NBC News reported that at a White House complex meeting this summer, an aide to Stephen Miller presented a plan to make it easier for states to institutionalize mentally ill homeless people through a policy change that NBC said would weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans. According to the report, after the Justice Department issued a memo making institutionalization easier, it began abandoning cases protecting disabled people's right to live in the community rather than in institutions.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued its opinion on the Olmstead integration mandate in June 2026, following the July 2025 executive order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets."
SAMHSA awarded $42.3 million in supplemental block-grant funding to states and territories to implement the July 2025 executive order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets" and the White House "Treatment First" best-practices toolkit. The total comprises $17.3 million to Community Mental Health Services Block Grant recipients and $25 million to Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant recipients for sober and recovery housing capacity, plus a separate $2 million to the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network. The agency said the mental-health block grant portion covers technical assistance, training, policy development, and cross-system coordination rather than direct treatment services.
The executive order directing agencies to prioritize treatment and recovery over Housing First was signed July 24, 2025.
Street Sense published emails obtained by public-records request showing a White House "Homelessness Working Group" — including the National Security Council, HUD, HHS, the National Park Service, and D.C. agencies — formed in May 2025 under the Safe and Beautiful Task Force executive order, and that police officers under federal control compiled a 25-site encampment list near the White House on August 14, 2025, at least 14 of which were cleared the next day. The National Park Service said August 28 that it has cleared 169 encampments on federal land since the task force was announced, and D.C.'s monthly clearing average has risen to about 17 this year from eight to nine in 2024–2025.
The White House said on August 19, 2025 that 48 encampments had been cleared during the takeover, a figure the article says Street Sense has not been able to independently confirm.
The Times reported that Joe Lonsdale's Cicero Institute has driven Republican homelessness policy, with 21 states considering camping bans or other Cicero-backed laws in recent years and 16 passing them. Former Domestic Policy Council official Scott Centorino said at a closed-door June Cicero conference that he consulted the group in drafting President Trump's homelessness executive order; Lonsdale told the Times "our work has been one of the main influences" and put his Cicero spending at "well less" than $15 million a year. The paper reported HUD's blocked NOFO sought to move two-thirds of roughly $4 billion in annual homelessness aid to time-limited programs with work rules or treatment mandates, a change opponents warned could cost as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people their housing.
The Washington Post and Mother Jones each published their own profiles of Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute the same day, August 22.
ONDCP, HHS, and HUD released a "Treatment First" toolkit on August 12, presented as implementing the July 2025 executive order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets." STAT reported the toolkit promotes faith-based interventions and abstinence-based recovery while rejecting harm-reduction principles and the housing-first model. The joint release said 75% of homeless Americans are addicted to drugs and 78% suffer from mental illness; HUD Secretary Scott Turner said "Housing is essential, but housing alone is not enough."
The joint ONDCP/HHS/HUD release is dated August 12, 2026.