And now, an executive order that calls for the involuntary institutionalization of the homeless and mentally ill without due process or clear release criteria. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/
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Discussion
@ben So many things are being said about how this will only make it worse by other commenters that I can only add: Who is going to pay for something the public has no stomach for paying for? And who is going to let them build it in their backyards?
Lead balloons incoming, duck!
@ben The WaPo called it "hospitalization" - how can we win when we have these fuckers making it all sound palatable?
@ben I think the executive giving this order needs to dogfood his own product b/c clearly he meets that 2nd cat.
@ben in case anyone needed more hard proof about where this is heading, this should suffice
@ben 40+% of homeless are vet. Heartless and stupidity hallmark of Trump
@ben
Speed running our way through that German poem.
@ben
Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for sharing this.
@ben
This was at the first 100 days. #RuthBenGhiat, #Autocracy scholar, analyses the #TrumpAdministration’s rapid shift towards #Authoritarianism. She talks about #Trump’s #PersonalityCult, how #Strongmen portray machismo and the potential for a female strongman figure. She also discusses how autocrats use corruption, violence and propaganda to stay in power, and how #ICE roundups echo the past, resembling a “secret police force”.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat anticipated that #America would reach the tipping point by September.
This was at the first 100 days. #RuthBenGhiat, #Autocracy scholar, analyses the #TrumpAdministration’s rapid shift towards #Authoritarianism. She talks about #Trump’s #PersonalityCult, how #Strongmen portray machismo and the potential for a female strongman figure. She also discusses how autocrats use corruption, violence and propaganda to stay in power, and how #ICE roundups echo the past, resembling a “secret police force”.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat anticipated that #America would reach the tipping point by September.
@ben fucking nazi president
@ben
So, as per Trump’s executive orders regarding immigration we can deport Melania and Barron Trump. As well as her parents.
As for this last executive order we can now have Donald Trump institutionalized for being mentally ill.
@ben this is downright terrifying.
@ben so in other words if I become homeless (say, because the minimum wage for autistic people is lower than for neurotypicals) I can be kidnapped? cool.
@ben Another distraction.
@ben What I learned from On the Road: they can fine you until you're broke and then lock you up for vagrancy
@ben
Just like in the old Soviet Union!
Just like in the old Soviet Union!
@ben So… Reagan closing the institutions was a bad thing, but Trump reopening them is also a bad thing? Which is it?
@ben Major distraction attempt ☑️
@ben How long before they come after Democrats calling them mentally ill?
@ben Jesus.
You know, even though I was against incarcerating immigrants, it does hit different when your number is on the list.
This is cruel, it is criminal, and it is intentional.
@ben
Republican megadonors CoreCivic and Geo Corp paid millions to profit from the criminalization of poverty and mental illness.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/private-prison-mass-deportation-trump-billions-geogroup-corecivic-ice/
https://truthout.org/articles/appeals-court-strikes-down-new-jerseys-ban-on-private-prisons/
https://jacobin.com/2024/11/private-companies-trump-immigration-surveillance
Detention costs $100,000 per person.
Providing housing and healthcare is far more effective & less expensive.
@ben Fuck this timeline.
@ben And we thought V for Vendetta was fiction...
@ben Here in the DC Metro area, the homeless community has its own weekly newspaper and I can’t wait to read their coverage of this.
@ben I truly hate how people believe we can just simply “vote this away” now.
@ben
History repeats. The work camps of 1938 Germany:
@ben How is this not a permission slip for ICE goons to disappear anybody anywhere?
@ben
Compassionate! Just as Jesus intended. I hear that was last weeks' church sermon - "Fuck the homeless."
My favorite part of this EO is how I still want to see the Epstein files.
@ben the most dangerous in this country are in the oval office, congressand judiciary. Clean house of that element and we can rebuild our nation
@ben Homelessness, mental illness, and substance use disorders have been inadequately addressed in the USA for many decades. But heavy-handed approaches to those problems by a Trump administration that often rejects evidence-based policies and seems apt to rely on interventions led by law enforcement agencies are unlikely to be humane or welcomed by targeted persons. Homeless persons are more often victims of violent crimes than perpetrators of it, but Trump’s executive order emphasizes the opposite viewpoint which is factually incorrect.
@ben Oh no! Extraordinarily cruel. Where is it going to stop?
@ben
Freedom is just another word
@ben
In plain English, Trump is creating more concentration camps. His excuse this time is to incarcerate the homeless - and mentally ill - for an indefinite sentence.
They aren't people anyway, according to Trump. They are detritus on the sidewalk that lowers property values and scares lil' women in their pumps and pearls. What a monster.
@ben NO!! Seriously this is bad enough for those affected without extrapolating it to others.
@ben
Also considering global warming is ramping up it's ability to destroy vast numbers of homes, nearly anyone can now end up in the forced labor camps.
@ben so now you or I can be declared mentally ill.
Disappeared with no due process. Just because “they” say so.
How is that legal?
Disappeared with no due process. Just because “they” say so.
How is that legal?
@ben And put them where? In my community many of the homeless are working multiple jobs, including moms who live in a car with kids.
@ben Im not remembering my history wrong, the nazis did this exact thing right?
@ben "Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. "
so. camps.
@ben
In addition to this abysmal inhumanity, the cash registers are ringing in the background. Prisons and detention centers and whatever else such facilities are called are corporations that make huge sums of money from imprisonment/locking people up.
@ben
Not to mention what hospitals have capatiy to take all these new folks, "house?" them, and who's gonna foot the bill Donnie
Oh I know, some pal of DJT will open a chain of for profit mental health facilities and get big gov't contracts
@ben and it continues. they'll use this to justify rounding up LGBTQ+ individuals, low income individuals, and more POC.
All they have to do now is say you're "mentally ill" or "homeless" (protesting outside too long, looking homeless, etc) and they'll send you off to the concentration camps.
@ben The fascist playbook.
@ben I wrote a near future story about a husband who committed his wife via his contacts in the medical community. Now, a much nearer future, and likely for commitment, the flimsiest of rationalizations will do.
@ben Maybe that’s why they started saying democrats have trump derangement syndrome. Guess that’ll qualify as mentally ill.
@ben Sigh. I feel sorry for the people affected. There's no english version (yet?) of the 1954 "law", but take a look at the spanish version of this fascist decree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Law_on_dangerousness_and_social_rehabilitation
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_de_Vagos_y_Maleantes
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_de_Vagos_y_Maleantes
@ben hey! That’s the “Ley de vagos y maleantes” that we abolished in Venezuela long ago for being unconstitutional and a way to impose a police state. It was used widely by the police to grab you for no reason.
Nice democracy that you have over there.
@ben
Note that efforts to declare all LGBTQ+ as mentally ill are both in progress and nearing completion.
@ben And soon Trump's ICE goons will be coming for veterans with PTSD.
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