Even in an era where every new presidential executive order is a body blow, President Donald Trump’s “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” is particularly awful. Ostensibly about “making America safe again and ending homelessness,” per the ever-mendacious White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, it’s nothing but criminalizing homelessness, substance use disorders, and mental health issues.  And, like so many things in the Trump era, the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court cleared the way for this cruelty.  The first part of the order purports to be about “restoring civil commitment,” which is nothing but a call for mass institutionalization of people experiencing substance use issues or a mental health crisis. Civil commitment has never gone away, so there’s nothing to be restored as such.  Every state has laws providing for involuntary commitment, but those generally have far higher barriers to entry than those preferred by conservatives. What this boils down to is that right-wingers haven’t yet managed to figure out a way to arrest and imprison people simply based on their diagnoses, so they need a different approach. The approach here is just to demand that states lock people up anyway, albeit under the guise of “civil” commitment.  But what to do with people who aren’t suffering an acute mental health crisis but are unhoused? How can Trump impose some sort of cruel incarceration on them as well? Well, by trying to force states and cities to criminalize urban camping, “loitering,” and “squatting.” The latter two are inflammatory terms meant to make it sound nefarious that the unhoused get to be out in public, standing around. xTrump on homelessness: «Tents -- I'm getting rid of them right now. You can't do that, especially in Washington DC. I talk to the mayor about it all the time. I said, 'you gotta get rid of the tents.' When leaders come to see me to make a trade deal & there's tents outside the WH, you can't have it»[image or embed]— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) July 25, 2025 at 10:08 AM And here’s where the Supreme Court comes in. In 2024, the court decided Grants Pass v. Johnson. There, the conservative majority ruled that cities could impose criminal penalties on people sleeping or camping in public places, even if there were not enough available shelter beds. As repugnant as that decision was, it obviously couldn’t force states or municipalities to adopt those criminal penalties, and executive orders aren’t law, as much as Trump wants them to be. Additionally, those orders really, really, really can’t bind states thanks to that whole federalism/Tenth Amendment thing on which our democracy is theoretically still based.  Never fear, though. The order has a solution. For grants from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, or Transportation, priority will be given to states and municipalities that adopt policies making it easier to arrest the unhoused.  That approach is unforgivable on its face, but it’s also bad policy. Any pretense that the administration cares about anything except cruelty is belied by the fact that it has already slashed billions from programs that help people.  Conservatives loathe “Housing First” policies, which prioritize getting people into secure and sustainable housing where things like treatment options are available, but not mandated. Instead, they want people forced into a cycle of forced treatment and incarceration, their vision of the appropriate “punishment” for poverty. Housing First efforts result in better results for the whole community by providing housing stability.  Conservatives also hate harm reduction efforts, which focus on lessening the harmful effects of substance use with efforts like providing fentanyl test strips or clean needles. Exposing people with substance use disorders to as much danger as possible should not be a viable policy position, but it is one held by a majority of conservatives. The executive order is a permission slip to stigmatize and incarcerate people rather than helping.  But hey, wait, conservatives love the troops, right? Surely they want to make sure that struggling vets get housing? Not so much. They’ve slashed programs that help vets pay for housing. And while Trump made a big splash demanding that the Department of Veterans Affairs  house 6,000 unhoused veterans in West Los Angeles by the end of his term, there are no real details or money attached to making that happen. Also, good luck with that, given that overall cuts to the VA will help grind that agency’s effectiveness to a halt.  Always money for cruelty, never for compassion. It’s the hallmark of the Trump era. Read more