EXCLUSIVE: Tom Cotton’s New Bill Supercharges Trump’s Efforts To Make D.C. Safe Again

WASHINGTON—Building off President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting crime and disorder on American streets, Senator Tom Cotton is introducing legislation aimed at cleaning up the nation’s capital.

The Daily Wire can first report that the Arkansas Republican will introduce the Prohibiting Encampments on Public Grounds Act on Tuesday. The bill would make it unlawful to set up, maintain, or establish camps or temporary abodes on public property in Washington, D.C.

“Our nation’s capital should be a point of pride, not littered with homeless encampments that endanger visitors like the thousands of Arkansans who visit each year,” Cotton told The Daily Wire. “This bill would clean up D.C.’s public property and allow law enforcement officials to maintain order in the streets of our nation’s capital.” 

Those who violate the terms of the bill would be fined $500, imprisoned for up to 30 days, or both.

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 25: A person sleeps in Freedom Plaza on July 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The president’s executive order, signed July 24, directs the Attorney General to reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees that are block state and local governments from committing “individuals on the streets who are a risk to themselves or others.”

Trump’s order was aimed at “making America safe again,” one of the president’s major campaign promises. It also requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to work with other administration officials to prioritize grants for both states and municipalities that enforce bans on “open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.”

The executive order focuses attention on providing both shelter and mental health resources to the homeless, and, in addition to allowing programs to exclusively house women and children — as opposed to men who identify as transgender women — it blocks sex offenders who are receiving homelessness assistance from being housed with children.

The Trump administration has argued that shifting the homeless into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment is the best way to restore public order, pointing to the highest number ever recorded of individuals living on American streets on a single night during the last year of the Biden administration: 274,224.

Most of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have mental health disorders, or both, according to a fact sheet from the White House, which argues that federal and state governments have spent billions seeking to address homelessness without addressing the root causes.

Asked last week about homeless individuals sleeping outside the gates of the White House, the president responded: “I think it’s terrible and we’ll have them removed immediately.”

“We’ve gotta get the mayor to run this city properly,” he told reporters.