in effect
Executive Order 14340, signed August 25, 2025, directs federal agencies and law enforcement to work around the District of Columbia’s cashless bail policies by pursuing federal charges and federal pretrial detention for D.C. arrestees wherever federal law allows. It also instructs the Attorney General to assess whether D.C. maintains a cash-bail prohibition and, if so, to coordinate pressure on the city to change that policy.
Federal law enforcement agencies participating in the existing “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force” are now directed to hold D.C. arrestees in federal custody and file federal charges whenever possible, rather than leaving them to the D.C. pretrial release system. The Attorney General must formally determine whether D.C. prohibits cash bail for cases involving offenses such as murder, rape, carjacking, assault, burglary, and vandalism. If the Attorney General finds that prohibition still in place, every federal department and agency — coordinating with the Office of Management and Budget — must identify specific actions to pressure D.C. to reverse course, including potentially withholding federal funding or federal services and approvals. The Attorney General is also directed to review Metropolitan Police Department general orders and request that the D.C. Mayor modify any policies that contribute to pretrial release of suspects deemed dangerous.
D.C. local government faces potential federal funding and service consequences if it does not change its bail policies, and the D.C. Mayor may receive formal requests from the Attorney General to revise Metropolitan Police Department procedures. People arrested in Washington, D.C. for the listed offenses could be transferred into the federal detention system and prosecuted under federal law rather than D.C. law, meaning federal rather than local pretrial release standards would apply to them. Federal workers, visitors to the capital, and D.C. residents are cited as the intended beneficiaries of the order’s public-safety rationale.