House Tackles Cashless Bail In D.C.

House Republicans wasted no time reasserting their oversight authority over Washington, D.C., after the government reopened, pushing forward a pair of major public-safety bills aimed at reversing some of the capital’s most controversial criminal justice policies. In a rare development for the deeply polarized chamber, both measures drew support from a notable bloc of Democrats.

The first bill restores cash bail for a series of serious offenses, ensuring dangerous suspects can be held before trial instead of being released back onto the streets. It passed 237–179, with 28 Democrats joining Republicans.

A second bill targets the District’s 2022 policing overhaul — a progressive wish list that banned chokeholds, expanded access to police body-cam footage, and empowered a new civilian complaints board often accused of undermining law enforcement. That repeal passed 233–190, earning 20 Democratic votes, according to Roll Call.

Both bills now head to the Senate, where at least seven Democrats will need to break ranks to defeat a filibuster and put the legislation on President Donald J. Trump’s desk.

“Cashless bail allows dangerous, violent criminals on our streets. For far too long, dangerous criminals have been allowed to roam the streets of Washington, D.C., posing a threat to the general public,” Oversight Chairman James R. Comer, R-Ky., said on the House floor.

Under Comer, Republicans have made it clear they see the nation’s capital as a case study in progressive governance gone wrong — a city choked by mismanagement, plagued by rising crime, and unwilling or unable to fix itself. In September, the House Oversight Committee advanced more than a dozen bills designed to reverse the city’s most reckless policies.

That same month, the panel summoned D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson, and Attorney General Brian Schwalb for a tense hearing on the city’s failures, following the need for National Guard support and federal law-enforcement reinforcement during Trump’s first term.

Congress maintains sweeping constitutional authority over the District, and the 1973 Home Rule Act gives lawmakers the power to overturn local laws whenever they decide the city’s leaders have gone too far.

Republicans have shown no hesitation to use that authority. In September, the House approved four additional D.C.-focused bills, mostly along party lines: one loosening pursuit restrictions on D.C. police, one transferring judicial nominating power from a local commission to the president, and two targeting juvenile justice by lowering the maximum youth-offender age and allowing certain 14-year-olds to be charged as adults. None have yet been taken up by the Senate, The Hill reported.

Predictably, D.C. officials and congressional Democrats cried foul — framing congressional oversight as an assault on “democracy” rather than a constitutional check on local incompetence.

“This is about home rule. This is about democracy. This is about self-governance,” said D.C. Councilmember Robert White, who is part of a slate seeking to oust longtime D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Bowser, Mendelson, and Schwalb issued a joint statement denouncing the latest bills as “an affront to Home Rule and the principles of democracy and local self-governance on which this country was founded.”

But their complaints overlook an uncomfortable reality: the nation’s capital experienced a surge in violent crime after the COVID pandemic — a wave that finally began to ebb in 2023, only after high-profile assaults on lawmakers and their staff drew national attention. Even so, the Metropolitan Police Department’s recent crime data is now being scrutinized by both Congress and the Trump administration amid concerns over accuracy and reporting practices.

Ironically, then-President Joe Biden himself signed a 2023 measure overturning the D.C. Council’s far-left rewrite of the city’s criminal code. Months later, he vetoed a similar bill targeting the same policing measures the House just voted to repeal.

Now, under President Trump, Republicans are renewing the push with greater urgency — especially as the city’s longtime non-voting delegate, 88-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, faces increasing scrutiny over her age, stamina, and ability to counter the GOP’s momentum. Once an untouchable figure in D.C. politics, Norton is hearing new questions about whether it’s time for a change.

For House Republicans, however, the mission remains straightforward: restore law and order in the nation’s capital and roll back the ideological experiments that helped fuel its decline.