"President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to find ways to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction for longer periods...."

"The order... instructs agencies to prioritize funding for mental health and drug courts — and to not fund 'harm reduction' programs that the administration said facilitate illegal drug use. It also called for agencies to prioritize funding states and cities that to the 'maximum extent' enforce laws on open-air drug use, prohibitions on urban camping, loitering and squatting.... Dozens of states have added to or expanded involuntary commitment laws during the past decade. That includes states controlled by Democrats, an illustration that political momentum has shifted toward a more aggressive approach to dealing with the inextricably intertwined crises of mental health and addiction...."

I'm reading "Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people/Trump’s executive order could increase hospitalization of homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders" (WaPo).

Looking for an existing tag that will fit this issue, I stumbled on "Trump's urban renewal." That could work for this... but what was it that led me to create it?

The oldest post with that tag was "Asking for the black vote" back in August 2016.

More relevant to today's post is this from July 2019: "'We have to take the people... And we have to do something... We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.' Said Trump, about the homelessness in San Francisco and L.A." 

"Elon Musk... has lately been dreaming aloud about building his own version of an old-fashioned company town."

"And not just dreaming. In September, Bastrop County, Texas, outside Austin, approved the construction of Project Amazing, a subdivision of 110 modest homes on land owned by Mr. Musk that is to be called Snailbrook.... Snailbrook is named for Gary, the official snail of the Boring Company, a tunneling company that is one of Mr. Musk’s less successful ventures, which has a workshop nearby. Company towns are often named for their owners — Alcoa; Hershey, Pa.; Steinway Village, N.Y., in Queens...."

Writes Binyamin Applebaum in "Welcome to Muskville, Texas" (NYT).

But he didn't call it Muskville. He called it Snailbrook. It's a modest name, just as Boring is modest.

And there really is a terrible problem of unaffordable housing in Austin, so why does Applebaum want to kick him around for building homes for the workers he's bringing into the area? 

"The Reverend Bill Owens Stands Behind Trump."

Isaac Chotiner interviews Bill Owens (in The New Yorker).

Owens said that Trump has talked with him and other "inner city pastors" about "ways the President could help the African-American community with their challenges and their problems." Trump was, according to Owens "very receptive" and had (to use Chotiner's words) "a pretty deep understanding of the problems affecting the black community."

Owens justified Trump's criticism of Elijah Cummings on the ground that Cummings attacked Trump and Trump "felt he should respond."

Chotiner prodded Owens to say that Trump's recent attacks on "the four Democratic congresswomen" had "a racial basis," and Owens said:

I don’t see that. This country is based on race now. Everybody tries to make a race issue out of everything, because they are trying to say the President doesn’t like black people. I don’t see that. They are using that because it is popular to do it now, and it polarizes black people against the President. I think it is very unfortunate.

Owens said that black pastors are often "reluctant to be interviewed by the press":

They ask, “Where is the trap? What are you trying to get me to say that I don’t want to say?” That happens every day to me. But I am bold enough to take my shot and try to be as honest as I can, regardless to where it takes me.

Chotiner asks about same-sex marriage, which Owens has opposed. He still opposes it:

It’s terrible! It has terrified children! Look at what they have done. Look at the men playing women in kindergarten. I forget what they call it, where they call it a civil right. These big men pretending they are women, playing with little children. And it sends the wrong message to little children. They think it is O.K., and it is not O.K.

Well, then, how does Owens feel about Trump's "romances and sleeping with porn stars," Chotiner asks. Owens answers like a preacher: "If you are a sinner, and repent your sins, your sins are forgiven."

Asked about the separating of families at the border, Owens prioritizes "the black children in America who have lost their parents":

For years, they put the black father out of the home. The federal government hired a hundred thousand social workers to put the black father out of the home and put the mother on welfare. What did that do to children? It was done by our government on purpose.... Can we just take children from all over the world and do better with them than we have with our citizens? Black people died for this country. We fought for this country for hundreds of years. And we are still being neglected, and no one is talking about it.

"We have to take the people... And we have to do something... We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up."

Said Trump, about the homelessness in San Francisco and L.A....



"We cannot ruin our cities. And you have people that work in those cities. They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago.... When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the President of the United States and they’re riding down a highway, they can’t be looking at that. They can’t be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco."

I ran across that at WaPo, where the headline is, "Trump paints a dark picture of homelessness in cities: 'We may intercede.'"

Dark, they love that world. Trump is painting it, painting it dark.

And what is the intercession? What does it mean to "take the people"? I assume it was just an awkward, unformed thought, and it could have been fleshed out to something like, We have to take care of the people or We have to take the people as they are, and they are troubled, some are sick, some are mentally ill, it's a complicated problem.

The commenters over at WaPo think the worst of him. They paint him dark:

This is the key quote: “We have to take the people,” he said. “And we have to do something.”

I dread what that means ...

And:

Trump only seems concerned with people having to experience the presence of the homeless rather than caring about homeless people. This attitude exemplifies how superficial he is, both mentally and emotionally. Oh, and the economy is great!

ADDED: I haven't used the tag "Trump's urban renewal" in a long time, not since August 2017. I started it in December 2016, when Trump nominated Ben Carson for HUD Secretary.  After I created the tag "Trump's urban renewal" in December 2016, I went back and added it to a post from August 2016, "Asking for the black vote."

"But the Trump administration doesn’t need to accept that climate change will make rodent infestations worse to step in and save the cities from their rats...."

"Maybe the best way to get Trump’s attention and sell him on reviving the Urban Rat Control grant program is to stress that there is glory to be had, and for relatively cheap. 'Rats are very incredible, wildly intelligent mammals, and human beings keep going around trying to exterminate [them] as if it’s the opposite,' [rodentologist Bobby] Corrigan said. “These cities are up against one of the most incredible mammals on the planet, which only stand to increase in number.' For a mere $13 million (plus inflation), Trump could stop the ratpocalypse before it begins."

From "America Is on the Verge of Ratpocalypse/Warmer weather is fueling a rodent surge, straining public health systems and the economy. It's time for the federal government to step in" (in The New Republic).

The article frets that Trump may resist rat control because the "ratpocalypse" alarm has to do with global warming. The part I quoted above is an effort at a different pitch, which seems to be an effort to appeal to Trump's vanity, with rats presented as a formidable enemy that he might feel pride in stepping up and fighting.

You don't really have to try that hard. Trump has made "fixing the inner cities" a core promise:

"I’ll tell you, we’re spending a lot of money on the inner cities. We’re fixing the inner cities. We’re doing far more than anybody’s done with respect to the inner cities. It’s a priority for me. And it’s very important."

That's a quote from a few days ago. I cut and pasted it from "President Trump’s claim that he has done ‘far more than anyone’ for ‘inner cities’" at The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" — which gives the statement 4 Pinocchios.

Nominating Ben Carson for HUD Secretary, Trump spoke of "urban renewal": Doesn't that connote something racist?

Trump's press release said, in part:

"Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities. We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up."

Campaigning in Charlotte, North Carolina, in late October he'd used the phrase once, at the beginning of a speech titled "New Deal For Black America":

It is great to be here in Charlotte to discuss an issue that means so much to me. That is the issue of urban renewal, and the rebuilding of our inner cities. Today I want to talk about how to grow the African-American middle class, and to provide a new deal for Black America. That deal is grounded in three promises: safe communities, great education, and high-paying jobs....

At the NYT, Emily Badger expresses anxiety about the phrase "urban renewal" (and she doesn't ignore that other historically resonant phrase, "New Deal"):

His language has an odd ring to it, not solely for marrying Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal with the post-World War II era of urban renewal. If Mr. Trump was reaching for a broadly uplifting concept — renewal — he landed instead on a term with very specific, and very negative, connotations for the population he says he aims to help....

The term “urban renewal” dates to the Housing Act of 1954; its 1949 predecessor called the same policy “urban redevelopment.” Under these laws, the federal government gave cities the power and money to condemn “slum” neighborhoods, clear them through eminent domain, then turn over the land to private developers at cheap rates for projects that included higher-end housing, hospitals, hotels, shopping centers and college expansions....

Urban renewal was meant to wipe clean poor, deteriorating neighborhoods, while boosting tax coffers, stimulating private investment and luring middle-class residents and shoppers back into the city.....

Did Trump mean to evoke these details when he used the old phrase? Badger says it's a "mystery" and compares it to the mystery of whether Trump knew the historical background when he had that phone conversation with the president of Taiwan.

My guess is that Trump not only knows the historical background, he intends to leave us off-balance — tangled up in the mystery of whether he knows. But I can't solve the mystery of what he intended to do by using the old phrase that James Baldwin once said was a euphemism for "Negro removal."

We know Trump has said "eminent domain is wonderful" and:

"If you have a factory, where you have thousands of jobs, you need eminent domain, it’s called economic development... Now you’re employing thousands of people and you’re able to build a factory, you’re able to build an Apple computer center, where thousands of people can work. You can do that, or you can say, ‘Let the man have his house.'"

I recommend assuming that Trump knows what he's doing. The alternative assumption — that he's a bumbling idiot — is too easy, and if you are wrong, you will be left in the dust. But to say that he knows what he's doing is not to know what he has in mind. It's easy to fall back on the old accusations of racism and to take advantage of his use of the old phrase to dangle that theory in front of NYT readers — who snap up the bait. The highest-rated comment there says:

The article makes clear "urban renewal" is code for racist policies. And the "political correctness" that clearly drove you to vote for Trump is coded language for racism.

But maybe Trump himself was baiting people like Badger and that commenter to talk about him like that and look like surly pessimists who make reckless accusations of racism over nothing. And here he has nominated that lovely man Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Asking for the black vote.

I noticed a meme yesterday: asking for the black vote.

Rick Perry — as a Trump proxy — was on Jake Tapper's show ("The Lead").

Tapper showed an old clip of Perry saying "For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn't need it to win. But when we gave up trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln."

Asked if Trump need to pay attention to that "warning," Perry talked about how Trump's policies are actually better for African-Americans, and Tapper said, "But Hillary Clinton, whatever you think of her and her policies, she was in Philadelphia today reaching out directly to many in the African-American community."

When Perry continued with the idea that Trump's policies are better and wondered why African-Americans keep voting for Democrats, Tapper sledgehammered his idea: "Well, I guess the point I was making is because they're showing up and asking for their vote."

Perry seemed a little annoyed at the idea: "Is that all it takes? If just a Democrat shows up and asks for their vote, that is enough?" He proceeded to characterize the showing-up-and-asking idea as "denigrat[ing]" African-Americans, who, in his view, "want to see action."

But who knows? Maybe the key is asking for the vote. Trump did show up — later that day — near the scene of the unrest in Milwaukee. Last night, in West Bend, Wisconsin, Trump said: "I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future."

I'm just observing notion that there are special words and that those words happen to have been said. But here's an excerpt from the transcript, if you want to see Trump's argument why black people should respond to his request: