The Brief

President Donald Trump’s new law-and-order approach to homelessness bears several striking resemblances to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s.

Trump wants cities to enforce laws that make it illegal for homeless people to sleep outside. So does Newsom.

Trump threatened to withhold funding from places that don’t. So did Newsom.

And the president wants to make it easier to force homeless people living with serious mental illness or addiction into treatment. So does Newsom.

It’s rare for Trump and Newsom, typically adversaries, to see eye to eye on anything. But when the president signed an executive order this week pushing cities and states to use law enforcement to get unhoused people off the streets, some of it read like déjà vu to Californians.

“I don’t know that there’s a huge contrast between parts of this order and what winds are already blowing toward in California,” said Ryan Finnigan, deputy director of research for the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

But Trump doesn’t want to stop at banning homeless encampments and pushing people into treatment, and that’s where he and Newsom diverge: The president wants to upend two core tenets of California’s homelessness policy.

Trump wants to abolish federal support for “housing first,” which is the idea that homeless individuals should get housing even if they are still using drugs, and “harm reduction,” which focuses on preventing overdoses and otherwise making drug use safer.

Both tenets are backed by research and have been the gold standard in California — and at the federal level — for years

The threat of abandoning those philosophies has left local service providers scrambling to figure out whether they’ll have to change how they’ve helped homeless Californians for years or risk losing out on federal funds.

“For all of that to be upended, the entire structure of service delivery is going to be turned upside down,” said John Maceri, CEO of The People Concern, a nonprofit that serves unhoused people in Los Angeles.

More of the same in California?

Trump’s executive order, titled “Ending crime and disorder on America’s streets,” seeks to prioritize funding for states and cities that enforce bans on open drug use, camping, loitering and squatting. It also orders the Attorney General to make federal funds available for removing encampments in places where state and local resources aren’t enough.

The order comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court removed protections for people living on the streets in California and other western states, ruling cities can ban camping even if they have no shelter beds.

Newsom already was pressuring cities to crack down on homeless encampments long before Trump’s order. In May, he urged every city in the state to pass an ordinance making it illegal to camp on public property. As an example of how this should be done, he released a model ordinance that would make it illegal to camp in one place for more than three nights in a row, block streets or sidewalks and build semi-permanent structures.

But Newsom was quick to distance himself from Trump’s policies.

“Like so many of Trump’s executive orders, this order is more focused on creating distracting headlines and settling old scores than producing any positive impact,” spokesperson Tara Gallegos said in an emailed statement. “But, his imitation (even poorly executed) is the highest form of flattery.”

Some experts say Trump, who has a history of holding funding hostage over perceived slights, could use his new executive order as a way to cut off money to California.

The order doesn’t specify exactly what compliance looks like, Finnigan said. At least 50 California cities have banned homeless encampments in the past year, according to a study by UC Berkeley researchers. But if homelessness doesn’t decrease in a way Trump is satisfied with, the president could accuse California of failing to enforce those laws and cut the state’s funding, Finnigan said.

That threat comes as the Trump administration already is cutting funds for homeless services, affordable housing and Medicaid.

Trump’s order also prioritizes committing more people to institutions from the street. The order seeks to make it easier to commit people with mental illness who can’t care for themselves, while also promising grants and other assistance to help ramp up commitments, and threatening to divert funding away from places that don’t push people into treatment facilities “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” It also promises to prioritize funding to expand mental health courts and drug courts.

Newsom, too, has made it a priority to get people living with mental illness and addiction out of encampments and into treatment — without their consent, if necessary. His CARE Court program, which went live in all 58 counties at the end of last year, allows judges to put people into mental health and addiction treatment plans, but stops short of allowing judges to force compliance. Newsom also supported a 2023 law that expanded who could be forced into treatment under a conservatorship.

Trump’s order prompted a backlash from groups that support the civil rights of people with mental illnesses and disabilities. The National Alliance on Mental Health, which maintains that forced treatment should be used as a last resort, said Trump’s order raises “grave concerns.” Disability Rights California, which also opposed CARE Court, said Trump’s order goes a step beyond what California is already doing.

“The playbook looks similar,” said Greg Cramer, associate director of public policy. “But I think the consequences of the Trump action go even further.”

But the order doesn’t include funding for new mental health or addiction treatment beds. In a state already struggling with a lack of resources, some experts said Trump’s order for more forced treatment feels hollow.

“Even if they agreed to go into treatment, where are these facilities that they’re supposed to go into?” Maceri asked.

No more housing first

In ending federal support for housing first and harm reduction strategies to fight homelessness, Trump’s order ends years of precedent. California has long practiced housing first, which means everyone is entitled to housing, even if they have an untreated mental illness or are using drugs. The idea is that it’s much easier to receive treatment or get clean while housed than it is on the street.

Instead, Trump wants people in federal housing programs to have to submit to substance abuse treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation. His order also stops federal funding for harm reduction.

The People Concern, which provides street outreach and runs permanent housing, offers the opiate overdose reversing drug Narcan to its clients. It gives out antiseptic wipes to help people who inject drugs avoid dangerous infections, and it doesn’t evict tenants just because they are using drugs.

The organization also refers people to treatment programs. But not everyone is ready for that, Maceri said. The harm reduction strategies help build trust — and keep people safe — until they are ready to get clean, he said.

The People Concern, like many nonprofits, uses state and private funds — not federal dollars — to pay for harm reduction services.

But Trump’s order directs the Attorney General to review whether organizations that get federal funds and also “knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia” or “permit the use of distribution of illicit drugs” on their property are violating federal law – and bring civil or criminal actions against them if so.

That could mean groups like The People Concern have to change their practices.

“If it goes that far,” Maceri said, “I’m certainly not going to put our staff or our clients in legal jeopardy.”

Listen to NPR's live special coverage of the decision

In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion.

The decision firmly rejected the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term. It sought to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge to review it, concluded, in the words of one judge, that it was "blatantly unconstitutional."

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship. But as Chief Justice Roberts observed the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution after the Civil War defined citizenship in broad terms on purpose, rejecting the views of those who wanted to limit citizenship. The resulting language of the amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

Trump maintained that the provision was meant to apply only to former slaves, but "wasn't meant for the entire world to occupy the United States." That interpretation, however, has not been embraced by the courts or the legal norms of the country for 160 years. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts' opinion for the court pointed to the court's landmark ruling well over a century ago in the 1898 case of case of Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrants. Back then, no documentation was required for immigrants entering the United States, and the parents ran a business in San Francisco until they ultimately returned to China. In 1895 their son visited his family in there, but was denied re-entry upon his return to the U.S., on grounds that he was not a citizen. He challenged that denial and won in the Supreme Court.

By a 6-to-2 vote the justices interpreted the words, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to mean that all children born in the U.S. were automatically granted citizenship—with three limited exceptions, only one of which exists today—for the children of foreign diplomats.

The decision in the Wong Kim Ark case was so widely accepted that even in periods of great hostility to immigrants, the notion of birthright citizenship remained untouchable. So much so that in World War II when Japanese citizens were held as enemy aliens in detention camps in the United States, their newborn children were automatically granted American citizenship because they were born on U.S. soil. In addition, Congress subsequently codified that legal understanding.

The ACLU's Cecillia Wang, herself a birthright citizen born to Chinese parents, argued the birthright case in April at the the Supreme Court. At she put it in an interview with NPR, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment deliberately chose to confer automatic citizenship on the child, not the parent, the idea being that "in America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean. When you're born in this country, we're all American, all the same."

Dissenting from Tuesday's decision were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito.

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The Supreme Court yet again loosened campaign finance restrictions on Tuesday by striking down limits on how much political parties may raise and spend on candidates.

By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court ruled the law, which had been enacted in 1974, violates political parties' First Amendment rights. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.

At issue in the case was a post-Watergate law that Congress passed to limit the amount of money individuals can give to political parties. The law, the Federal Election Campaign Act, also limited how much money political parties can spend on their candidates. Other types of organizations, like political action committees and Super PACs, have no limits on the amount of money they can raise and spend on elections. But unlike parties, they cannot coordinate with candidates.

Tuesday's decision means that parties get the best of both worlds. They can both coordinate with candidates and raise unlimited funds.

Republicans, including Vice President Vance and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, challenged the law as an unconstitutional violation of political parties' First Amendment right to raise and spend money on their candidates.

Backed by the Trump Justice Department, they contended that the only justification for imposing a fundraising limit on parties is to prevent corruption, but they maintained that there is no evidence that the law has prevented corruption.

This decision overturns a 2001 Supreme Court case that declared the limits on party spending to be constitutional. It's the latest in a series of rulings since then that have unraveled campaign finance regulations.

The saga began in 2010, when the court ruled in Citizens United that corporations have a First Amendment right to unlimited spending on elections. The following year, the court dismantled Arizona's public election financing scheme, which gave money to less-funded candidates in order to equalize spending between politicians. And in 2014, the court struck down limits on how much money an individual can donate in national elections. All of these decisions were ideologically split votes, just like Tuesday's ruling, and in each case, the court overturned the regulations for burdening the First Amendment right to spend on elections.

The practical implications of Tuesday's ruling are unclear. Lawyers for the Democratic Party, who intervened in the case in support of the campaign finance restrictions, argued that they are necessary to prevent quid pro quo corruption. Authorizing unlimited coordinated expenditures would "fundamentally reshape the campaign finance regime," they wrote. "The potential for actual or apparent corruption is obvious."

Further, in previous decisions, the high court cited these anti-corruption protections as reasons why other campaign finance regulations could be rolled back without worry.

But the Republicans who brought the case argued that the risks of corruption are low. "It doesn't make any sense to think of a party as 'corrupting' its candidates," lawyers for the Republicans argued in a brief submitted to the court, "because the very aim of a political party is to influence its candidate's stance."

This is a developing story and will be updated

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The Supreme Court once again leaped into the culture wars on Tuesday, ruling that states may ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has long coached his daughters' and other girls' basketball teams at school, wrote the court's majority opinion.

The court's decision follows last year's ruling, which upheld state laws that make it illegal for doctors and other health professionals to provide gender-affirming care for minors. Since then, a total of 25 states have criminalized or banned gender-affirming care for minors. And in some states, bills have been introduced to ban gender-affirming care for adults, too.

At the heart of Tuesday's case is Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education programs that receive federal money. Enacted in 1972, the law has revolutionized women's sports by requiring equal treatment for male and female athletes, including proportional scholarship funding and equal facilities.

But in recent years, 27 states have barred trans women and girls from participating in girls' sports. The issue has become the newest flashpoint in both politics and law — especially after 2024 when the Trump presidential campaign aired attack ads on the subject more than 15,000 times, putting Democrats on the defensive.

Supporters of the ban on trans athletes say the laws are needed to prevent athletes whose assigned sex at birth was male from having an unfair advantage in women's sports. Opponents of the transgender bans say they discriminate based on sex, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution's guarantee to equal protection of the law. And for athletes at every level, the issue is deeply personal, with tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova on opposing sides, for example, along with hundreds of other high-profile athletes.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court tried to thread the needle, ruling that since Title IX explicitly allows sex-segregated athletic teams, states are free to limit team players to their sex at birth.

The two cases before the court were factually quite different. One involved Lindsey Hecox, a trans college student barred by Idaho law from trying out for the Boise State University varsity women's track team. She challenged Idaho's ban on trans athletes, contending it violated her right to equal protection of the law under the Constitution. Ultimately, after dropping out of school, she won her case in the lower courts, but upon returning in 2025, she decided not to play varsity sports.

This is a developing story and will be updated
Copyright 2026 NPR

Can't see the video above? Watch it here.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations. More than a year into his second term, the White House has taken a sweeping approach to curbing illegal and legal migration.

Ximena Bustillo, NPR's immigration policy correspondent, breaks down the five strategies that make up the administration's mass deportation policy.

They include providing historic funding for immigration enforcement agencies, stripping legal pathways, reshaping previously little-known immigration courts and expanding the infrastructure focused on increasing the number of those detained and deported. It's a strategy that limits immigrants' options for arguing for permission to stay in the U.S., and eliminates previous pathways to legal status.

Over the past year, judges as high up as on the U.S. Supreme Court have weighed in on the measures taken. In some instances, district court rulings have barred some of the strategies, including ordering federal officers to stop making arrests in immigration courts.

Other efforts have been upheld by the courts, including the Supreme Court's most recent ruling allowing the administration to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians and a policy that allows border officials to turn migrants away before they physically cross to claim asylum.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday weighs in on Trump's landmark executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship.

Bustillo travels to Arizona, California and New York to break down this strategy — and the impacts on the agency, federal workers and immigrants going through these complicated systems.

Relying on over a year of reporting, policy memos, data and ultimately dozens of interviews, the Trump administration's strategy becomes clear.

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