By Lily Amback / News & Opinion Editor and Lydia Styf / Staff writer
Since the start of the school year, President Donald Trump has signed a total of 21 executive orders.
Some of the major directives include sending troops to D.C., cashless bail, and flag burning. On Aug. 11, Trump signed the order “Restoring Law and Order in the District of Columbia” in response to the assassination of Israeli embassy members Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim.
In this order, Trump said, “It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”However, according to worldatlas.com, Washington, D.C. is No. 69 on the most dangerous cities in the world list, while Indianapolis has a higher ranking of No. 66.
Despite this, on Aug. 12, around 800 troops arrived in Washington, D.C. to fight this crime problem.
But, when Trump deployed the National Guard, he broke a long-standing law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act states that any part of the military cannot be utilized to enforce the law against U.S. citizens unless Congress agrees to it, which they didn’t do. Therefore, the National Guard should not be able to arrest those in D.C., yet they are doing it anyway. This led to another executive order, “Measures to End Cashless Bail and Enforce the Law in the District of Columbia.”
This order eliminates the use of cashless bail when there is an arrestee who “poses a clear threat to public safety and order. Such cases include violent or sexual offenses such as rape, murder, carjacking, and assault, as well as property offenses such as burglary, looting, and vandalism,” as stated by Trump’s executive order.
Bail refers to the money someone pays to be released from judicial custody until their trial. Cashless bail means that there is no price to be released, normally leading to no incentive for the criminal to show up to their hearing.
Bail prices for the crimes listed in the EO range from $25,000 to $1 million or more, leading middle-class citizens (those who make between $50,000 to $150,000 a year) to spend almost one-fourth to a half of their yearly income to avoid judicial custody before their trial.
According to pewresearch.org, “Immigrants – about 14% of the U.S. population in 2022 – were less likely than the U.S. born to be in the middle class and more likely to live in lower-income households.”
These are the people most affected in the next executive order, “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag.”
This executive order focuses on the Supreme Court ruling Texas v. Johnson. In Texas v. Johnson, Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag to protest the 1984 Republican National Convention. Texas wanted to apprehend him, but when he went to the Supreme Court about this issue in 1989, they ruled that flag burning was protected underneath the freedom of speech.
In Trump’s executive order he said, “Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s rulings on First Amendment protections, the Court has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words’ is constitutionally protected. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 408-10 (1989).”
This means that if Trump deems that a certain degree of burning the flag was reached, he would have reason to prosecute that person burning the flag. Nonetheless, the only punishment specifically stated in the executive order is focused on migrants.
The executive order states, “The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting within their respective authorities, shall deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residence permits, naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek removal from the United States…whenever there has been an appropriate determination that foreign nationals have engaged in American Flag-desecration activity under circumstances that permit the exercise of such remedies pursuant to Federal law.”
