CHICAGO — A horrific attack on a woman riding a commuter train this month is reviving President Trump’s strong opposition to cashless bail, once again pitting the White House against liberal-leaning states and cities that have embraced criminal justice reform.
According to Chicago police, a repeat offender who was awaiting trial for an unrelated attack set a woman on fire as she rode a Chicago Transit Authority train downtown on Nov. 17. The woman, identified as Bethany MaGee, survived the attack but remains hospitalized with severe injuries.
The accused attacker, Lawrence Reed, had been arrested 72 times over the past 30 years, federal prosecutors say. At least 15 of those arrests were since 2016, with the most recent occurring in August, when Reed was charged with aggravated battery for allegedly slapping a social worker while he was being treated as a psychiatric patient at a local hospital.
State prosecutors asked that Reed be held without bond after that arrest, but a judge released him under an electronic surveillance agreement.
In the wake of the attack, Trump is stepping up the administration’s opposition to no-cash bail policies that are designed to prevent the jailing of low-income criminal defendants who cannot afford to pay the bail a judge has set.
At the annual White House turkey pardon this week, Trump blamed Democrats for the attack on MaGee and repeated his claims that crime — which is down in Chicago and many other parts of the country — was “out of control.”
In a statement later in the day, the White House amplified its criticism of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats who support the state’s bail policy.
“Delusional politicians like Pritzker and Johnson arrogantly double down on the same failed policies that handed a violent thug a can of gasoline and a match,” the statement said. “Enough is enough.”
A spokesperson for Pritzker on Wednesday declined to comment, pointing to remarks Pritzker made to reporters last week. The governor said he stands by his state’s policies on bail, saying “they are designed to give elected judges the ability to keep people in jail who they believe are dangerous.”
“It’s a better way, by the way, than bail, because bail is sort of an automatic out for people who just happen to have enough money, and an automatic incarceration for somebody who happens not to have enough money,” Pritzker said.
In recent years, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Washington D.C. and dozens of cities have adopted policies that limit or eliminate cash bail, especially in cases that involve nonviolent crimes.
Illinois was an early leader in the movement, adopting a far-reaching bail reform law in 2021, shortly after racial justice protests swept the nation in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Before passing the Illinois SAFE-T Act, proponents of ending cash bail said a defendant’s wealth, not dangerousness, often determined whether they were granted pretrial release. Instead of setting bail for defendants, Illinois judges must now evaluate arguments and conditions solely to determine if a defendant should be jailed or released.
Advocates for criminal justice reform in Illinois said they stand by the state’s policy and accused Trump of politicizing a human tragedy.
“This administration tends to use tragic anecdotes to further its policy goals and ignores other data that doesn’t fit that, and that is what we see here,” said Ed Yohnka, communications director for the ACLU of Illinois. “That means this is not a seriousness about crime or public safety. It’s just to score political points.”
The White House message mirrors its effort this year to target Democrats in Charlotte after Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was brutally stabbed to death on a commuter train in Charlotte.
The White House said the suspect in that case had been freed by “woke policies” after an earlier arrest, even though that charge was a misdemeanor that does not normally carry a prison sentence.
The chilling attack on MaGee, which took place on CTA’s Blue Line, was captured in its entirety on surveillance camera, federal court filings show.
The 13-page complaint described MaGee as “almost fully engulfed in flames” after Reed allegedly approached her, poured liquid onto her head and body, chased her and set her on fire. She tried to put out the fire by rolling on the train floor.
At the next stop, Reed exited the train and walked away, while MaGee was left with severe burns to her face and body. Reed, 50, was identified and arrested by Chicago Police the next day wearing the same clothes as when he allegedly attacked MaGee. He had a burn injury on his right hand.
As officers were taking Reed to a district station for questioning, the complaint said, he allegedly yelled unprompted, “burn, b—- and “burn alive, b—-.”
Reed is charged with committing a terrorist attack against a mass transportation system, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Since his arrest, Reed has not had an attorney; he repeatedly refused to speak with the federal public defenders who have come to court ready to intervene on his behalf, according to court documents.
District Judge Laura K. McNally has ordered him to undergo a medical and psychological evaluation.
Reed has lived with depression and schizophrenia since his early 20s, his public defender said at a retrial hearing in August for the aggravated battery charge in state court.
Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Jerrilyn Gumila argued strenuously against Reed’s release at the hearing, laying out his extensive criminal history to Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez.
“Electronic Monitoring would be wholly insufficient,” Gumila said according to court transcripts. “It could not protect the victim or the community from another vicious, random, and spontaneous attack.”
But Molina-Gonzalez ruled that prosecutors had not entirely met their burden for denying Reed pretrial release and sent him home on electronic monitoring.
In a statement, the Office of the Chief Judge, Timothy C. Evans, said it was “deeply concerned” for MaGee and takes the matter seriously, though it is prohibited by the state judicial code of conduct from commenting on specific facts of Reed’s case now that it is in federal court.
“We are reviewing all actions taken in this case to ensure procedures were followed and to identify opportunities for improvement,” the statement said. One immediate change the office considered was reinstating the practice of reporting escalated electronic monitoring alerts to the State’s Attorney’s Office.
“That process was previously paused, following concerns raised by the State’s Attorney’s Office regarding the volume of alerts. In the interest of public safety, we believe it is necessary to re-evaluate this process,” the statement said.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke expressed frustration with the judge’s decision to release Reed in a post on X on Tuesday, writing that the crime against MaGee was “heartbreaking” but did not come out of nowhere.
“My office requested the perpetrator be detained after he committed a previous violent crime,” she wrote. “The judge denied our request.”
The White House has been targeting cashless bail policies at least since August, when it issued an executive order seeking to withdraw federal funding for states and cities that have adopted the practice.
The order directs the attorney general to develop a list of places that “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual, or indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism.”
But advocates for criminal justice reform maintain that states and cities generally have the power to implement their own form of justice.
“The thing about the American criminal justice system is that, because of federalism, there is not one overarching policy that governs the criminal justice system,” said Jeremy Cherson, director of communications at The Bail Project, a Los Angeles-based organizations that advocates for no-cash bail. “The federal government has some influence over those things, but they can’t dictate what this looks like.”
Last year, the Brennan Center released a report that found cashless policies in 33 cities did not have any impact on crime rates.
Cherson accused the Trump administration of using bail reform as a “cudgel and scapegoat for spurious claims that crime is increasing.”
“They look at sensational news stories and they say, this is what is causing our cities to be in crisis,” Cherson said. “But the reality is crime rates are down in most places.”
Instead of attacking bail policies, Cherson and Yohnka both suggested that additional resources for housing and mental health support are needed to try to prevent further violence.
“What might get us to a better place, so things like this are less likely in Illinois, would be significant investments in community services that really bolster community well-being,” Cherson said.
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