Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Chikungunya fever has spread rapidly in many places in Guangdong Province and spilled over to other parts of China. Local residents told The Epoch Times that the Chinese communist regime is forcing residents into quarantine and asking them to pay for it, which many people cannot afford.

As of July 24, the total number of officially confirmed cases of Chikungunya fever reported in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, and elsewhere in China reached more than 4,014, according to Chinese state media. The first case was reported on July 8.

In the city, 53 hospitals have been designated to treat the disease, with more than 3,600 isolation beds set up and preparations made for expansion to a quarantine facility, according to state media.

Because of the Chinese communist regime’s record of censoring data it considers politically sensitive, as was seen with its underreporting of COVID-19 infections and related deaths in late 2019, the true number of known Chikungunya fever infections could be higher.

Chikungunya fever is a viral disease mainly transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. Its symptoms are similar to dengue fever. Patients usually experience fever, severe joint pain, muscle pain, headache, fatigue, and rash. It has the potential to be fatal.

There is no specific antiviral treatment for Chikungunya. Deaths from the disease are rare but do occur, especially among vulnerable populations such as infants and the elderly.

The outbreak has also spread from the hardest-hit Shunde District of Foshan City to the provincial capital of Guangzhou City, as well as Yangjiang City in western Guangdong Province, more than 124 miles away. A case of Chikungunya fever occurred in Yuexiu District of Guangzhou, according to Chinese media reports. The Yangjiang City Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported on July 25 that three cases of Chikungunya fever have been diagnosed in the area.

The Macau Health Bureau, which is independent from the Chinese communist regime’s health authorities, also reported a case of Chikungunya fever on July 18. The patient is a Macau resident who visited relatives in Shunde District of Foshan City from July 8 to July 17.

The Chikungunya virus has also spread to northern China. The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a prevention reminder on July 22, warning of occasional cases allegedly imported to Beijing from abroad. However, Beijing officials have not released any data.

The Chikungunya virus is mainly spread by the white mosquito (Aedes albopictus), also known as the Asian tiger mosquito, Sean Lin, assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College and former U.S. army microbiologist, told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.

“This type of mosquito is currently more common in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in China and Southeast Asia,” he said, noting that in the past few years, “this type of mosquito has moved northward in China, so other provinces should also be careful.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has raised concerns of another Chikungunya virus epidemic. The WHO said it was noticing the exact same early warning signs as were seen with a major outbreak two decades ago and wanted to prevent it from happening again.

“We are calling for urgent action to prevent history from repeating itself. There is no particular treatment for chikungunya, so people need to avoid mosquito bites,” Dr. Diana Rojas Alvarez, a medical officer at the WHO, told reporters on July 22.

“WHO is currently supporting member states by deploying and strengthening laboratory diagnosis, risk communication and community engagement, training clinical workers, and strengthening surveillance and mosquito control.”

To prevent the spread and infection of Chikungunya virus, according to the WHO, local mosquito control is the key, along with emptying and cleaning containers that contain water on a weekly basis and disposing of waste.

Mandatory Paid Quarantine

Similar to how the Chinese regime handled the COVID-19 pandemic, Chikungunya patients in China are being placed in forced quarantine, which they are being asked to pay for out of their own pocket, according to Chinese residents and doctors.

The Chinese regime’s health authorities are currently saying that home quarantine is not “recommended” and instead, “quarantine at hospital is recommended” for Chikungunya patients.

A doctor at Beijiao Hospital, also known as Shunde District Third People’s Hospital, said that “home isolation is not allowed at the moment,” and it depends on testing results. “Only those with negative testing results can be discharged from the hospital. Currently, no one can conduct the test themselves, and everyone has to go to the hospital for testing.”

The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that the quarantine hospital uses screen doors, windows, and mosquito nets and that patients are treated with traditional Chinese medicine.

A laboratory employee who does virus testing in mainland China told The Epoch Times that Chikungunya fever is not included in the Class A testing category. According to mainland China’s infectious disease regulations, only Class A infectious diseases require mandatory quarantine. However, the Chinese regime is now using Class A disease standards to handle Chikungunya, and accordingly now require isolation.

A local villager in Foshan, who didn’t give his name because of safety concerns, told The Epoch Times on July 24 that his movements were controlled as soon as he entered the hospital for testing for Chikungunya.

Describing what happened when he was under observation at the hospital and wanted to leave the observation room temporarily, he said: “I was stopped when I got close to the door of the observation room. Later, my blood test result came out negative. Then, I was allowed to leave. Those who tested positive were taken to register for hospitalization by staff.”

Local residents said in social media posts that the mandatory hospital quarantine for Chikungunya is aimed at making money off the people. One patient in Guangdong showed his hospital bill for quarantine in a video posted on social media, while saying: “It costs nearly 500 yuan [about $70] a day to be quarantined at the hospital. I can’t afford it.”

Luo Ya and Ning Haizhong contributed to this report.

Recent reports in Mideast regional media say that Iran is actively exploring abandoning GPS technology and instead adopting China’s main navigation satellite system, BeiDou. Such a drastic change can’t be accomplished overnight, however, as the world’s dominant system (GPS) has long been embedded in Iranian industries and technology. 

US-based and Western technology firms dominate such telecoms and mapping tech infrastructure, and the June 12-day conflict saw Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf experience repeated disruptions of GPS signal – and it’s believed the system was utilized by Israel and the US to track and target Iranian officials.

Iranian officials were already worried about reliance on GPS even before the war, but the conflict has only heightened existing concerns – enough to race for alternatives. After all, the Global Positioning System (GPS) was literally an invention of the US Department of Defense in the 1970s and is currently run under the Space Force.

“At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told state media earlier this month.

He confirmed that the government is working on a plan switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to China’s BeiDou, according to Al Jazeera.

The same report emphasizes that “Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale – something that has worried governments around the world.”

It’s also only a natural trajectory that Iran would become increasingly more trusting of tech based out of China, India, or Russia – as opposed to that of the United States and Israel’s close Western allies.

Russia, for its part, hopes its national or regional satellite navigation system GLONASS can spread, especially among allied populations.

As for BeiDou, it’s seen as going hand and hand as a major tech tool with President Xi’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) which has been making inroads across Asia and Africa.

Al Jazeera aptly concludes in its report that “Iran’s possible shift to BeiDou sends a clear message to other nations grappling with the delicate balance between technological convenience and strategic self-defence: The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end.”

“Nations can no longer afford to have their military capabilities and vital digital sovereignty tied to the satellite grid of a superpower they cannot trust,” the report adds.

Indeed the Edward Snowden NSA leaks of many years ago also confirmed that this trend has been a problem for decades, and more recently Israeli companies have also made huge leaps in developing hidden spyware embedded in what’s presented as civilian products and software.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memo on July 28 aimed at protecting religious expression among federal workers, allowing them to display religious items and discuss religion in the workplace.

OPM Director Scott Kupor said in the memo that federal agencies must ensure that employees have the right to express their religious beliefs “to the greatest extent possible,” in accordance with the Constitution, unless such expression would cause “an undue hardship on business operations.”

“Federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career,” Kupor said in a statement announcing the latest guidance for federal agencies.

The memo outlines forms of permissible religious expression by federal workers in the workplace, such as displaying Bibles, crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs on desks and within designated workspaces.

Federal agencies must also allow their workers to engage in “individual or communal religious expressions,” provided that such conduct does not take place during on-duty time, according to the memo.

It states that federal employees should be able to engage in conversations about religious topics, including encouraging co-workers to participate in religious expression of faith, such as prayer, and “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” so long as such efforts are not harassing in nature.

According to the memo, federal workers may engage co-workers in polite discussion, while not on duty, about why they believe their faith is correct and why a “non-adherent should re-think” their religious beliefs.

However, it stated that if the nonadherent requests that such attempts stop, the employee is expected to honor that request.

Federal workers are permitted to invite co-workers to church services, even if they belong to “a different faith.” Supervisors may also post on bulletin boards invitations to Easter service at their church.

The memo also states that park rangers leading tours in national parks may join their tour groups in prayer and that Veterans Affairs doctors may pray over their patients for recovery. Security guards stationed at the front desks of federal office buildings may also display religious items on their desks.

Kupor said the guidance is intended to ensure that the federal workplace is compliant with the law while also fostering an environment that is “welcoming to Americans of all faiths.”

“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined,” Kupor said.

In February, Trump signed an executive order to establish a task force within the Department of Justice that is aimed at “eradicating anti-Christian bias” in the federal government.

Trump accused the Biden administration of engaging in “an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses,” citing the prosecution of “nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians” who received prison sentences under the former administration for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.

“My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians,” Trump said in his order. “The law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace, and my Administration will enforce the law and protect these freedoms.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has launched a recruitment drive to hire “brave and heroic Americans” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to tackle illegal immigration, the DHS said in a July 29 statement.

The “Defend the Homeland” recruitment initiative aims to hire individuals as federal law enforcement agents and remove “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from America’s streets,” the statement said.

ICE is offering attractive incentives for new recruits, including signing bonuses of up to $50,000, student loan repayment and forgiveness options, overtime pay, and enhanced retirement benefits.

As Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times, recruitment materials will be distributed across major college campuses, law enforcement networks, job fairs, and cities nationwide starting this week, DHS said. ICE encourages Americans with a commitment to upholding the rule of law to apply, it added.

“Your country is calling you to serve at ICE. In the wake of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies, your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in the statement.

“This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland.”

At present, ICE employs more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel across more than 400 offices in the United States and globally.

According to DHS, the ICE recruitment drive is backed by “significant new funding” from the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act that was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4. The OBBB Act has allocated $150 billion to support immigration enforcement.

The Act allocated nearly $30 billion to ICE for hiring and training additional personnel, including signing and performance bonuses.

While the Trump administration is strengthening ICE, Democrats are pushing forward measures they say are aimed at ensuring accountability from immigration enforcement agencies.

On July 8, Senate Democrats introduced the VISIBLE Act of 2025, which requires ICE officers, Customs and Border Protection personnel, and others engaged in immigration enforcement to display their name or badge number and the agency they represent during enforcement actions.

The bill would also prohibit the use of nonmedical face coverings by such personnel during these operations unless required for safety reasons or covert operations.

“When federal immigration agents show up and pull someone off the street in plainclothes with their face obscured and no visible identification, it only escalates tensions and spreads fear while shielding federal agents from basic accountability,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said the bill is aimed at strengthening trust between law enforcement and the public.

Lack of proper identification has “created confusion, stoked fear, and undermined public trust in law enforcement,” he said.

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin rebutted such arguments.

Officers are facing a “nearly 700 percent increase in assaults,” she said, adding that some personnel have been doxxed or have been targeted along with family members. Protective gear, including face coverings, reduces these risks, McLaughlin noted.

“While ICE officers are being assaulted by rioters and having rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at them, and our CBP officers are being shot, Sanctuary politicians like Alex Padilla and Cory Booker are trying to outlaw officers wearing masks to protect themselves from being doxed and targeted by known and suspected terrorists,” she said.

In a July 20 statement, DHS said it has achieved more in six months under the Trump administration in terms of keeping America safe than most administrations achieve in their entire terms.

More than 300,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested under the Trump administration so far, it said, adding that 70 percent of ICE arrests were of criminal illegals with convictions or criminal charges. Funding from the OBBB will allow ICE to arrest and remove “even more criminal aliens,” DHS said.

Authored by Crystal-Rose Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An urgent motion to prevent search engine users from being subject to age verification has passed Australia’s Senate with sweeping support from across the political spectrum.

Put forth by United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet, the motion was supported by the right-wing One Nation party, the centre-right Coalition, and the far-left Greens.

Senators David Pocock, Lidia Thorpe, and Fatima Payman—who tend towards the left-wing spectrum—also backed Babet’s motion.

The motion was not supported by Labor senators.

A proposal to demand age verification for signed-in users of search engines was proposed by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner in early July as the government continues to crack down on access to online content for under-16s.

The Epoch Times understands several methods could be used to verify age, including ID checks, face scanning, credit card checks, vouching from a parent, AI guesswork or the results of a third party that has already verified the age of the internet user.

The proposal builds on legislation to ban under-16s from social media which passed parliament in November 2024.

An eSafety spokesperson told The Epoch Times earlier in July that the move to restrict children’s access to search engines was a protective measure to limit exposure to harmful content.

But in his speech in the Senate, Babet said it would come at the cost of every Australian’s right to privacy.

“Let me say from the outset that protecting children online is a moral imperative,” he said.

“Measures like safe-search filters for minors, better parental controls and the restriction of harmful content are of course welcome, but let’s not kid ourselves—this is not about protecting children, it is about building a surveillance infrastructure under the cover of safety.”

Babet expressed concern about age assurance measures and how they could be conducted.

“That’s biometric scanning. That’s data mining. We’re rapidly marching towards a society where privacy online is not just frowned upon but perhaps going to become illegal. That’s what’s going on,” he said.

“Imagine this: your face, your ID and your personal browsing history all linked, logged and stored in the name of keeping kids safe.

“But I ask you this: who is keeping citizens safe from this creeping authoritarianism disguised as policy?”

Babet said while the existing plan would apply only to logged-in users, it was a “slippery slope.”

“I cannot stress enough that we are not, nor do we want to become, China or North Korea. We’re Australians,” he said.

The success of the motion does not mean it will be passed into law, but the government could act on the move if it represents significant pressure from senators.

The eSafety Commissioner’s office was contacted for comment.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, has freshly warned in newly published comments that oil sanctions will have a serious and hard-hitting economic impact if properly enforced – though they haven’t been up till now, he suggested.

His prediction comes after President Trump’s announcement early this week that he would shorten Russia’s deadline to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine down to ten days from the previous 50. “We haven’t really applied full pressure on the oil sector yet,” Kellogg said on The Record With Greta Van Susteren.

“Russia’s a petrostate, exporting around 7 million barrels of oil daily, much of it through what’s called the ‘dark fleet,’” he continued.

Noting that India and China remain Russia’s two biggest oil customers, he described that the revenue from these exports helps finance the war in Ukraine and fund “huge bonuses” for soldiers being recruited as Russia expends manpower in a war of attrition.

The proposed sanctions, including 100% tariff on countries purchasing Russian oil, will “start to bite”…

“If that happens—and if Russian oligarchs start seeing the effects, especially with Russian sovereign assets largely held in Belgium—Putin will start feeling the pressure not just from within his military, but also from the oligarchs and internally,” Kellogg said.

He gaged the current level of sanctions as moderate, rating them at about “six out of ten” while admitting that enforcement remains weak, which he put at a “three out of ten.”

Kellog called for strengthening enforcement if Washington hopes to make the sanctions more effective.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has shrugged off these new threats and Trump’s revised timeline, which is clearly aimed at drastically ratcheting the pressure on Moscow.

“We’ve taken note of President Trump’s statement,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday. “The special military operation continues.”

He added, “We remain committed to a peace process to resolve the conflict around Ukraine while safeguarding our national interests.”

You will find more infographics at Statista

As for what’s next after US new secondary sanctions are activated – probably little will change, at least initially. Russia has been able to weather the sanctions storm fairly well, while deepening its economic relations with major BRICS countries, and its ground advance in Ukraine east – and even into Sumy lately – has shown no signs of stopping. At home, store shelves are full, and average Russian citizens have been living their daily lives with little perceptible change in circumstances.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

It’s reshaping Indian policymakers’ views of the West and breeding resentment of their governments among its society…

India’s former Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin recently published an informative opinion piece at NDTV titled “Tariff Blitz: Is India Becoming Collateral Damage In Someone Else’s War?”

The gist is that the West, via Trump’s threatened 100% sanctions on Russia’s trading partners upon the expiry of his deadline to Putin for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the EU via its new sanctions barring the import of processed Russian oil products from third countries, is putting undue pressure on India.

They can’t defeat Russia on the battlefield by proxy, nor will they risk World War III by taking it on directly, so they’re going after its foreign trade partners in the hopes of eventually bankrupting the Kremlin.

This is counterproductive though since their threatened sanctions could torpedo bilateral ties, push India closer to China and Russia (thus possibly reviving the RIC core of BRICS and the SCO), and spike global oil prices, which hitherto remained manageable due to India’s massive imports from Russia.

Nevertheless, partial compliance is also possible due to the damage that Western sanctions could inflict on the Indian economy, so it can’t be ruled out that India might curtail its aforesaid imports and no longer export processed Russian oil products to the EU.

Full compliance is unlikely though since India would risk ruining its ties with Russia, with all that could entail as was touched upon here, while reducing its economic growth rate through higher energy prices and thus offsetting its envisaged Great Power rise.

Even in the scenario of partial compliance, however, Western pressure on India over Russia already backfired.

Their coercive threats and the very real consequences for no compliance whatsoever, presuming that exceptions can be made for partial compliance, are reshaping Indian policymakers’ views of the West and breeding resentment of their governments among its society. The “good ‘ole days” of naively assuming that the West operated in good faith and was India’s true friend will never return.

This is for the better from the perspective of India’s objective national interests since it’s more useful to have finally realized the truth than to keep having illusions about the West’s intentions and formulating policy based on that false perception. Conversely, this is for the worse from the perspective of the West’s hegemonic interests since their policymakers can no longer take for granted that India will naively go along with whatever they request and blindly trust its intentions. This new dynamic might lead to rivalry.

To be clear, India’s envisaged Great Power rise doesn’t pose a systemic challenge to the West like China’s superpower trajectory does, nor is it “disruptive” like the restoration of Russia’s Great Power status has been. India consistently sought to facilitate the global systemic transition to multipolarity by serving as a bridge between East and West, which complements the West’s objective interests, albeit while undermining its subjective hegemonic ones that are responsible for many of the Global South’s troubles.

Trying to subordinate India and then treating it as a rival when it doesn’t submit could therefore further destabilize this already chaotic transition, thus possibly leading to unforeseeable consequences that accelerate the decline of Western hegemony more than if the West treated India as an equal.

Pressuring India even more and then punishing it for lack of full compliance with their demands will only hasten this outcome. It’s unlikely to succeed in getting India to submit to them so they should abandon this policy.

It would seem that mass deportations in the name of national security is not an issue limited to western countries.  Over the past few weeks Iran has drawn the attention of the UN and a number of humanitarian NGOs after initiated a nationwide program to remove all Afghan migrants without proper legal documentation from their borders, relocating them back to Afghanistan. 

Nearly 1 million migrants have been deported in the past month alone according to estimates by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni.  That’s around half of the 2 million Afghans currently residing in the country.  Iran’s government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani stated at the beginning of the relocation effort:

“We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority.” 

The deportations are a response to detrimental intelligence leaks and acts of sabotage within Iran during recent conflict with Israel.  Iranian authorities report the capture of a number of Afghan refugees involved in the transportation and piloting of drones, the gathering of sensitive intelligence and the planting of bombs.  They assert that migrants are easier for the Israelis to bribe.

In a well-publicized case, Iranian authorities in the city of Rey arrested an Afghan university student accusing him of links to the Mossad and alleging he was caught in possession of sensitive material on bomb-making, drone mechanics and surveillance operations. 

State television aired reports of arrested Afghan citizens “confessing” to being Israeli agents.  In one such report, broadcast on June 26, showed the questioning of several suspects, mostly Afghans, being accused of plotting to bomb a power station in southeast Tehran.

It is possible that the mass deportations represent nothing more than an effort to divert blame for Iranian intelligence failures onto a convenient scapegoat.  However, migrant groups have historically been easy targets for manipulation and conversion by foreign enemies and Iran’s caution is a logical response.  Open borders have long been used by intelligence agencies as a means to plant “sleeper agents” within nations they plan to go to war with.

For example, several Iranians have been recently apprehended trying to sneak across the US border, some of them with national security ties.  

The Taliban government has urged Iran to stop the exodus, calling for a gradual process instead.  Taliban officials say the dignity of the migrants must be respected, though, it is likely that the Afghan economy could be crippled by a surge of a million or more refugees in such a short span of time and the Taliban have limited means of humanitarian support.

Afghanistan maintains a number of restrictions on foreign aid groups seeking to operate within the country.  The UN has also accused the Taliban of “serious abuses” against returning migrants, including cases of torture, mistreatment and arbitrary arrest and detention targeting women, media workers, civil society members as well as individuals affiliated with the former government that fell in 2021.

While education of women is common in Iran, it is strictly prohibited in Afghanistan under the Taliban.  Women refugees returning to the country after years or decades in Iran are likely to experience a cultural shock.

Iran’s deportations have been escalating since 2023, with the government citing not just national security issues, but also economic strain.  As with any other country, it is not their responsibility to take on the economic, cultural and strategic risks associated with mass immigration.     

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration has made a move to address homelessness with an executive order to bring back facilities to house those with mental illness or drug addiction.

President Donald Trump issued a July 24 executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”

The administration says that chronic homelessness is often fueled by addiction and mental illness, which has led to safety concerns in many cities.

The White House stated that during the last administration, a record of more than 274,000 individuals were found to be experiencing homelessness.

The order pushes local governments to redirect the homeless to “long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment.”

Cabinet heads have been instructed to prioritize funding to cities that work to abolish open drug use and camping on the streets.

The Executive Order 

Trump’s order tasks Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. to seek the reversal of any policy at the federal, state, or local level that blocks the commitment of those with mental incapacity or addiction who are living on the streets to “appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”

The order also redirects funds to rehabilitation and treatment facilities, and attempts to “restore public order,” saying “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.”

Trump has called for a shift back toward long-term institutional care, saying that this is a more compassionate and safe solution for both the homeless and the individuals they interact with in U.S. cities.

The order also directs federal resources toward grants and other programs to not only fund the facilities to house the homeless, but also to ensure grant money for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery only funds “evidence-based programs.”

Order’s Critics

Some critics of the order say the administration’s efforts would be counterproductive.

The National Homelessness Law Center issued a statement the day the order was signed, saying it “deprives people of their basic rights and makes it harder to solve homelessness.”

Areas of concern for the group include the expanded use of police and institutionalization as a response to homelessness, as well as the prioritization of funding for states to deal with homelessness as a crime. According to the group, the way the order is structured, it will also cut off funding for current programs that the group believes save lives and reduce harm. 

“Today’s executive order, combined with MAGA’s budget cuts for housing and healthcare, will increase the number of people forced to live in tents, in their cars, and on the streets,” the law center warned.

“This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet.”

The group said, “Forced treatment is unethical, ineffective, and illegal.”

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, the two current primary contributors to the homelessness crisis are the lack of affordable housing and limited government-funded housing assistance programs.

Historical Context: Deinstitutionalization 

The historic use of institutions and asylums for those who were not able to function well in society went by the wayside in the mid-20th century due, in part, to overcrowding and underfunding.

That mixture contributed to widespread abuse suffered by residents, which led to further reform.

Later, advances in drug treatment for psychiatric care, along with financial pressures and legal changes, led to activism that pushed forward the first wave of deinstitutionalization in the 1950s and 1960s.

Under the Kennedy administration, the 1963 Community Mental Health Act was signed, which promoted smaller community health centers in place of large institutions, but the funding for those centers was insufficient in the long term. 

Later, a second push targeted removing those with developmental disabilities from such facilities in the late 1960s and 1970s. 

However, without community services to meet the demand for those mentally ill or mentally challenged, those who were previously in institutions frequently found themselves without homes, particularly in urban areas. 

Between 1980 and 2000, many individuals with mental illnesses who had previously been in psychiatric institutions began to enter the criminal justice system instead—a shift known as transinstitutionalization. This trend alone is estimated to have contributed to a 4 to 7 percent increase in the overall incarceration rate during that period.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that cities are allowed to hand out fines or jail time for the homeless who sleep outside. It overturned an appeals court ruling that found such policies violated the Constitution if there was not enough publicly available shelter for the city’s homeless population.

Unitree Robotics, China’s dominant robot company, is turning heads with the release of its new humanoid that can fist-fight and perform cartwheels – capabilities that represent a direct challenge to Elon Musk’s ambitions of establishing Tesla’s Optimus as the world’s leading humanoid robot.

The Unitree Robotics R1, weighing 55 pounds and equipped with 26 joints for fluid movement, showcases advanced capabilities like cartwheels, spin-kicks, and a “kip-up” maneuver, transitioning from a supine position to standing without using its hands, as demonstrated in a recent video released by the company.

Unitree Introducing | Unitree R1 Intelligent Companion Price from $5900
Join us to develop/customize, ultra-lightweight at approximately 25kg, integrated with a Large Multimodal Model for voice and images, let’s accelerate the advent of the agent era!🥰 pic.twitter.com/Q5pmkfFZZa

— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) July 25, 2025

The R1’s launch directly challenges Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla’s Optimus, which aims to lead the global humanoid robotics market. Musk has outlined ambitious plans, predicting in January that Tesla could produce “several thousand” Optimus robots this year for internal factory use, with goals to scale to 50,000–100,000 units in 2026 and achieve a tenfold increase the following year. However, reports from Taiwan’s Digitimes suggest Tesla’s Optimus faces production delays due to a redesign, with unnamed Chinese supply chain sources indicating ongoing refinements to key components before mass production can resume.

The humanoid robotics market could see explosive growth, with projections estimating a $5 trillion industry by 2050, encompassing supply chains, maintenance, and support networks. Morgan Stanely analysts anticipate adoption will surge in the late 2030s, driven by technological advancements and increasing regulatory and societal acceptance.

By 2050, over 1 billion humanoids could be in use, with 90% deployed in industrial and commercial roles. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, an early backer of OpenAI, has predicted a ChatGPT-like breakthrough in robotics within two to three years, envisioning adaptable humanoids capable of tasks like chopping vegetables or washing dishes.