fired from his position as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The DIA under Kruse was responsible for the classified preliminary report about America’s June strike on Iran, which gave President Donald Trump much grief once it leaked to the press, as it painted a starkly different picture of the attack than his administration had.

Though the report expressly acknowledged its preliminary nature, its findings—that the strike set Iran’s alleged nuclear program back by only a few months, at most—put a damper on Hegseth’s and Trump’s insistence that they had totally decimated their targets. The president had referred to the attack as “one of the most successful military strikes in history,” comparable to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hegseth axed Kruse for “loss of confidence,” per the Post.

The ouster is just the latest example of the Trump administration shooting the messenger. After the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a troubling July jobs report, the president fired BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, appointing in her place a MAGA partisan who just happened to have been at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.