John and Nisha Whitehead – The Rutherford Institute July 31, 2025
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is a dangerous activity.”—Hannah Arendt
The government’s war on homelessness—much like its war on terrorism, its war on drugs, its war on illegal immigration, and its war on COVID-19—is yet another Trojan Horse.
First, President Trump issues an executive order empowering federal agencies to clear out homeless encampments and lock up the homeless in mental institutions using involuntary civil commitment laws intended for dealing with individuals experiencing mental health crises.
Days later, a gunman allegedly suffering from a mental illness opens fire in New York City, killing four before turning the gun on himself.
Coming on the heels of Trump’s executive order aimed at “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets,” the shooting has all the makings of a modern-day Reichstag fire: a tragedy weaponized to justify allowing the government use mental illness as a pretext for locking more people up without due process.
An Orwellian exercise in doublespeak, Trump’s executive order suggests that jailing the homeless, rather than providing them with affordable housing, is the “compassionate” solution to homelessness.
According to USA Today, social workers, medical experts and mental health service providers say the president’s approach “will likely worsen homelessness across the country, particularly because Trump’s order contains no new funding for mental health or drug treatment. Additionally, they say the president appears to misunderstand the fundamental driver of homelessness: People can’t afford housing.”
And then comes the kicker: Trump wants to see more use of civil commitments (forced detentions) for anyone who is perceived as posing a risk “to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”
Translation: the government wants to use homelessness as a pretext for indefinitely locking up anyone who might pose a threat to its chokehold on police state power.
When you consider the ramifications of giving the American police state that kind of authority to preemptively neutralize a potential threat, you’ll understand why some might view these looming mental health round-ups with trepidation.
By directing police to carry out forced detentions of individuals based not on criminal behavior but on perceived mental instability or drug use, the Trump administration is attempting to sidestep fundamental constitutional protections—due process, probable cause, and the presumption of innocence—by substituting medical discretion for legal standards.
Taken to its authoritarian limits, this could allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling dissidents who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.
Police in cities like New York have already been empowered to forcibly detain individuals for psychiatric evaluations, based on vague, subjective criteria: having “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibiting “excessive fears,” or refusing “voluntary treatment.”
What happens when these criteria are expanded to encompass anyone who challenges the police state’s narrative?
Once the government is allowed to control the narrative over who is deemed mentally unfit, mental health care could become yet another pretext for pathologizing dissent in order to disarm and silence the government’s critics.
Take heed: this has the potential to become the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes, cloaked in the guise of public health and safety.
According to the Associated Press, federal agencies have been exploring how to incorporate “identifiable patient data” into their surveillance toolkits, including behavioral health records.
The infrastructure is already in place to profile and detain individuals based on perceived psychological “risks.”
The government is actively exploring how to use data from wearable health devices—including heart rate, stress response, and sleep patterns—to flag individuals for intervention. Now imagine a future in which your Fitbit or Apple Watch triggers a mental health alert, resulting in your forced removal “for your own safety.”
Mass surveillance combined with artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, and government access to behavioral health records could pave the way for a regime of police state authoritarianism by way of preemptive mental health detentions.
If the police state is equipping itself to monitor, flag, and detain anyone it deems mentally unfit, without criminal charges or trial, this could be the tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”
This is not about public safety. It’s about control.
We’ve seen this tactic before. When governments seek to suppress dissent without provoking outrage, they turn to psychiatric labels.
Throughout history, from Cold War-era Soviet gulags to modern pre-crime initiatives, authoritarian regimes have used psychiatric labels to isolate, discredit, and eliminate dissidents. As historian Anne Applebaum notes, administrative exile, which required no trial and due process, “was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.”
The word “gulag” refers to a labor or concentration camp where prisoners (oftentimes political prisoners or so-called “enemies of the state,” real or imagined) were imprisoned as punishment for their crimes against the state. Soviet dissidents were often declared mentally ill, institutionalized in prisons disguised as psychiatric hospitals, and subjected to forced medication and psychological torture.
Totalitarian regimes used such tactics to isolate political dissidents from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan describes a process in which:
The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years.
Warrantless seizures, surveillance, indefinite detention, isolation, exile…sound familiar?
What’s unfolding in America is the modern police state’s version of that same script.
Civil commitment laws are found in all states and employed throughout American history.
Under the doctrines of parens patriae and police power, the government already claims authority to confine those deemed unable to act in their own best interest or who pose a threat to society.
When fused, these doctrines give the state enormous discretion to preemptively lock people up based on speculative future threats, not actual crimes.
This discretion is now expanding at warp speed.
The result is a Nanny State mindset carried out with the militant force of the Police State.
Once dissent is equated with danger—and danger with illness—those who challenge the state become medicalized threats, subject to detention not for what they’ve done, but for what they believe.
We’ve already seen what happens when dissent is pathologized and criminalized, and civil commitment laws are weaponized:
- Russ Tice, an NSA whistleblower, was labeled “mentally unbalanced” after attempting to testify in Congress about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
- Adrian Schoolcraft, an NYPD officer who exposed police corruption, was forcibly committed to a mental facility in retaliation.
- Brandon Raub, a Marine who posted controversial political views on Facebook, was arrested and detained in a psychiatric ward under Virginia’s mental health laws.
These cases aren’t anomalies—they’re warning signs.
Government programs like Operation Vigilant Eagle, launched in 2009, characterized military veterans as potential domestic terrorists if they showed signs of being “disgruntled or disillusioned.” A 2009 DHS report broadly defined “rightwing extremists” as anyone seen as antigovernment.
The result? A surveillance dragnet aimed at military veterans, political dissidents, gun owners, and constitutionalists.
Now, under the banner of mental health, the same dragnet is being equipped with red flag gun laws, predictive policing, and involuntary detention authority.
In theory, these laws are meant to prevent harm. In practice, they punish thought, not conduct.
Trump’s latest executive order doesn’t just target the homeless—it establishes a precedent for rounding up anyone deemed a threat to the government’s version of law and order.
The same playbook that pathologized opposition to war or police brutality as “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” could now be used to classify political dissent as a psychiatric illness.
This is not hyperbole.
The government’s ability to silence dissent by labeling it as dangerous or diseased is well documented—and now it’s about to be codified into law.
Red flag gun laws, for example, authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others. The stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats. No mental health diagnosis is required. No criminal charge. Just a hunch. Those most likely to be targeted? The people already on government watch lists: political activists, veterans, gun owners, and anyone labeled an “extremists”— a term that now applies to anyone critical of the government.
While the intention may appear reasonable—disarming people who pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others—the problem arises when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of a police state that equates dissent with extremism.
This is the same police state that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
The same police state whose agents are weaving a web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using AI, social media surveillance, behavior sensing software, and citizen snitches to identify potential threats.
The same police state that renews the NDAA year after year—authorizing the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens.
The same police state that considers you suspicious based on your religion, your bumper stickers, or your political beliefs.
As a New York Times editorial warns, you may be labeled an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, believe the economy is about to collapse, fear the government will soon declare martial law, or display too many political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
This is the same police state that now wants access to your mental health data, your digital footprint, your biometric records—and the legal authority to detain you for your own good.
And it’s the same police state that, facing rising protests, unrest, and collapsing public trust, is seeking new ways to suppress dissent—not through open force, but under the cover of public health.
This is where thought crimes become real crimes.
We’ve seen this trajectory before.
The war on drugs.
The war on terror.
The war on COVID.
Each began with real concerns. Each ended as a tool of compliance, coercion, and control.
Now, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are entering a new war: the war on anti-government dissidents.
We are fast approaching a future where you can be locked up for the thoughts you think, the beliefs you hold, or the questions you ask.
The government will use any excuse to suppress dissent and control the narrative.
It will start with the homeless.
Then the mentally ill.
Then the so-called extremists.
Then the critics, the contrarians, and the constitutionalists.
Eventually, it will come for anyone who dares to get in the government’s way.
This is how tyranny rises. This is how freedom falls.
Unless we resist this creeping mental health gulag, the prison gates will eventually close on us all.
—
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
“the shooting has all the makings of a modern-day Reichstag fire:” — I stopped reading right there. Just another brainwashed fool. Was this idiot at the Reichtag? If not then he is spouting hearsay.
the zio government in the UK is flailing around like a head less chicken
things are very bad. the police have to decide if they are on the side of the people or the NWO zios
some of the laws about to be passed are horrendous
Both trump and elon musk have been asked to come
and give us regime change,
we may yet become another state of the USA
I do not know how homelessness happens but I do know that councils look after people who then only take the piss. On Sunday I got given money by a kind person who must have thought I was homeless and starving, and it has happened before. I explained that I am not homeless “but I am very ill” He said he could tell, and he wanted me to indulge in some self-pity, which I have banned in all circumstances. God supports you with perfect skill if your ego is under control
kier starmer should be serving his electorate not george Soros and rothschild
WE dont want any more migrants
and the threat to use water cannons on tho protesters is very wrong
the police were caught bussing in rentamobs, one old man aged 96
was roughed up for wearing his army medals
admittedly the so called anti racists did apologise
no wonder Trump is offering to take charge of the UK
Dear Dear..
why do you think the maggot media has been running with the so called ‘mental health crisis’ for the last ten years?..it really is a psy-op’ that one and quite literally…bearing in mind that the regime creates nuts to crack and the common imbecile itself doesn’t know it’s own arse from its elbow..
not withstanding..
most of these unhappy people are then shunted into the big pharmer con and catalogued for later use and of course to create precedents.. and horseshit legalese.. to brutalise them further..
because you may well have been a bit glum when you went to see the local butcher at the quacks..but when they’ve finished with you, you’ll actually be as demented as they are..no doubt believing in the veracity of big govern-mente and the the kindly ‘professions’…howling at the moon on your bed in the community mental institution nursing a genital scar where your cock used to be and crying into your tutu.. and using your mickey mouse knickers as a hankie..
Trump is expelling loads of migrants, kier Starmer is not
and putting them up in luxury hotels is a major hate crime
America is very afraid of the UKs slide into communism
In the USA the American flag is sacrosanct
when a 12 year old girl attended a British culture day wearing a union jack dress
and was punished for it, hackles went up all over the USA
people were shouting for Elon Musk and Trump to please come take over
Britain is at the precipice, the government is spying on its people
and objectors are being called terrorists far rightists and natzis
the way things are going, trump and elon musk may not be a bad thing
Police warning as ordinary people organise more migrant hotel protests
Story by Holly Evans
Police are bracing for further anti-migrant protests and potential disorder across the UK, particularly outside hotels housing asylum seekers.
At least four demonstrations are planned for the upcoming week in Bournemouth, Southampton, and Portsmouth, with people also organising a “no asylum day” of action on Thursday.
The police have to decide between a criminal government or the people who pay their wages
The Metropolitan Police also anticipate being stretched on Saturday due to a large pro-Palestine Action protest in central London, despite the group’s proscription as a terrorist organisation.
So israel is committing mass murder on palestinians, yet they are the terrorists ?
US president Trump is very worried about the road the UK is being taken down and with George Soros funding hard left groups
Tensions have risen following sexual assaults by asylum seekers, in Epping and claims by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of a “cover-up” regarding an rapes in Nuneaton etc.
Police say they are committed to facilitating peaceful protests but will address any public order or criminal offences.
As a lawyer John Whitehead might consider reaching far more people than just through the alt-news if he was to start writing novels like his fellow lawyer John Grisham. I haven’t read any of JG’s books because I prefer to read non-fiction, but those which were made into films are excellent. The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client among them. What John Whitehead knows and foresees his books could make great films.
The Nazis had the right idea–round up all these dysgenic freaks, commies, Jews, antifascists, bible nuts, homos, criminogenic scum—put them in concentration camps & isolate them from normal civilized society.
Let’s not forget who started this homeless mess. Mr Reagan and his gov. Then the landlords and merchants followed with their shit. Not only are there plenty of mentally ill among the homeless population, we get lots of service veterans, predators, priced out people, unemployed, the recently released from jails and prisons, and psych hospitals, and many more who but the State is the root of this mess. Why did Regan suddenly close the hospitals and let loose on society the mentally ill?
Young woman goes into the tattoo shop and asks for a portrait of Elvis on her inner thigh, after removing her skirt and panties the tattooist goes to work when he’s finished the woman isn’t happy so he does another portrait of Elvis on the other inner thigh, the woman is still not happy and refuses to pay, so tattooist says I’ll grab the first person off the street and if they don’t recognise Elvis the tattoos are free. A little old lady is walking past the shop so the tattooist asks her to take a look at the tattoos and tell me who they are, the young woman spreads her legs an the little old lady takes a good look, after several minutes she turns to the tattooist and says, I don’t know who the twins are but the one in the middle is Keir Starmer
In Russia if you question the Hoaxlocaust you get 5 years in some jail/gulag. Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is also banned by the chabad ghoul.
eventually white ‘racism’ and ‘anti-semitism’ will be categorized as ‘mental illnesses’ requiring immediate arrest and evaluation in some prison
No Way Out On The Highway To Hell ~ Zionism’s Fall, The Westernized Mind and The 4 Weapons of Spiritual Warfare in Palantir’s Prison Grid
No Way Out: Trump’s Ultimatum FORCES Russia, China, Iran & India to FIGHT! – John Helmer & Dialogue Works
Palantir’s Prison Grid, mRNA Floss & the Healing Power of Sunlight –
EyesIsWatchin #190
UK Forces in Ukraine Now Targeted by Russia – Scott Ritter
Citizens building their own energy weapons to combat skynet will be the next step for many…
Who’s Really Complicit? GCC Strategy, Zionism’s Fall & the Westernized Mind – Middle Nation
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): What is it?
Doctor Reveals The 4 Weapons of Spiritual Warfare
No Way Out On The Highway To Hell ~ Zionism’s Fall, The Westernized Mind and The 4 Weapons of Spiritual Warfare in Palantir’s Prison Grid
https://grizzom.blogspot.com/2025/08/no-way-out-on-highway-to-hell-zionisms.html
O this is old stuff . 60 years ago . if you were an outsider,
not living like the other limited brain provincials you could
land in psychiatric confinement if you are a loner even
if you are no criminal . northgerman landlords + their
provincial asslicker conspirators were able to do this
to one without family . after that they had their nerverobbing
judges + corrupt lawyers for psychological torture bombs .
insofar with german provincials envy decomposing multi
culti massinvasion they had to learn that their oldfashioned
days are over . this is the positive aspect of multiculti even
if I did not like Mehrkills +Kohls (cohen) parasiteflood since
40 years .
@COSTA LATORRE
homelessness started with jewCIA drug business
barry + the boys (Koks+Heroin) . marihu was only
preliminary . now US has harder stuff to bring USA
faster down . I bet the most drugcooks are jews .
the CIA needed trillions for their dark projects,
rooms for tenants are owned mostly by jews –
Kneel before Zod
Zod knows what needs to be done
@Harry Marsh — Trump has turned on the US and is breaking every pre-election promise he made. He’s blaming it on the courts or Putin or whomever, but it’s him, Epstein’s long-term pal and long-term pawn of the Jewish Mafia, who is doing it.
He’s giving us a regime change at warp speed, from Biden to a few token actions to worse than Biden.
You can have him. Please take all of Congress with him. Or just cut Washington off of North America and float the whole place over to Britain.
@JamesBalderson1991 — you are too obviously a troll. That line about the Am flag — ha ha! I’ve lived all my long life in the US, worked for the fed govt and been totally loyal to the Constitution. My country is in deep distress, and I don’t like seeing liars like you using Newspeak to claim, “every day, in every way, it’s getting better and better.”
Mental health crisis in the clown world? Come on!
Clowns are clowns and are generally doing funny things – on and for the funny farm. Popping pills and to become addicted is simply a bonus for all – for the authority and the local economy/community. Supporting ones own pharmaceutical bourgeoisie who in exchange again encourages global polliticks, regime changes, famines and wars for everyone also includes the efficiency of magic money laundering where collected/stolen coins simply vanish into thin air – never to be seen again. A win win situation for all and even clowns are adored while constantly chewing on their “happy pills” and whatever will numb everything else that hurts so badly – just to forget the crazy sadness in their hearts, minds and soul.
Crypto fake j. drumpf is clearly himself a heavy mental patient & should be stashed away in normal circumstances the rest of his days in a cuckoos nest facility.
He rigged the 2024 elections in collaboration with Elon Musk / everyone in the US or anywhere else in the world who followed his adderral rally speeches will have seen the wanna-be´Adolf left himt after hint & the controlled media nor the sheople did not give a .uck
Repeat service anouncement for US of A – Dump crypto fake j- drumpf he is the THSB ( Trojan Horse Shit Bag ) of the RotSchild & Rockeller big pharma etc- usw. cabal / Vance already pumping up himself on the reserve bench but he is an a-hole too on the payroll of KarpalanThiel / Harris-Walz actually won 2024 / OK have their issues too / put them in the WH ( no ballroom¡¡ / provide houses for the roofless around the corner of the WH)
CIA O
@ ursa..
Zeal before nod…
“Kneel before Zod” has not happened much in real life except with BLM–and some White girls and cops went and obeyed when all self-respecting witnesses stood and scoffed
In Los Angeles County countless people are routinely abducted , tortured in the downtown Abu Ghraib (aka Central Jail ) for no legitimate reasons. Forced psychiatric medication of political and religious opponents is routine as well, with jews playing prominent roles in these outrages. Jew World Order on the march. The hatred of the jews is rising. Even their former leftist liberal supporters have turned against them.
Something tells one that places of greatest jew infestation and greatest in their politico-religious and other abuse, such as Los Angeles, New York etc. will lead the way in the upcoming anti-jew uprisings kicking the filth out of our societies.
Already the ultraliberal Venice Beach has had what appeared as multiracial anti-zionist patrols conducted jointly(!) by liberal and concervative negroes and whites, indicating loss of narrative and collapsing jewish control over their former slaves. Imagine Antifa and Nazis stomping out up jew rats TOGETHER!