The Trump Administration has taken aim at several public health tools that seek to address the very issues on which the Administration predicates its attacks. Beginning with another Executive Order, the Trump administration has made several policy moves toward reviving decades old rhetoric linking substance use, homelessness, and crime in an effort to justify stricter, more punitive policies. Aspects of this policy shift are alarming, especially the promotion of controversial and extreme tools to control drug use like involuntary commitment, but others are simply a restatement of longstanding federal policy or much more complicated to implement than the initial order suggests. The new Executive Order takes an explicit stance against harm reduction and some of the tools to protect public health that traditionally fall within that umbrella. It also takes aim at certain models of low-barrier housing, and instructs federal resources to be utilized for law enforcement and other criminal legal system responses.
Read Health Care in Motion to understand these attacks and the potential impacts of this old-but-new policy shift.
Food Law & Policy, Commentary, Students Speaking On...
SNAP Benefits Were Disrupted: Here’s What’s Happening and What You Can Do
November 7, 2025