The Bipartisan Roots of Trump’s Cruel Crackdown on the Homeless

That decision said that it wasn’t a violation of the Eighth Amendment to ban outdoor camping, even if there were no shelter beds or places to be offered to people sleeping on the streets. It essentially gave local governments the opportunity to criminalize homelessness, a privilege that they had been itching to use and quickly did after the Supreme Court gave the green light. More than 200 local laws were swiftly enacted, criminalizing people for having nowhere to sleep. They ranged from Phoenix to San Francisco, with no clear divide between Republicans and Democrats in how these laws rolled out.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom—while a high-profile Trump critic on other issues—helped pave the way for Trump’s own escalation on the homeless by ordering state agencies to clear encampments “with urgency,” coupled with threats to city and county governments that the state would withhold funding unless they complied. “This is not about criminalization,” Newsom said at the time, even as he pushed for de facto criminalization over the more effective but slower process of building housing and getting people into shelters with services. Some cities took action without Newsom’s prompting. In San Francisco, the city began issuing bus tickets before offering housing or shelter, in another case of prioritizing “out-of-sight” policies rather than housing.

Trump has a long history of animus toward the unhoused, even suggesting setting up internment camps far outside of cities as a place to put people, even involuntarily. Naturally, none of his proposals actually tackle the affordability crisis or any of the underlying causes of homelessness; his issuing of ultimatums for the homeless to leave Washington, D.C., did not offer any explanation as to how such a migration would be made convenient. So far, Trump has not set up his proposed internment camps for the homeless (although his administration clearly has shown a capacity and willingness to set up similar facilities as part of its sweeping mass deportation efforts). Instead, his targeted actions in D.C. feel like an extension of what mostly liberal governments have done in California.