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    Portlanders mock Trump for calling their city ‘war-ravaged’. But they’re clear-eyed about its problems

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    When Donald Trump said he was sending the national guard to Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration officers, local residents immediately responded with characteristic sarcasm. Mocking the president’s portrayal of a city in decline, social media was awash with videos of children in parks, busy farmers’ markets and September’s falling leaves overlaid with satirical text: “war ravaged”.When the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building where protesters had been gathering for weeks, she found a small crowd of demonstrators wearing inflatable animal costumes, not a city overrun by antifascist militants. The reality on the ground did not deter Trump from painting the city as unlivable.“I don’t know what could be worse than Portland,” Trump said in an 8 October White House meeting. “You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows. Most of the retailers have left.”Oregon’s largest city boasts a wealth of beauty, nestled between two rivers and surrounded by mountains. It isn’t “bombed out”, as Trump said, and officials in recent weeks have worked hard to convince Trump the city is not a dystopia, saying years of public messaging about Portland’s challenges are outdated.“Portland is vibrant and thriving,” said a 28 September letter co-signed by 200 Oregon business leaders, elected officials and organizations. “Just like with public safety, we recognize that there is more work to do and we continue to forge public-private partnerships every day to make our city better.”But Trump’s narrative did not appear suddenly. Portland is, in fact, struggling with a dire affordability crisis, with persistently high rates of homelessness, and too many people living on the streets with mental health and addiction needs.Economic leaders in the city have argued for years that those problems, combined with high taxes and racial justice protests, have slowed the city’s economic recovery from a deep pandemic hole.Progressive critics have said that a period of economic boom followed by Covid left the city’s social safety net in disrepair, and their arguments have increasingly resonated with voters in recent years.View image in fullscreenPortland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, a moderate, won election in 2024 in a landslide. But the election also brought four members of the democratic socialists of America (DSA) and an even, progressive-moderate split to the city council.Campaigns promising to address root causes of social issues are resonating with voters across the nation, including in New York, where Zohran Mamdani is leading the polls for the mayoral race.Sameer Kanal, a DSA-affiliated councilor, said that, like in cities across the country, there is a new, relentless focus on affordability.“How can we make sure that the rent is low enough, not make sure that the people that are richest in the city are benefiting the most?” Kanal said.Cost of livingIn the mid-2010s, national media celebrated Portland’s quirks, bringing an influx of new residents and business opportunities. It also meant housing costs soared and homelessness increased year after year. Average rent in Portland increased by 30% from 2012 to 2015, and the average home sale price grew by nearly 50% from 2011 to 2016. In 2025, Portland’s average fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, as defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, was $1,997, up from $905 in 2011.No single neighborhood’s average rent is affordable to Portlanders making under $31,000 annually. And despite home sale prices decreasing by 7% citywide from 2020 to 2024, high mortgage rates and a low stock of houses for sale leave even median-income Portlanders with few options to buy.To keep up with demand, Portland’s housing bureau estimates the city needs to build at least 63,000 units affordable for low- and moderate-incomes in the next 20 years.Mitch Green, an economist and professor elected to Portland’s city council this year, said the “Portlandia era” of the 2010s brought significant revenue to the city, but did not create the sufficient affordable housing necessary to meet the needs of the entire population, particularly low-income residents.“People can, in some sense, adapt a little bit to changes in rent,” Green said. “But when it changes quickly, what you’ll see is, people will fall through the cracks.”View image in fullscreenA 2019 project to bring a luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel and residences symbolized both the market’s optimism for Portland and its troubles after the economic downturn following Covid, people like Green argue.The $600m project displaced a block of food carts enjoyed by locals. The city’s tax incentives obligated the project to build affordable housing units or contribute $8m toward an affordable-housing program. When high rents and the arrival of Covid hollowed out downtown Portland in 2020, shuttering the central city after its upswing, the project like many others of its kind struggled. Only 8% of the 132 luxury condos sold, and the city may never see the money or the affordable housing after the construction lender foreclosed on the building earlier this summer.Temporary solutionsThe lack of affordable housing has been a key driver in a persistent homelessness emergency. As of July, more than 16,000 people are unhoused in Multnomah county, which encompasses Portland. Roughly half are unsheltered, and the vast majority live in Portland.There are twice as many unsheltered Portlanders as there are shelter units. With affordable housing in short supply, unhoused residents are left surviving in the shadows, under constant threat of fines, jail time or sweeps.The mayor has responded with a dual strategy: clearing encampments, while building out temporary shelter units.Like in many counties across the US west, encampment sweeps have become more frequent and aggressive in recent years. It’s a strategy the mayor says he wants to scale up.“The city of Portland anticipates returning to enforcement of existing public space regulations on safety, sanitation and livability in the coming days,” Wilson said. “Every community member, both housed and unhoused, deserves a safe community.”Meanwhile, the mayor’s office has added 800 beds since January toward his goal to add 1,500 by 1 December.The approach is not without its critics. A Street Roots and ProPublica investigation earlier this year found that the increase in sweeps in Multnomah county contributed to a fourfold increase in homeless deaths over a four-year period. And progressive leaders, backed by a throng of local organizers, have argued the city should focus on building permanent housing rather than temporary shelter.Multnomah county has spent $500m on housing in 2024, with half spent on temporary shelters and navigation services. That approach is expensive and ineffective, according to Green.“It’s good to open up some shelters so people have a place to hang their head at night, and they don’t have to be stuck out in the winter or the summer experiencing the conditions,” Green said. “But it’s not a solution for homelessness. The solution for homelessness is housing.”Green and other local leaders recently visited Vienna to learn how social housing might better address Portland’s needs. The European city spends $500m on its entire social housing program, including all homelessness spending. It is rare for a person to live on the streets.Meanwhile, the outlook is grim for Oregonians at risk of losing housing. Amid billions in federal cuts to social programs and tax breaks in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the state’s Democratic supermajority legislature cut $100m in eviction-protection funds this year, instead allocating $205m toward a statewide temporary homeless shelter program.That’s a heavy loss, according to Becky Straus, managing attorney at the non-profit Oregon Law Center, which provides pro bono legal assistance for low-income Oregonians.“We can’t cut our way out of the housing crisis,” Straus said. “Without eviction prevention, more people will end up on the streets and shelters won’t be able to keep up.”Through August, nearly 8,000 evictions were filed in Multnomah county alone this year, with 90% for nonpayment of rent.Drug decriminalizationAs the city grappled with a sharp increase in homelessness, it also faced the visible impacts of a drug crisis that rose nationally since as early as 2013, following decades of disinvestment in services at the state level. In 2021, Oregon became the first state in the US to decriminalize drugs and allocate hundreds of millions in marijuana tax revenues to build treatment programs across the state. The measure was an attempt to address a persistent addiction crisis, one that appeared more visible with storefront windows boarded up and social services at a minimum post-pandemic. Rather than incarcerating low-level drug offenders, the state would invest in building up its support infrastructure.The decriminalization measure – passed after the city saw 100 consecutive days of racial justice protests – was meant to reduce interactions with the criminal justice system and confront racial disparities in policing, particularly for low-level offenses, and create a public health framework for addiction. A now-deleted Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) 2020 survey showed Oregon among states with the least access to substance use and mental health treatment.But the headwinds the policy faced were fierce. After voters passed the ballot measure, it took more than 15 months for the state’s health authority to send funds to new statewide support networks – the other side of the decriminalization coin. That meant people were not arrested for possession or consumption of drugs, even in public spaces. Still, few options existed for a person seeking recovery services for substance use disorders.In time, multiple studies showed that the effects of Covid-19, rising housing costs and the arrival of fentanyl coalesced in early 2021, leading to the public’s distorted perception that drug decriminalization was responsible for homelessness, crime and high downtown vacancy rates.Despite appearances, deaths from fentanyl followed an identical trajectory in all 50 states after the drug saturated each market, regardless of each state’s criminal penalties.“Portland was not an outlier,” said former Multnomah county district attorney Mike Schmidt.Still, the Oregon legislature ended the state’s decriminalization efforts under public pressure in September 2024, while maintaining funding for new treatment centers.Portland police have arrested 400 people for drug offenses since then, with 72% being charged with misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. Meanwhile, funding has helped thousands of people access harm reduction, peer support and substance use treatment services through new networks the decriminalization measure created.Olivia Katbi, co-chair of the democratic socialists of America Portland chapter, said she still believes “Portland is the best city in the country”, despite its challenges. “And, Portland as a city has problems in the way that every large American city has problems.”This article is co-published with Street Roots, an investigative weekly street newspaper More

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      LA 2028 Olympics: fears of mass displacement and homeless sweeps as Trump threat looms

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      In the lead-up to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the city deployed 30 police officers on horseback to rid downtown of unhoused people and, in the words of a captain, “sanitize the area”.Some people were arrested and transported to detox centers. Others were forced from public view while their possessions were trashed.Now, as the city prepares to host the games once more in 2028, civil rights advocates are fearful history will repeat itself, and authorities will again banish unhoused communities in ways that could exacerbate the region’s humanitarian crisis.Karen Bass, Los Angeles’s Democratic mayor, has vowed not to bus unhoused people out of the city and repeat the tactics of 1984, telling the Los Angeles Times her strategy will “always be housing people first”. But the scale of the problem in LA is larger than it was four decades ago, and the Trump administration’s forceful stance on homelessness could increase pressures on Bass and the unhoused population.LA county is home to an estimated 72,000 unhoused people, including 24,900 people in shelters and 47,400 people living outside in tents, makeshift structures and vehicles. In the last two years, Bass and county leaders have reported some progress in moving people indoors, which they attributed to their strategy of targeting people in encampments with shelter options and resources.But the dramatic shortage of affordable housing in the region will make it difficult to get tens of thousands of people stably housed in less than three years and stop new encampments from rising up.Meanwhile, Trump, who appointed himself White House Olympics taskforce chair, has made it clear he wants to see encampments disappear from American cities, signing an executive order in July to push local governments to clear encampments and making it a point of focus during the federal crackdown in Washington DC.Combined with a supreme court ruling allowing governments to fine and jail unhoused people when no shelter is available, Trump’s ongoing deployment of troops to Democratic cities, significant support from California residents for tougher policies towards the unhoused, and California governor Gavin Newsom’s push for aggressive sweeps, experts fear the Olympics could force out many of LA’s poorest residents.“The pressures are going to come from the White House, from the state and from local government as we get closer to the Olympics,” said Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, an anti-poverty group that advocates for unhoused people and is based in Skid Row, a downtown area with a high concentration of homelessness. “My fears come from being an Angeleno and seeing our communities attacked and displaced when major events come our way.”‘I remember the arrests’There is a long history of Olympics host cities trying to get rid of their most disenfranchised communities.In Moscow in 1980, organizers pledged to “cleanse” the city of “chronic alcoholics” and dumped people outside city limits. In Atlanta in 1996, officials arrested thousands of unhoused people under anti-loitering and related ordinances. In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, more than 70,000 people were displaced. And last year in Paris, thousands of unhoused people, including asylum seekers, were bussed out.The 1984 LA games led to the increased militarization of the LA police department (LAPD) and an escalation of racist and aggressive policing that targeted Black and Latino youth, experts say.“I remember the pre-Olympics arrest of my older cousins,” said White, 56, who grew up within walking distance of the Coliseum, a stadium that served as an Olympics venue then and will be used for the 2028 opening and closing ceremonies. “Young Black and brown men were afraid to be in the streets, because they were sweeping people up under the pretext of addressing gang violence.”View image in fullscreenThe games helped LAPD acquire flashbang grenades, specialized armor, military-style equipment and an armored vehicle, which it used a year later to ram a home where small children were eating ice cream, Curbed LA reported. The Olympics-fueled law enforcement expansion also paved the way for LAPD’s notorious Operation Hammer, a crackdown that led to mass arrests of Black youth.In 2018, after LA won the 2028 bid, then-mayor Eric Garcetti said the games would present an opportunity to improve homelessness, which he said could be eliminated from the streets by the games.“Garcetti kept saying: ‘We’ll end homelessness in LA,’” said Eric Sheehan, a member of NOlympics, a group founded in 2017 to oppose the Olympics in LA. “And we have been warning that the only way they can actually end homelessness is by disappearing people.”Increasing sweepsCalifornia, LA and LA 2028 officials have not released plans for a homelessness strategy.But on the streets, there are already fears that sweeps of people living outside are escalating due to the Olympics – and as LA prepares to also host the World Cup next year.In July, the city shut down a long-running encampment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in the San Fernando valley, north-west of downtown and visible from the 405, a major freeway. The site, which residents called the Compound, was across from the Sepulveda Basin where the Olympics is planning events. The sweep displaced roughly 75 people. The city said it offered 30 motel rooms to the group and other shelter options.Carla Orendorff, an organizer working with the residents, said she was aware of at least 10 displaced people now back on the streets, including several who had been kicked out of the motels, which have strict rules. Residents were dispersed to eight motels, and in one, staff ran out of food and people were left hungry, she said.Those still out on the street “are just forced further underground, in places that are harder to reach, which makes it incredibly dangerous for them”, Orendorff said.Giselle “Gelly” Harrell, a 41-year-old displaced Compound resident, said she lost her motel spot after she was gone for several days. She was temporarily staying in a hostel with help from a friend, but would soon be back in a tent, she said. Before the Compound, she was at another major encampment that was swept.View image in fullscreen“They’re strategically cleaning out the area for the Olympics,” Harrell said. “They’re destroying communities. It’s traumatizing … I wish all that money for the Olympics could go toward housing people … but they are not here to help us.”It was hard to imagine the Olympics taking place in an area where so many people were living outside and in cars, Orendorff added: “The city has all these plans, but our people don’t even have access to showers.”Bass denied that the Compound closure was Olympics-related, with the mayor telling reporters the site was a hazard. Officials had worked to shelter everyone and keep people together and would aim to transition residents into permanent housing, she said, while acknowledging some “might be in motels for long periods”. “I will not tolerate Angelenos living in dangerous, squalor conditions,” she added.The mayor’s office continued to defend the Van Nuys operation in an email last week, saying an outreach team had built relationships with encampment residents over several months and offered resources to all of them: “Coming indoors meant access to three meals a day, case management and additional supportive services.”Zach Seidl, Bass’s spokesperson, did not comment on the city’s Olympics strategy, but said in an email that since the mayor took office, street homelessness had decreased by 17.5% and placements into permanent housing had doubled: “She is laser-focused on addressing homelessness through a proven comprehensive strategy that includes preventing homelessness, urgently bringing Angelenos inside and cutting red tape to make building affordable housing in the city easier and more efficient.”Inside Safe, Bass’s program addressing encampments like the Compound, has brought thousands of people indoors and “fundamentally changed the way the city addresses homelessness by conducting extensive outreach, working with street medicine providers and offering other supportive case management services while they are in interim housing”, he continued. “This is why she ran for office and this is progress she would’ve made regardless of the Games.”The White House did not respond to inquiries about the Olympics, and a spokesperson for Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (Lahsa), the lead public agency responsible for addressing homelessness in the region, declined to comment.‘Legal restraints are gone’Advocates’ concerns are partly fueled by a supreme court ruling last year that gave local authorities significantly more leeway to criminalize encampments.“The legal restraints are gone, to the extent they were meaningful, and there is broad policy-level agreement by liberals and conservatives that sweeps are an acceptable approach,” said John Raphling, associate director of Human Rights Watch, a non-profit.He authored a report last year on LA’s policing of unhoused people, which found that unhoused Angelenos were routinely subject to aggressive LAPD crackdowns, misdemeanor arrests and sweeps that destroy their belongings.Homelessness-related arrests and citations, such as anti-camping violations, increased 68% in LA in the six months after the supreme court ruling, a recent CalMatters analysis found. The crackdowns are happening even as LA has vowed to not rely on criminalization and has promised a more restrained approach than other California cities.View image in fullscreenSheehan said he was concerned LAPD would work with federal authorities to target people during the Olympics, especially after officers aggressively attacked protesters and journalists during demonstrations against Trump’s immigration raids in June, in violation of the department’s own protocols.Newsom, meanwhile, has pushed California cities to ban encampments by adopting ordinances that make it a violation to camp in the same spot for three days, and advocates fear his presidential ambitions could lead him to continue to push punitive strategies as the Olympics approaches.“We’re already seeing a contest between Trump and Newsom as to who is going to appear tougher on homelessness, with tough being defined as how one responds to visible homelessness,” said Gary Blasi, professor of law emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles, who co-wrote a report last year on the 2028 Olympics in LA and the unsheltered population. “There aren’t good signs from either of them. Newsom offers the promise of alternatives he doesn’t identify and Trump offers the promise of some equivalent to incarceration.”In a statement to the Guardian, Newsom said the state has a “strong, comprehensive strategy for fighting the national homelessness and housing crises” and was “outperforming the nation”. “I’ve emphasized that our approach is to humanize, not criminalize – encampment work is paired with shelter, services [and] behavioral health support,” he said, citing his Care court program, which is meant to compel people with severe psychosis into treatment.“Bottom line: encampments can’t be the status quo. We’re cleaning them up with compassion and urgency, while demanding accountability from every level of government. There is no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in an encampment for years and years,” the governor added.Tara Gallegos, Newsom’s spokesperson, said the governor’s approach was distinct from the president’s, writing in an email: “The Trump administration is haphazardly bulldozing and upending encampments without creating any sort of supportive strategy to go along with it. It is about fear, not support … California’s strategy pairs urgency with dignity and care, creating wrap-around services addressing the root causes of homelessness.”An LA 2028 spokesperson did not comment on homelessness, but said in an email: “We work closely with our local, state and federal partners on Games planning and operations, and remain committed to working collaboratively with all levels of government to support a successful Games experience.”Organizers and providers prepareHomelessness service providers and advocates said they hoped LA officials would pursue bold solutions that quickly get people housing and resources without the threat of criminalization.A key part of the region’s strategy during the early pandemic was getting people out of tents and into motels, but those programs are costly and not a good fit for all of LA’s unhoused residents; it can also be challenging to transition participants into permanent housing. Blasi noted that that approach would become even harder during the Olympics when hotels face an influx of tourists.Blasi advocated for direct cash payments to unhoused people, akin to the 2020 stimulus checks, which could help some unhoused people get off the streets at a faster and cheaper rate than the traditional process, he argued: “There are a lot of people who can solve their own homelessness if they just have a little bit more money.”Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said LA has seen success with rapid rehousing programs that offer people rental subsidies, and that he hopes those efforts can be scaled up: “We know how to move people back into housing and do it quickly. It’s just a matter of whether we can marshal the political will to bring the money to make that happen.”Funding cuts, including from Trump’s slashing of federal homelessness resources, will be a barrier.The Union Rescue Mission, a faith-based group that runs the largest private shelter in LA, has recently seen an influx of people needing services as other providers have faced cuts, said CEO Mark Hood. Hood, however, said he has had productive conversations with the Trump administration and remained optimistic the Olympics would provide an “opportunity to collaborate with our city, county, state and federal government in ways that we never have before”.He said he hoped the Olympics would lead to increased funding for providers, but was so far unaware of any specific plans.White, the longtime organizer, said he expected grassroots groups to come together to defend unhoused people, especially as mutual-aid networks have grown in response to Trump’s raids: “The kidnappings of immigrants and the attempted clearing of houseless people as we get closer to the Olympics gives us an opportunity to bring various communities together, and that’s when we can build the power necessary to push back.” More

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      in World Politics

      FO° Podcasts: Why Has Trump Deployed Thousands of National Guard Troops in Washington, DC?

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      Fair Observer Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh speaks with Ankit Jain, a voting rights attorney and the shadow senator of Washington, DC. Together, they discuss the city’s unusual political status, US President Donald Trump’s interventions in the capital and broader questions about crime, governance, statehood and the future of American democracy.

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      What is a shadow senator?

      Jain begins by clarifying his unusual role as one of DC’s two elected shadow senators. Unlike other states, Washington, DC, has no voting representation in Congress. To push for statehood and defend its autonomy, the city created two non-voting senators and one non-voting representative. Jain, elected in November 2024 and sworn in this January, explains that his position is part-advocate, part-lobbyist and part-symbolic lawmaker. His chief responsibility is to fight for DC to become the 51st state and secure full representation for its 700,000 residents.

      Turmoil in Washington, DC?

      Singh turns the conversation to Trump’s controversial policy decisions in the capital. Jain describes how Trump took control of the Metropolitan Police Department for 30 days, placing it under a presidentially appointed official. Trump also sent in hundreds of federal agents and more than 2,000 National Guard troops. The stated aim was to reduce crime, but Jain argues the real goal was to reshape policing “in his own image,” encouraging brutality and overriding DC laws on cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He points to raids that terrified the Latino community and recalls seeing federal troops idling around tourist sites like the National Mall rather than addressing real problems.

      DC’s governance structure

      Jain then explains how fragile DC’s self-government really is. While the city elects a mayor and council, the federal government controls the judiciary and prosecution of adult crimes. Judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the US Attorney — also a presidential appointee — handles prosecutions. Right now, one in five local court seats sits vacant, slowing trials and fueling more crime. The US Attorney’s office, meanwhile, suffers from mass firings that gutted its capacity. Even when DC passes its own laws, Congress can block or repeal them within 30 to 60 days. To Jain, this makes self-rule an illusion, unlike London or other world capitals, where residents govern their own affairs.

      Crime in DC

      Trump has repeatedly claimed that crime in Washington is spiraling. Jain challenges this, citing objective data: Crime is down 25% year-on-year, violent crime is at a 30-year low and overall rates remain below pre-COVID-19 levels. He accuses Trump of spreading lies to justify costly deployments that burn “millions of [taxpayer] dollars a day” without solving problems.

      Jain acknowledges DC still faces crime and homelessness, but argues solutions require smarter police deployment, housing reform and more funding for mental health. It does not need troop surges and headline-grabbing raids. He also notes that federal restrictions like the Height Act prevent the city from building enough affordable housing, driving rents higher and fueling homelessness.

      Trump’s attacks on DC

      Jain sees Trump’s interventions as part of a larger pattern. By stripping money from DC’s budget, firing federal workers and blocking judicial nominations, Trump is deliberately weakening the city. These moves deepen DC’s “mini-recession” and leave essential services, from schools to emergency response, undermanned. In Jain’s view, Trump’s goal is not to fix urban challenges but to create crises, then claim sweeping authority to impose his preferred policies.

      Should Washington, DC, be a state?

      For Jain, it is clear that Washington, DC, should be a state. He argues that nearly every problem facing the capital — crime policy, housing shortages, budget manipulation — stems from the fact that DC is not a state. Its residents pay taxes, serve in the military and number more than Wyoming or Vermont, yet they lack voting representation. Jain calls it a modern case of “taxation without representation,” pointing out that no other democratic nation in the world denies its capital city’s residents the vote. Statehood, he insists, is the only path to justice.

      The National Guard in other cities?

      Singh raises Trump’s threats to send the National Guard into Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois. Jain warns this is no idle talk — DC is simply the test case. Because it is not a state, it was an easy target. If successful, Trump could expand the model to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Michigan, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, coercing them into repealing policies or cutting federal funds. Jain calls this a “dangerous precedent” and urges Senate Democrats to resist using every tool available, including the filibuster, to stop such power grabs.

      Democrats need an upgrade

      Finally, Singh raises a broader critique: Democrats have failed urban America. Jain concedes there is truth in this. Democrats, he says, often rely too much on the “old guard” and resist fresh ideas. Still, he pushes back against Republican attacks, noting that Grand Old Party-led cities often have higher crime rates, largely because of permissive gun laws. He argues that Democrats need to show a new vision while Republicans must stop blocking gun control measures and sabotaging agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

      To Jain, Trump’s actions in DC reveal a deeper threat: an authoritarian drift that undermines American democracy itself. If left unchecked, he warns, it could spread from Washington to the rest of the nation.

      [Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

      The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘It’s not illegal to be homeless’: disquiet as Trump crews clear DC encampments

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      For the past eight months, David Harold Pugh has found his “spot” outside the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC. He keeps all his belongings, including a guitar, tied up together on a two-wheeled buggy.“This is shelter. It’s a safe place where I can put my buggy up against the wall, and it’s up against that beam so nobody can roll it,” said Pugh. “I roll it on its back, and then I sleep alongside of it, so nobody can get it without me waking up.”He’s one of the more than 5,000 people in the city without a permanent place to live and now facing uncertainty about where to find shelter after Donald Trump said homeless people in DC must be moved far from the city.Crews tore down a major encampment near the Kennedy Center on Thursday, with federal law enforcement removing residents and clearing out the remaining encampments across the city overnight. The removal is part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard across the city.Pugh believes the Trump administration is out of line for blaming crime on unhoused individuals. “It’s not illegal to be homeless,” he said.Despite the widespread encampment closures, Pugh told the Guardian he didn’t have any plans to visit a shelter this week and wanted to stay close to his spot. “If they tell me to roll, I’ll roll and I’ll come back when they leave,” he said.View image in fullscreenIn an encampment across the city, near the interchange of Rock Creek Parkway and Whitehurst Freeway, one homeless individual, who identified himself as G, had already packed up his belongings. He said he had had to bounce around to various locations over the last few weeks.“It’s just going with the punches,” said G. “So you just never get settled. It feels like you [are] on the edge.”G is also just days away from moving off the streets and into permanent housing. He said the only thing he’s missing is a new social security card, which he will have very soon, but until then, he’s not sure where he will go.“What am I supposed to do for six days? Am I supposed to tell the national guard, or whoever, I got six days? Gonna get six days, and I literally have the appointment at the social security [office] on the 20th,” said G.With encampments now closed around DC and just a few days before he can secure stable housing, G said he may consider staying at a shelter.“I know the shelters might be full. I don’t even know where a shelter is, they haven’t gave us any list. No, nothing. They just made us fully aware of possibilities,” he said.According to the DC office of the deputy mayor for health and human services, unhoused residents who want shelter will not be turned away, and the city is prepared to expand capacity as necessary.View image in fullscreenBut if homeless individuals refuse to leave encampments, the Trump administration said their options are limited.During a news briefing earlier this week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said homeless individuals could face fines or even jail time if they refused to go to a shelter or receive addiction or mental health services.“We’re in the business of making sure people have the information, they have the connection to resources if they choose, but then people are, you know, left up to make their own decisions,” said Kierstin Quinsland, chief program officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless service provider in DC. “However, it is extremely concerning that people are being threatened with arrest if they are refusing services.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center said many unhoused people sleep outside in DC and across the nation because rent is too expensive. “Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money and simply does not work. The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails,” said Rabinowitz in a written statement.Quinsland said advocates and community partners have mobilized to keep an eye on encampment closures to make sure unhoused individuals are offered support and “treated as respectfully as possible”.She said one of their biggest concerns about these federal police sweeps is losing contact with homeless residents. In many cases, Quinsland said advocates work with members of the city’s unhoused population for weeks, months or longer if they are trying to move them toward permanent housing.“Trust is an issue in homeless outreach, you know. A lot of folks [who] are outside, they decline shelter for a reason, because they don’t trust services,” said Quinsland. “So these relationships that we have with folks are precious, and they are hard fought.”View image in fullscreenAdvocates also warn that these citywide encampment closures may separate homeless individuals from critical support and social services.“If they’re moved somewhere where they don’t know where they can get a meal, they don’t even know how to get back to the neighborhoods that they’re familiar with,” said Quinsland.Ahead of the encampment closures, Quinsland said outreach street teams with Miriam’s Kitchen have been passing inexpensive mobile phones to unhoused residents to help them stay connected.“Making sure that they have our phone numbers, have our business cards with them, to make sure that wherever they may end up, we can remain in contact,” she said.With Trump’s temporary takeover of the DC police department in place for the next few weeks, Quinsland said there had also been discussion about bussing homeless residents to neighboring areas like Montgomery county, Maryland, or parts of Virginia to be “out of sight of Donald Trump”.But that’s just a temporary fix, she said, as homeless service providers need more funding to address the issue.“The long-term answer is, if we have the political will to put money in the city budget for housing, then we can do that,” said Quinsland. “This year, there is zero dollars in the budget for permanent supportive housing vouchers, so that’s not a help.” More

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      Trump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC

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      In a social media post on Sunday, Donald Trump demands homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January.“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”View image in fullscreenThe post was illustrated with four photographs, all apparently taken from the president’s motorcade along the route from the White House to his golf course. Two of the images showed a total of 10 tents pitched on the grass along a highway on-ramp just over a mile from the White House. The third image showed a single person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building on Constitution Avenue. The fourth image showed the line of vehicles that whisk Trump to his golf course passing a small amount of roadside litter on the E Street Expressway, near the Kennedy Center.Trump’s post promoted a previously announced news conference on Monday, which he has promised, “will, essentially, stop violent crime” in the capital district, without explaining how. In a subsequent post, he said that the news conference at 10am Monday, “will not only involve ending the Crime, Murder, and Death in our Nation’s Capital, but will also be about Cleanliness”.The Free DC movement, which advocates for self-determination, immediately scheduled a protest on Monday to coincide with Trump’s news conference.Despite Trump’s claims, there is no epidemic of homelessness or violent crime in the capital.According to the Community Partnership, which works to prevent homelessness in Washington DC, on any given night there are about 800 unsheltered persons sleeping outdoors in the city of about 700,000 people. A further 3,275 people use emergency shelters in Washington, and 1,065 people are in transitional housing facilities.Trump’s repeated claims that it might be necessary to federalize law enforcement in the city to make it safe also ignores data collected by the Metropolitan police department, released in January by the federal government, which showed that violent crime in Washington DC in 2024 was down 35% from 2023 and was at the lowest level in over 30 years.“We are not experiencing a crime spike,” Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, told MSNBC on Sunday. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.” She added that Washington DC police statistics show that violent crime is down a further 26% so far this year.“Federal law enforcement is always on the street in DC, and we always work cooperatively with them” Bowser said, adding the the Washington DC national guard, which Trump has threatened to deploy, is under the control of the president.Earlier this week, Trump ordered a surge of federal officers from a variety of agencies to increase patrols in Washington DC, pointing to the assault on a young federal worker who came to Washington to work with Elon Musk as evidence that the city’s police force was failing to combat violent crime. Washington DC police, however, had stopped the assault Trump focused attention on, and arrested two 15-year-old suspects at the scene.Asked by Reuters, the White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The president controls only federal land and buildings in the city.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US Congress has control of the city’s budget but the DC Home Rule Act, signed into law in 1973 by Richard Nixon, gives Washington DC residents the right to elect the mayor, council members, and neighborhood commissioners to run day-to-day affairs in the district.Trump told reporters on Wednesday that White House lawyers were “already studying” the possibility of legislation to overturn the law granting the Washington DC self-rule and imposing direct federal control of the capital.“Even if crime in D.C. weren’t at a historic low point, President Trump’s comments would be misguided and offensive to the more than 700,000 people who live permanently in the nation’s capital,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents DC as a nonvoting delegate in congress said in a statement. “D.C. residents, a majority of whom are Black and brown, are worthy and capable of governing themselves without interference from federal officials who are unaccountable to D.C.”“The only permanent remedy that will protect D.C.’s ability to govern itself is enactment of my D.C. statehood bill into law,” the 88-year-old congresswoman added.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump cracks down on homelessness with executive order enabling local governments

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      The federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the “reversal of federal or state judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees” that restrict local governments’ ability to respond to the crisis, and redirect funds to support rehabilitation and treatment. The order aims to “restore public order”, saying “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe”, according to the order.The action comes as the homelessness crisis in the US has significantly worsened in recent years driven by a widespread shortage of affordable housing. Last year, a single-day count, which is a rough estimate, recorded more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness across the country, the highest figure ever documented.Cities and states have adopted an increasingly punitive approach to homelessness, seeking to push people out of parks and city streets, even when there is no shelter available. The supreme court ruled last year that cities can impose fines and even jail time for unhoused people for sleeping outside after local governments argued some protections for unhoused people prevented them from taking action to reduce homelessness.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told USA Today, which first reported on the executive order, that the president was “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again” and end homelessness.“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.The president’s order comes after last year’s US supreme court ruling, which was one of the most consequential legal decisions on homelessness in decades in the US.That ruling held that it is not “cruel and unusual punishment” to criminalize camping when there is no shelter available. The case originated in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city that was defending its efforts to prosecute people for sleeping in public.Unhoused people in the US have long faced crackdowns and sweeps, with policies and police practices that result in law enforcement harassment, tickets or jail time. But the ruling supercharged those kinds of aggressive responses, emboldening cities and states to punish encampment residents who have no other options for shelter.In a report last month, the American Civil Liberties Union found that cities across the US have introduced more than 320 bills criminalizing unhoused people, the majority of which have passed. The crackdowns have taken place in Democratic- and Republican-run states alike.Advocates for unhoused people’s rights have long argued that criminalization only exacerbates the housing crisis, shuffling people in and out of jail or from one neighborhood to the next, as they lose their belongings and connections to providers, fall further into debt and wind up in increasingly unsafe conditions.During his campaign last year, Trump used dark rhetoric to talk about the humanitarian crisis, threatening to force people into “tent cities”, raising fears that some of the poorest, most vulnerable Americans could end up in remote locations in settings that resemble concentration camps. More

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      Newsom calls on California cities to ban homeless encampments ‘without delay’

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      Gavin Newsom has called on California cities and counties to clear and effectively ban encampments “without delay” as the governor intensifies a crackdown on homelessness in the state.Newsom on Monday announced a new model ordinance to address “persistent” camps, in hopes of reducing the most visible signs of a worsening crisis, as well as $3.3bn in voter-approved funding to increase housing and drug treatment programs.“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets. Local leaders asked for resources – we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity – the courts delivered,” Newsom said in a statement.“Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”California has the largest population of unsheltered people in the US with more than 180,000 people in the state experiencing homelessness, including 123,000 people living outside, according to a 2023 count. The state – and local governments across California – have begun enacting harsher anti-camping policies following a US supreme court’s ruling last year that cities can criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside – even if there are no available shelter spaces.Newsom has escalated efforts to force local governments into action since the 2024 supreme court decision, warning counties that he could withhold state support if they did not do more sweeps. In February, he told cities and counties they could lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding if they do not make progress in eradicating encampments and reducing homelessness.In a statement this week the governor’s office pointed to its own approach that it said had cleared more than 16,000 encampments and was “effective and scalable”. The model ordinance introduced by the office includes provisions it said can be modified to suit local needs, including a ban on persistent camping in one location, a ban on encampments blocking sidewalks and a requirement for local officials to provide notice and offer shelter before clearing an encampment.The governor is seeking to help municipalities set “rules around encampments and establish effective enforcement procedures that prioritize notice, shelter and services”, according to the statement.“Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, and expose the people in encampments to increased risk of sexual violence, criminal activity, property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions,” the news release said. More

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      The United States is witnessing the return of psychiatric imprisonment | Jordyn Jensen

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      Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as “modern mental health care”. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state’s power to surveil, detain and “treat” marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control – particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.Take Hochul’s proposal, which seeks to lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in New York. Under her plan, individuals could be detained not because they pose an imminent danger, but because they are deemed unable to meet their basic needs due to a perceived “mental illness”. This vague and subjective standard opens the door to sweeping state control over unhoused people, disabled peopleand others struggling to survive amid systemic neglect. Hochul also proposes expanding the authority to initiate forced treatment to a broader range of professionals – including psychiatric nurse practitioners – and would require practitioners to factor in a person’s history, in effect pathologizing prior distress as grounds for future detention.This is not a fringe proposal. It builds on a growing wave of reinstitutionalization efforts nationwide. In 2022, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, directed police and EMTs to forcibly hospitalize people deemed “mentally ill”, even without signs of imminent danger. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s Care courts compel people into court-ordered “treatment”.Now, these efforts are being turbocharged at the federal level. RFK Jr’s Maha initiative proposes labor-based “wellness farms” as a response to homelessness and addiction – an idea that eerily echoes the institutional farms of the 20th century, where disabled people and people of color were confined, surveilled and exploited under the guise of rehabilitation.Just recently, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a sweeping restructuring that will dismantle critical agencies and consolidate power under a new “Administration for a Healthy America” (AHA). Aligned with RFK Jr’s Maha initiative and Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” directive, the plan merges the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and other agencies into a centralized structure ostensibly focused on combating chronic illness. But through this restructuring – and the mass firing of HHS employees – the federal government is gutting the specialized infrastructure that supports mental health, disability services and low-income communities.The restructuring is already under way: 20,000 jobs have been eliminated, regional offices slashed, and the Administration for Community Living (ACL) dissolved its vital programs for older adults and disabled people scattered across other agencies with little clarity or accountability. This is not administrative streamlining; it is a calculated dismantling of protections and supports, cloaked in the rhetoric of efficiency and reform. SAMHSA – a pillar of the country’s behavioral health system, responsible for coordinating addiction services, crisis response and community mental health care – is being gutted, threatening programs such as the 988 crisis line and opioid treatment access. These moves reflect not just austerity, but a broader governmental strategy of manufactured confusion. By dissolving the very institutions tasked with upholding the rights and needs of disabled and low-income people, the federal government is laying the groundwork for a more expansive – and less accountable – system of carceral “care”.This new era of psychiatric control is being marketed as a moral imperative. Supporters insist there is a humanitarian duty to intervene – to “help” people who are suffering. But coercion is not care. Decades of research show that involuntary (forced) psychiatric interventions often lead to trauma, mistrust, and poorer health outcomes. Forced hospitalization has been linked to increased suicide risk and long-term disengagement from mental health care. Most critically, it diverts attention from the actual drivers of distress: poverty, housing instability, criminalization, systemic racism and a broken healthcare system.The claim that we simply need more psychiatric beds is a distraction. What we need is a complete paradigm shift – away from coercion and toward collective care. Proven alternatives already exist: housing-first initiatives, non-police and peer-led crisis response teams, harm reduction programs, and voluntary, community-based mental health services. These models prioritize dignity, autonomy and support over surveillance, control and confinement.As Liat Ben-Moshe argues, prisons did not simply replace asylums; rather, the two systems coexist and evolve, working in tandem to surveil, contain and control marginalized populations. Today, reinstitutionalization is returning under a more therapeutic facade: “wellness farms”, court diversion programs, expanded involuntary commitment. The language has changed, but the logic remains the same.This moment demands resistance. We must reject the idea that locking people up is a form of care. These proposals must be named for what they are: state-sanctioned strategies of containment, rooted in ableism, racism and the fear of nonconformity.Real public health does not rely on force. It does not require confining people or pathologizing poverty. It means meeting people’s needs – through housing, community care, healthcare and support systems that are voluntary, accessible and liberatory.As budget negotiations in New York continue to drag on – with expansions to involuntary commitment still on the table – and as RFK Jr advances carceral care proposals at the federal level, we face a critical choice: will we continue the long history of institutional violence, or will we build something better – something rooted in justice, autonomy and collective wellbeing?The future of mental health care – and of human dignity itself – depends on our answer.

      Jordyn Jensen is the executive director of the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law More

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      California’s economy surpasses Japan’s as it becomes fourth largest in world

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      California’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, making the Golden state the fourth largest economy in the world, governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.The state’s nominal GDP reached $4.1tn, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn nominal GDP. California now ranks behind the US at $29.18tn, China at $18.74tn and Germany at $4.65tn.Along with the tech and entertainment industry capitals, the state, which has a population of nearly 40 million people, is the center for US manufacturing output and is the country’s largest agricultural producer.“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world – we’re setting the pace. Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation,” Newsom said in a statement.The state has outperformed the world’s top economies with a growth rate in 2024 of 6% compared with the US’s 5.3%, China’s 2.6% and Germany’s 2.9%. This week’s new rankings come six years after California surpassed the United Kingdom and became the world’s fifth largest economy.Newsom noted, however, that the Trump administration’s agenda endangers California’s economic interests.“And, while we celebrate this success, we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration. California’s economy powers the nation, and it must be protected.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia last week became the first state to sue the federal government over Donald Trump’s tariff policies, and has argued that the president’s actions are unlawful and that constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs.“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said during a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”California is a major contributor to economic growth nationally, with the money it sends to the federal government outpacing what it receives in federal funding by $83bn, according to a statement from Newsom’s office.Despite an enormous shortage of affordable housing that has fueled a homelessness crisis in the state, the population has grown in recent years. Meanwhile, last year the state reported its tourism spending had hit an all-time high – though California has seen a drop in some areas.Canadian tourism in California was down 12% in February compared with the same month last year amid Trump’s tariff war. In response, the state has announced a new campaign to draw Canadians back, while one city has put up pro-Canada signs across its downtown. More