Trump’s New Executive Order Revives Forced Hospitalization and Criminalizes Poverty
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump signed a sweeping new executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” Framed as a crackdown on public safety threats, the order calls for the revival of civil commitment laws, increased arrests for low-level offenses like loitering and squatting, and a rollback of harm-reduction and housing-first strategies.
Behind the title, however, is a deeply troubling blueprint—one that critics say could enable the indefinite detention of unhoused people, people with mental illness or addiction, and anyone deemed “disruptive” to public order.
At the heart of the order is a call to “restore civil commitment” laws across the country. For many Americans, that phrase may sound unfamiliar. But for people who’ve studied or lived through this country’s history of institutional abuse, the meaning is chillingly clear.
Civil commitment refers to the state’s power to detain individuals with mental illness or addiction in psychiatric institutions or treatment centers without criminal charges, a trial, or voluntary consent. In practice, civil commitment laws have historically been used to warehouse the poor, the disabled, the neurodivergent, and the socially marginalized—often in unsafe, unaccountable conditions.
The executive order doesn’t just revive that tool. It positions it as a central strategy in addressing visible poverty and addiction.
“No one should be allowed to turn our streets into lawless, drug-infested camps,” Trump said in his remarks Thursday. “We’re going to bring back order.”
But many advocates argue this approach doesn’t bring order—it brings oppression.
“This order criminalizes survival,” said Maria Owens, a civil liberties attorney based in Atlanta. “It punishes people for being unhoused, addicted, or mentally ill—and it treats forced confinement as a form of care.”
Under the order, federal funds will be withheld from cities that refuse to clear encampments. States are encouraged to pass laws allowing police to forcibly detain individuals suspected of having mental illness or substance use disorders. Cities that continue to use housing-first or harm-reduction programs may lose access to federal support.
This is not a public health initiative. It’s a punitive, top-down policy shift with deep roots in America’s worst civil rights abuses.
In the 20th century, thousands of people—especially Black, Indigenous, and disabled Americans—were forcibly institutionalized under vague definitions of “mental illness” or “moral defect.” These systems were rife with abuse, neglect, and racial bias. Many never got out.
This executive order suggests we are willing to go back.
And it raises another troubling question: What happens when political dissent or protest is framed as disorder? Who decides who is “unstable”? And what’s to stop this from being used—explicitly or implicitly—to suppress political opposition?
Despite a dramatic framing of rising chaos, violent crime in the U.S. has declined for the third year in a row. What has not declined is the visibility of poverty—and the political will to punish it.
This order doesn’t build housing. It doesn’t expand treatment access. It doesn’t invest in mental health care or addiction services. Instead, it builds a narrative that poverty is criminal, illness is dangerous, and public disorder is more urgent than public health.
We must call this what it is: state violence. And it’s only the beginning.
If this is the federal government’s plan to address public distress—more arrests, more confinement, less autonomy—we must resist it with everything we have. Silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity.
At The Flip Report, we’ll keep tracking this and other policies that impact Tennessee and the South. But this one’s personal. Because if they can lock people up without charges, none of us are safe.
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