Trump order to help local governments address homelessness (07-25-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron. Go to thepeatclendarshow dot com make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to the program. Pete Calendar here, thanks a lot for hanging out. I appreciate it. The phone number is seven oh four five seven zero eleven ten. The email, oh, I should say, that's the same number as the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick GMC seven O four five seven oh eleven ten, So you can shoot a text over there. If you don't want to speak with me directly, I won't take it personally. You can also email Pete at the Pete calendarshow dot com, or you can hit me up on Twitter at Pete Calendar. Another day, another outrage among the lefties. They are very very mad. They're outraged that President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department to eliminate laws and regulations that hinder cities ability to remove homeless people sleeping on the street. Okay, so the Department of Justice, the federal government is not saying we're going to send in people, We're going to send in troops, We're going to round up homeless people like that. That's not what the order says. It says we're going to remove barriers that cities and counties and states are facing, so if they want to, they can pursue alternative ways of dealing with the homelessness crisis. The administration says the move is necessary to crack down on crime and drug use. This is a piece at the Washington Times by Jeff Mordoch. Under the executive order, Attorney General Pambondi will take steps to quote, reverse judicial precedents and consent decrees that limit local and state governments from removing homeless people from the streets and help move them into treatment centers. Oh how dare she? Were you trying to get people treatment? The order? By the way, could we brand this maybe as healthcare? Maybe we brand it as healthcare free healthcare. Maybe we do that and then the Democrats will be on board with it. What do you think? Because they are anything you just label anything healthcare and they're they're in, you know, whether it's you know, aborting babies, it's like God's healthcare. So how about this, It's like, hey, we're gonna get them into treatment. We're going to get them health care. We're going to get health care for the homeless. The order also commits federal funding to help move people on the streets into treatment centers, though it was not immediately clear how much money is being allocated. Shifting homeless individuals into long term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order, according to the directive. Okay, so civil commitment, what does that mean? That means if you are adjudicated to be a danger to yourself or to the community, to society around you, to other people, that they can put you into a facility, even against your will. And so this has got the you know, civil libertarians, it's got Democrats very upset. Although to be fair, really anything Trump does on this front is going to get them mad. But here's the other thing. This homelessness issue, or I think they're now using a term called those living unhousedly or something like that, they've come up with different nomenclature because, of course you can't just call it homelessness, because it's not that they don't have a home. Their home is their tent and their community and blah blah blah blah blah. Right, so now it's like those experiencing temporary unhousedness or something. There is an entire cottage industry of NGOs, of nonprofit organizations that feast off of government funding for their programs, and so they have an incentive to not solve the problem because if they were to solve the problem or to ameliorate the problem to such an extent that their services are no longer required or are no longer required to the extent that they are providing them, means means that they go out of business or they have to lay off people that sometimes make up pretty good living serving people who don't make a living. Right, So this has got them very upset. The directive from Trump also says surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens. Right. See, this is what gets lost in the entire debate about the homelessness crisis. The open air drug markets. The criminality that is bred around these large encampments is that the other people who are living in this society and they're playing by the rules. They're not living on the streets right, They're not abusing other people. They're trying to just live their lives. They are victimized and they are paying for all of this. What about them? Don't they get to have their wishes catered to, like the NGO's wishes are catered to, or like the unhoused wishes are are catered to. He goes on to say, my administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety. I've talked about this in many different ways over the years, which is this thin line between chaos and order. We live in a high trust society, although that is fraying once you abandon that level of trust. Or people don't wish to put their trust in their government because it's not fulfilling their side of the bargain, the bargain being the social compact. I will yield to you, Gov Co. I will give to you some liberty, and I will yield to you some of my treasure. I will let you tax me, I will let you tell me what I can and cannot do. And I understand that by giving this up, we all are then enjoying a level of security and protection so we can engage in free activity and commerce. And if you govc fail, if you fail in your duty in your end of the bargain, then you no longer have the legitimacy because the compact is now nullified. Trump also directed Bondy to work with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Transportation to prioritize federal grants for states and cities that quote enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping, and loitering. What does that mean? Means they're going to direct federal funds to locations that are actually trying to crack down on this behavior, the ones that are trying to protect the high trust, open society that the vast majority of people yielded their tax money and some liberty to participate in. He's going to put the emphasis of the federal funding to those governmental entities that are fulfilling their end of the bargain. In other words, the order requires any discretionary grants for substance use, prevention, treatment, and recovery do not go toward funding drug injection sites or illicit drug use. It also aims to ban sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance from being housed with children. Donald Trump, that monster. Does it want homeless people who are sex offenders to be housed in shelters with kids? Please, Democrats, please oppose him on this. Please let this be another one of those eighty twenty issues where you side with the position that's only popular with twenty percent of the public. Please do that, all right? If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago, and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The line spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot Ground, dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. This executive order from the Trump administration to the Justice Department to eliminate laws and regulations that prevent cities from removing homeless people sleeping on their streets, and also to try to crack down on crime and drug use. I did see this hang on. Speaking of the crime, people are celebrating that Baltimore. Violent crime in Baltimore has plummeted to historic lows. How did that happen? John McCormick, who is a senior editor at The Dispatch. He says, I interviewed Baltimore's top prosecutor who defeated the progressive DA Marilyn Moseby. Remember that woman back in twenty twenty two. So the top prosecutor asked the prosecutor why the number of murders hit a fifty year low in the city, a fifty year low. You know what he said, Now, this is in Baltimore. This is no right winger, that's a prosecutor right. Jailing people on felony gun charges seems far more important than woke policies and life coaches. Oh that's not a direct quote from him, but that's what the prosecutor said, was that you jail the people who have the felony gun charges, especially if they're a criminal with gun possession charges, because they're a prohibited possessor. Like the cohort of people that we're talking about are known, right, These are repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders. It's the same thing. It's the same thing with with the rash of car burglaries. My neighborhood just suffered another one. People are all you know on the Facebook group talking about the latest hit where some young guy, I'm not sure. I think he may have been the guy that the Gaston police picked up. Guy at a rap sheet of like two dozen burglaries. And the point here, though, is that he's under the age of eighteen, and they know that they can keep doing this because there's no punishment. So you have adults that hire kids, drop them off into neighborhoods. The kids roll through the neighborhood, popping locks on the door handles on all of the cars in the driveways. People who don't lock their cars, they get their cars rummaged through and things stolen from their vehicles. If you're in a boding community, I think they just hit somebody or some community up in like Mountain Island, Lake or Lake Norman or something. They Oh, I think it was a drift. The restaurant. Right outside of the restaurant, there's a bunch of boat slips there. I think they hit those. And so these juveniles go in, they steal a bunch of stuff, They bring it back to the waiting car driven by the adult, and the adults then pawn them off, they sell them, and they pay the kids out because the adult knows that if they were to do the crimes, they would go to jail. If the juveniles do the crimes, they don't, and they can do them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and they just get released back to their guardians or their parents, who obviously have failed in a pretty significant way. But we don't want to incarceerate a child at the tender age of sixteen or seventeen, when they've engaged in dozens of burglaries. We got to rehabilitate them. But we're not. That's the thing is, we're not rehabilitating them. Are we doesn't seem like it. It just seems like we're sending a message that you can keep doing this and when you turn eighteen records clear, you're fine. All that stuff doesn't matter. I guess these are decisions, and they these kinds of ills will persist to the degree that they persist until people decide they don't want them to persist anymore. Like this, this is a choice. It's not inevitable. It's a choice. It's a choice people make when they pull the lever at the voting stations, or fill in the bubble sheets or whatever, or press the touchpad. Like these are choices. You elect dumbasses into office, you get dumb assory. This is all over the country. Trump's order comes after the Supreme Court ruled last month that people without homes it's not homeless. People without homes can be arrested and fined for sleeping in public spaces. In a six to three decision, the court's conservative justices upheld a ban that was in Grant's Past, Oregon because, by the way, what was occurring, I imagine it still is, you've got certain jurisdictions that will load up their homeless population and bust them to some other place, some small town on the outskirts of the county or something. They send them somewhere else because they don't want to pay for it. They can't pay for it anymore, so then they send them someplace else. So you're forcing the law abiding taxpayers to keep funding these systems that obviously do not work. Meanwhile, they have to live in a constantly degraded and eroding quality of of life in their downtowns. This was the Grant's Pass, Oregon case that prohibits homeless residents from sleeping outdoors. That was a city ordinance that they did. Homeless residents of Grant's Pass face fine starting at two hundred and fifty dollars and jail time for repeat offenses. What was most amazing was that some homeless people sued somehow or another, they were able to get legal representation. They and they went all the way to the US Supreme Court on it and they lost. But right now, there are more than seven hundred and seventy one thousand homeless in the US, so three quarters of a million people. That's according to an annual count by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was the highest total ever recorded, and it represents an eighteen percent increase from the prior year. Trump also signed an executive order directing the National Park Service to we are all homeless encampments on federal land. Yeah, have you been? Have you ever been or seen a homeless encampment, particularly those that are on like public parkland. They're filthy, obviously, they're living out in the woods. Right. It's a very difficult existence. This isn't to say I have no empathy for the people that are in those conditions, but there are a whole host of reasons why people end up there. Yes, drug addiction, yeah, people fell on hard times. Yes, But also there are people, a lot of them suffer mental health problems, and there are some that actually just choose to live that lifestyle for the freedom. There are countless YouTube interviews and documentaries where people go to these encampments in various places and they interview the people that live there and you will hear their stories, and some of them are like, dude, I make money being here, Like out in California. They get paid and it doesn't make sense for them to go to work because they can just keep living the life that they're living, yes, with its trials and troubles and such, but they get stipends. They know the system, they know where to go to get food and shelter if they need shelter, and they know where to get you know, the free medical care, and then they get stipends to pay for whatever addictions that they are are suffering with. That's not humane. That's not a humane system to allow people to continue living out on the streets, under bridges and in the woods. So yeah, something different has to be done because whatever the Left has convinced so many of these governments to do over the last twenty years obviously is not working. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the Mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection with You're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. 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Regarding the ever changing terminology the lefties use regarding the unhoused, I prefer the term uh that was used by the great neil Boards urban outdoorsmen. That's a great term, true uh neil Boards is great. Loved listening to neil Boards. We used to carry him back in the day. This is from Jane H speaking of homeless Like the man I saw sleeping passed out or maybe dead on the sidewalk on Woodlawn Road near the KFC last week midday, pants down around his naked butt is right there for everybody to see. Is this what democrats want? It's what they tolerate, and it's what voters tolerate, obviously, And people drive by and you know, maybe feel bad for the person and wonder what happened that they would end up there, and then that's it. And here's the other thing too, Like you've got people that are you know, flying signs, they say, which is at all of the intersections, all of the off ramps and stuff with the signs asking for money and all of that stuff I've talked about this before in the past. Have you ever noticed that there's never there are never two people or three people at the same spot. I mean, yeah, they would be at maybe the same intersection, but they're at different ramps, right, And do they just kind of sort that out themselves or wouldn't somebody like coming to like, hey, this is my corner. You don't get to use my corner, this is my spot. I'm here, right. How come there are never any fights around these locations. M people control those corners. There are people that manage that through violence, and so that's why you get people that like, Okay, I'm allowed to be there during this time and then I have to leave. And by the way, I remember there was a news story done years ago in Charlotte. I believe it was at this very intersection Woodlawn and I seventy seven, which has always been sort of a hot spot for this kind of stuff. But that intersection, there was a guy who used to fly a sign and some local TV station like followed him after he was done, and he walked off and got in a like a big extended cab pickup truck and they went up and got an interview with him, and he said he makes I forget what the number was, but it was it was like a good salary. Basically he was pulling in forty k. Let's say, all tax free, working a few hours a day, making a good living like this. So and they know if they've got a dog, they get paid more. They got some kids, they get paid more. Right with the language on the sign says gets them paid more. This is not a humane way to address this problem. Letting people live like this is not humane. There is a proposal that was moving through the legislature this year, also in this session. Right now, it's been referred to the Senate Rules Committee, which is basically where legislation goes to die. If the leadership doesn't want to move it, it's not going to move. But it got sent to rules back in May. It came out of the House and it would put new regulations and limitations on how, where, and for how long homeless camps would be allowed. Shelters often don't have enough room, according to the piece by Laura Leslie and Mark Bergen at WRAL, and some homeless people choose to camp outdoors anyway credit where it's due. WRAL acknowledging that some people do choose to camp outside. Why Because the shelters usually require that you not be high or drunk or do drugs or drink while you're on the premises, and some people choose not to live under those burdensome onerous conditions. But some residents and businesses near the homeless camp say that they generate trash and unsanitary conditions. That's true, they do. They harm property values, and they drive customers away. House Bill seven eighty one, sponsored by Representative Brian Biggs from Randolph. Big said local governments don't know what to do. It's unsanitary. Does this bill criminalize homelessness, No, he says, it addresses the use of public property for camping and sleeping without prohibiting homelessness itself. Seven eighty one would give local governments authority to designate a publicly owned outdoor space to be used for camping and sleeping, but only if local indoor shelters do not have sufficient space to meet demand, and only for one year at a time, with the approval of state and local health officials. The site could not be close to residentially zoned areas and could not adversely affect commercial property or schools. The local government would have to provide security, it would have to supply toilets, it would have to supply running water for sanitation purposes. There is a reason why these laws came into existence. This is how like the plague spreads people. Right, all of you lefties that were like wear the masks, stand six feet apart. You're literally killing grandma. Like that same reason that you're relying on to make those arguments is the reason why there were sanitation codes. That's why you don't get just to poop in the streets, how you spread disease. It would also the local governments would also have to offer access to behavioral health services and enforce a ban on the use of alcohol or drugs. So this would be the criteria for if you want to have an open air homeless encampment someplace, If your local government and you want a virtue signal that you care more about people than everybody else, and you want to let people camp on this public property, you can do so. But here are the rules. You don't get to let people live in their own filth. You don't get to let it turn into an open air drug market. Pretty simple. Otherwise you don't follow the criteria local governments would be banned from allowing unauthorized camping or sleeping at any location. Any resident or business owner in the locality could go to court to force their local government to take action to disperse any other encampments. The bill would not apply during state or local states of emergency, though, which I think is fair. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand and experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. Let's go to the phones and uh, it just says mayor on the call screen here, Mayor, is that your name? Yes, sir, okay, Well, Mayor Grave from TK, South Carolina. Pete, how you doing today? I'm all right, so do I hope you don't mind, but I have to vet you just to make sure you actually are Mayor Gray from Tiga K. So who's your mayor pro tem? Who's your mayor pro tem? Well, at first when I was elected, my mayor pro temp was Tom Heislip. Now my mayor pro temp is Carmen Miller. Okay, he passes. All right, I believe you're the mayor of Tika k all right. Nobody would know those names except the mayor of Tika k Okay. So yeah, so what's up? What's going on? Well? I was, I was listening to you as I do every day. Thank you for what you do, Pete. You put on a for Riffy shows a lot of information, so great job. With the with the homeless encampments and the homeless problem that we have around the city of tu Kay adopted an ordnance that for hibbits homeless encampments as such in our city limits. Uh. So just wanted to throw it out there. If anyone from any of our local cities or or anyone from council or other folks having this problem, just give me a call. You can look me up, Google me. But we have an ordinance already on our books that we've approved that prohibits that. And it's just we were having a little bit of an issue. Uh. And with that, we like to be proactive on everything that we do in the city, and we made it to where you cannot do that in our city and that that would be you will be subject to arrest and removal. How long ago did you do that? Uh? What was that last year? Okay? As has anybody like threatened litigation or court challenges? No? No, Basically, we just want to keep our city beautiful, We want to keep it safe, uh, and we want to keep it to wear our businesinesses and our residents can can go and and and do as they please, uh and not be inhibited by a bunch of trash and a bunch of stuff that we don't need there. Uh you know. I we pride ourselves in t K of being the save the city in South Carolina. We pride ourselves on being a clean city and a city that we take care of each other. Uh. In that if we do have some folks that that that are you know, are homeless and and they're not able to to to have a place to live, we try to work with those folks as well. And like to give a shout out to the folks down at pilgrims In and in rock Hill. They do a great job with those folks. So if if anyone is looking, are in need of a of a place to stay, and you know the great folks down at Pilgrim's In they do a great job. They also have some some work programs and everything as well to help folks get back on their feet. The Family Promise of York County also does that as well. So just wanted to give an, you know, just a little shout out to those folks. If you find yourself in those needs then that would in need of some help, you know, best thing to reach out to your local church. Those folks can can point you in the right direction, they can give you the help, and they can pray for you, which is a big thing. If you need any help, really you need to have the Good Lord for it and he'll provide. So just wanted to get that out to everybody information and stuff. If some of the local municipalities need that information. It's on our website. You can go and look that order. It's up. No problems, but it's worked well for us and with those folks that we do find in need, we do help those folks to get to where they need to go to fine help and working with Amy and other folks around York County. So just encourage everybody to reach out to the resources that you have around you well. And it was one of the things. One of my first jobs I ever had was at my local church. I was like fifteen years old. I was answering phones and stuff in the rectory after hours and stuff, and people would come up and seek money from the church. And I heard all sorts of stories from people that were trying to get me, this fifteen year old kid working the phones, you know, to give them checks. And I was like, I can't do that, I said, But I can call down one of the priests and they can talk to you. And what the priests had and what the church had done was they had partnered with, you know, local shelter. They had a deli down the road that they would give vouchers to so they could go get food. And I was amazed. Is where I first learned in these first interactions that so many of the people that came in, they were asking for the money. When given the opportunity for the services and for the food that they claimed they need the money for, they refused to take the vouchers. They refused to go to the shelter. They didn't want that. They just wanted the money and they didn't want those services. Yes, sir, those folks are out there. It's unfortunate that day they would rather, you know, have a hand out. I'm one of those guys teaching man to fish. Yeah, so you know, I just want to encourage everybody to reach out to you to your local churches, reach out to your local folks, and and if you want help, it's out there. You just need to reach out to folks that can put you in touch with folks that can help you. There's a lot of programs that we have to help folks that are had had a hard time. And I remind all of my folks too. Hey, folks, you know what, by the grace of God, we're able to to park ourselves underneath the rooms. We're able to be safe, and we're able to do what we do every day. There's folks out there that there one pay check away from being being out of their homes or out of their car. Uh. You know, but would in that keep your head up, keep going. Uh. Things get better, But do reach out and do and and do seek that help. It's out there for you if you need it and you want it. Another thing for our veterans, you know, we've got our Veterans Association as well. You know, veterans, if you're within the sign of my voice and you need help, you can reach out to our Veterans Association. We are there to help any veteran that is in need. Uh. And we've got programs throughout the federal government has programs throughout the nation to help those folks. And especially when you're a veteran, you don't need to be sleeping on the street. You need to be taken care of. And there are programs out there and help that you can get to help you out with anything that you need. So yeah, you know, I find it very very disappointing to me that we're taking care of of everybody else but our veterans. Yeah, I agree, I hear you. Uh, Mayor, I appreciate the call. Thanks for thanks for joining. Yes, sir, all right, take care of all right. So that's the mayor of t Chris Gray. This is Tara. Hello, Tara, welcome to the show. Hey Pete. So, when my kids were in high school in Myers Park, one of the guys that was doing like an eagle scout something whatever, but he observed and interviewed. You know, the guys that are on Billy Graham coming off from the airport and then thereby that Marshals and there's there's like eight off them. One lady sits there with her diapers on in a wheelchair. YadA yah. They parked their van at that Marriott courtyard and they all got together, said we'd interview them, and he said the same thing, why should we work. They lived in a house together, eight of them on Lake Norman, Nice and I think somebody took it to the news one day he said, why should we work, why should we pete pay the government when this has happening. So what that guy said, who I want him to run for a governor of North Carolina please, is if you want the help, it is there. Yeah, everywhere you turned there was work. If you decide you don't want it, even veterans, and I have veterans in my family and they're not homeless. The help is there, but you have to want it. With anything. It is there so much. I live in a place where they feed them three times a day and I still see needles, I see people dead. I see it's horrific, but it's you know. It's not humane or whatever. Yeah, no, it's not humane. The allowing people to live like that is not a humane response. So absolutely I had to teach my children that because he's like, let's give him cigarettes, let's give them food, and then he got spin on from giving a guy some crackers one day. Yeah. Oh, I've had my wife and I have had my wife will like she works in uptown Charlotte and terror, I appreciate the call, but as she works in uptown and she's given people food, but like she's coming home from lunch she didn't need her whole lunch, and they're like, hey, do you have any money. She's like, well you can have this food, and like she's been rejected, like I don't want that. I'm not gonna eat that. Like okay, all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.