WASHINGTON — The House passed a pair of bills Wednesday repealing cashless bail in DC and much of a law passed by the city’s council in 2022 that limited cops’ use of force — including banning chokeholds — and their ability to collectively negotiate disciplinary actions against them.
The first measure, introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), would mandate pretrial and post-conviction detention for dangerous or violent crimes and require mandatory cash bail for offenders who pose a threat to public safety in the nation’s capital — and it passed in a 237-179 vote.
The other piece of legislation doing away with the DC Council’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022 sailed through the House in a 233-190 vote.
Stefanik described her bill as a “precursor” to an effort aimed at scrapping New York’s “failed bail reform.”
“New Yorkers know that Kathy Hochul’s failed bail reform has unleashed a crime wave across our state by emboldening violent criminals and putting law-abiding New Yorkers in harm’s way,” Stefanik told The Post. “Kathy Hochul’s failed bail reform has literally caused murders, assaults, rapes, and heinous crimes to be committed against law-abiding New Yorkers.”
“Today I proudly voted to end cashless bail in DC, which Congress has jurisdiction over, and this is a precursor to next month when Congress will pass my bill to end New York’s failed bail reform,” she added. “Kathy Hochul is incapable of making New York safe, so I will come over the top of her and pass this in Congress.”
Republicans rallied behind Stefanik’s bill, but Democrats claimed DC’s current rules for pretrial release largely matched federal law, making the measure needless.
“Her bill isn’t just unconstitutional; it runs directly against one of the bedrock principles of our justice system: The accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the District in Congress.
“Progressive, activist judges are currently allowed to release criminals to DC’s streets with only a promise that they will not re-offend and will return to court for their trial date,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) during floor debate on the legislation.
“The DC Cash Bail Reform Act would take away a judge’s ability to release these violent criminals. It would require judges to hold anyone charged with a violent crime before trial, and it would impose cash bail or bail bonds on anyone charged with a range of public-safety or law-and-order offenses,” added the chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) also reintroduced a bill similar to one passed by the House in 2023 that rolled back a host of so-called “police reforms” adopted by the Democrat-controlled DC city council the year before. Critics claimed the reforms hamstrung cops’ enforcement capabilities and scrapped their due process rights.
Norton also took issue with the measure, claiming it was, like Stefanik’s, “anti-home rule” and that violent crime has already been cut in half since the last time the House considered a similar measure.
“Violent crime in DC dropped 35% last year and is down another 28% this year, yet Republicans are acting as if we’re in a crisis that justifies extraordinary federal overreach,” the DC Dem delegate said.
DC still had the fourth-highest murder-per-capita rate of any US city last year, according to a February 2025 report from the Center for Public Safety Initiatives at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Comer said the CLEAN DC Act was an “anti-police law” that “stripped law enforcement officers of many tools needed to execute their duties safely and without fear of retribution, as well as limited their options in situations of life or death.”
“It also created new opportunities for anti-police activists to harass law enforcement officers and added many undue burdens and requirements to officers in the DC Metropolitan Police Department,” he claimed in his floor speech.
“By addressing the retention and recruitment crises gripping D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, Congress can do its part in helping boost the number of crime fighters this city desperately needs to keep violent criminals off the streets,” he said.
Former President Joe Biden vetoed a version of the bill that passed both chambers of Congress on a bipartisan basis, claiming it would “overturn commonsense police reforms such as: banning chokeholds; limiting use of force and deadly force; improving access to body-worn camera recordings; and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force.”
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) had also championed a bill rolling back parts of that DC law in June.
In August, President Trump authorized a federal takeover of Washington that deployed National Guard troops to clean up — sometimes literally — the city and use the show of force to deter crime, all while other federal agents were sent out in a task force to seize guns, drugs and collar perps.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser — who vetoed her city council’s crime bill in January 2023 but was later overruled by its members — credited the move with reducing violent crime by 45% by the end of the month.
Carjackings fell a whopping 87%, and overall crime dipped 15%. In September, Bowser ordered local law enforcement to cooperate with the feds indefinitely “to the maximum extent allowable by law.”
Trump has continued to threaten Democratic localities and jurisdictions using cashless bail with the revocation of federal funds if they refuse to scupper the policy.
His DC US Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, has also called for the repeal of other soft-on-crime laws like the Incarceration Reduction Act and the Youth Rehabilitation Amendment Act, which allows for sentencing alternatives for young adult offenders under 22 years of age.
