NEW TARGET: LGBTQ & Disabled People
- Nishita Rao
- Jul 25, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 26, 2025
CRITICALLY ANALYZED:
Assumptions
That anyone with a DSM-5 diagnosis poses a risk to themselves or others.
That “help” can be mandated through forced institutionalization.
That mental illness, homelessness, and criminality are interchangeable.
That liberty, autonomy, and informed consent can be revoked “for the public good.”
Target
As outlined in the Order:
“Persons with mental health conditions who cannot care for themselves or pose a risk to themselves or others…”
“Homeless individuals, many of whom suffer from mental illness or addiction…”
“Broad expansion of civil commitment statutes with fewer procedural obstacles…”
Analysis
This Executive Order paints with a dangerously wide brush.
Let us consider its underlying logic:
That any person with a mental illness, not just the unhoused, not just those in crisis, may be legally institutionalized against their will.
But what is a “mental illness”? The DSM-5 defines over 150 conditions, including:
ADHD
Autism
Depression
Anxiety
Bipolar Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Schizophrenia
PTSD
These diagnoses span a broad spectrum of severity, functioning, and treatment pathways. And yet, under this order, any one of them could justify forced institutionalization if a clinician (or policymaker) interprets someone as "unable to care for themselves."
Just as the earlier Gender Ideology Executive Order confused biological processes with ideological assertions, this Mental Health Order confuses clinical diagnosis with criminal threat. To allow law enforcement individuals to redefine what is and isn't a mental illness, and not base their diagnoses on evidence-based research, is Punitive Psychiatry.
An example of Punitve Psychiatry can be found in 1851, when Drapetomania was coined. Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright described a "mental illness" that caused enslaved people to flee their captivity. Yes, you heard that right. Should an enslaved person try and break free, and make a run for it, they were termed mentally ill. Cartwright's claims were that because of the disease, the enslaved people ran away — that slavery was to be a natural and beneficial state for Black people. The CURE? Treatments that include "harsh physical punishments and forced labor".
In short, Drapetomania, was used to justify inhumane treatment of the enslaved to deny them their right to humanity.
The Weaponization of Vagueness
What makes this Order especially dangerous is its intentional use of vague language — written not to clarify, but to expand power.
“The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take steps to remove barriers to treatment and allow for flexible use of civil commitment laws.”
What does flexible mean?
“This includes modifying or rescinding existing consent decrees that restrict the use of institutional treatment.”
Why remove consent protections?
“Individuals who are not homeless but may require similar care should be included in these reforms.”
This sentence clearly signals that the target population is not limited to the unhoused, but anyone deemed “in need of care.”
“Such reforms should ensure that individuals diagnosed with mental illness receive appropriate intervention before their conditions deteriorate further.”
Who decides when a condition is “deteriorating”? And by what metric?
Words like “appropriate intervention,” “flexible,” “before it’s too late” create a rhetorical framework that justifies nearly any interpretation. This is not accidental. It is deliberate ambiguity that enables coercive enforcement.
This is not a health policy. It is legal infrastructure for psychiatric policing.
These terms are so vague and so broad that they can be used against Trans people, Queer people, the whole LGBTQ+ community— I mean we already went through a phase when being Gay=having a mental illness. There was even a time when along with the LGBTQ+ community, even women being too outspoken were arrested and locked up. We live in a time when politicians are introducing medical terms and justifying their usage without holding a degree or any research or evidence or even experience in the field. On May 15, 2025, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) introduced the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) Research Act of 2025. This Bill would redirect NIH's efforts to study the social and psychological roots of the phenomenon of "growing dissent against Donald J. Trump", calling it a growing "epidemic on the Left". The TDS Research Act aims to address the issue by:
Investigating its origins and contributing factors, including the media’s role in amplifying the spread of TDS.
Analyzing its long-term impacts on individuals, communities, and public discourse.
Exploring interventions to mitigate extreme behaviors, informing strategies for a healthier public square.
Providing data-driven insights into how media and polarization shape political violence and social unrest.
Requiring an annual report to Congress.
Using existing NIH resources
So the funds to cancer research that were cut will be redirected to be used as research funding for a hypothetical, made-up mental illness that the MAGA politicians can use against the Left and any person who dares to question Trump. In short, questioning Trump means one has a mental illness.
Now, let us go back to what the White House proclaimed:
"Civil commitment must be flexible and include those who cannot care for themselves.”
Yet:
There is no standardized test for determining what “unable to care for oneself” means.
There are no safeguards in the Order to prevent overreach.
The language applies not only to the unhoused, but to anyone diagnosed.
By this logic, at diagnosis, we are all potentially institutionalizable.
Which is factually and ethically dangerous.
Diagnosis does not mean danger.
Mental illness does not mean disorderly.
Autism does not mean incapable.
Anxiety does not mean unfit for society.
ADHD does not mean incompetent.
Depression does not mean that one cannot live independently.
Having a different Gender Identity is not a mental illness and one should not be institutionalized for being Trans
Being lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer doesn't mean that someone is confused and needs intervention.
Protesting against Trump, voicing one's political opinions is a Freedom of Speech and cannot be used to construct and drive forward a hypothetical mental illness.
I can go on.
So, what are we left with?
A government policy that uses vague legal definitions, fear-driven narratives, and the weaponization of psychiatry to expand state control over already marginalized communities.
If the order’s definitions stand, diagnosis becomes detainment.If the protections erode, treatment becomes punishment.If mental health systems are no longer consent-based, then we are all vulnerable at diagnosis.
At diagnosis, we are all vulnerable. And if we are vulnerable, then we all deserve rights, not erasure.
P.S: The first to be put in concentration camps by the Nazis were disabled people.
Here's a list of articles for you to jog your memory.
https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/MADIGFBDISAWRN1018 https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/ https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/blog/the-first-victims-of-the-holocaust/ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-murder-of-people-with-disabilities https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-in-nazi-occupied-europe/oppression/disabled/ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/nazis-holocaust-disabled.html https://columbian.gwu.edu/holocaust-killing-centers-historical-nightmare-disabled https://hmh.org/library/research/minority-victims-guide/
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