Donald Trump Cut Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Public Safety. It Will Cost Lives.
On Wednesday, April 23, the Trump administration rescinded over $800 million in grants to local gun violence prevention and crime reduction programs. The administration also cut grants to domestic violence assistance and drug addiction intervention programs.
These programs and the workers behind them are on the front lines of crime reduction. Cities like Boston, Oakland, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are attributing huge drops in crime in part to programs like these. But now, Donald Trump is ripping away the very funding that makes these programs work, and the consequences aren’t just lost jobs and the halting of innovative and effective organizations in their tracks. His actions will cost lives and endanger vulnerable communities.
What is community violence intervention?
Community violence intervention (CVI) programs work to stop violence before it happens through a variety of strategies. These include street outreach, in which peacemakers who are already ingrained in their communities mediate potentially violent conflicts, respond to shootings, support victims and their families, and provide much-needed access to social services. Other strategies include hospital-based violence intervention programs, case management, transformational mentoring programs, and much more.
These programs often work at the ground level and do not receive much media attention, but that doesn’t mean they don’t save lives daily. Many CVI programs are already underfunded—and now the Trump administration’s unnecessary cuts will make their mission to save lives even more challenging.
Why were these cuts made?
The Department of Justice called these vital initiatives “wasteful” spending, and authorized cuts to “programs that do not align with the administration’s priorities.” If our administration views stopping gun violence as a “waste,” and feels that lifesaving victim advocacy programs contradict its priorities, then we have to ask ourselves: What are the Trump administration’s priorities?
The answer? Enriching the gun industry. People who feel scared and unsafe buy more guns—and gun industry CEOs profit.
At least 365 grants were ended. Below is just a snapshot of the funding Trump has ripped away from organizations across the country:
Funding for National Organizations
- Community Resources for Justice lost $37 million. Community Resources for Justice provides support for men and women as they transition out of incarceration, supports adults with developmental or intellectual disabilities through specialized programs, and provides domestic violence intervention for over 900 people each week.
- The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges lost $15 million. The council is a judicial membership organization providing resources, knowledge, and training for families and children within the justice system.
- Activating Change lost $2.15 million. Activating Change is a nonprofit that works to prevent the victimization and incarceration of the disabled and deaf. These cuts represent nearly 40% of Activating Change’s annual budget, and have already resulted in 11 out of 26 employees being laid off.
- Community Based Public Safety Collective lost $2 million. The collective is a technical assistance provider that interacts with 95 organizations including police departments, cities, counties, and states to increase public safety. The collective has already had to lay off 20 staff members.
- The National Center for Victims of Crimes lost $2 million. This funding was used to operate a website called VictimConnect, which directed crime victims to support services.
- The Gault Center lost $800,000. This national center trains and supports youth defenders, but lost about half its annual budget.
- The National Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Resource Center lost ALL funding, effective immediately. Among other services, the center provided resources to imprisoned sexual abuse survivors.
Funding for State Organizations
- Impact Justice (California) lost $8.5 million. Among other programs, Impact Justice used grant funds to reduce sexual abuse in prisons.
- ROCA (Massachusetts, Maryland, & Connecticut) lost $6 million.ROCA engages hard-to-reach young people to address trauma and prevent urban violence and incarceration. They also train police in de-escalation strategies. Roca was forced to begin layoffs as quickly as April 28th, 2025.
- The Vera Institute of Justice (New York) lost $5 million. The cuts will endanger programs that assist police as they serve deaf domestic abuse survivors, provide mental healthcare access to those in crisis, and improve prison operations, training, and culture across the country.
- Fresno EOC Advance Peace (California) lost $2 million. Fresno EOC Advance Peace works to end retaliatory gun violence by providing mentorship, educational opportunities, life coaching, career programs, and more.
- LiveFree OKC (Oklahoma) lost $2 million. LiveFree OKC works to reduce gun violence rates through direct intervention, life coaching, and providing necessary resources.
- Youth Alive (California) lost $2 million. Youth Alive accompanies gun shot victims from hospitalization to recovery, providing physical and emotional support and aiming to prevent re-injury.
- VictimConnect (Maryland) lost $2 million. VictimConnect provides victims of crime with physical, emotional, legal, and financial support.
- UTEC (Massachusetts) lost $2 million. UTEC works with impoverished and justice-involved youth to reduce future violence, often providing crucial support services, employable skills, and mentors that help youth access health insurance, apply for food stamps, meet with landlords to find housing options, and much more.
- LifeBridge Health Center for Hope (Maryland) lost $1.2 million. The center provides a wide variety of services and support for those suffering from child abuse, domestic violence, community violence, and elder abuse.
- Living Classrooms Foundation (Maryland) lost $1 million. The grant that was cancelled funded Operation Respond, which kept community advocates and a medical team placed directly in neighborhoods likely to need interventionists.
- Survivors.org lost $750,000. Surviors.org provides resources to help people who have experienced sexual and intimate partner violence
- The Asian Women’s Shelter (California) lost $500,000. The grant that was cut assisted Arab American and Muslim women escape domestic violence by providing multi-lingual information on crucial services.
- The National Crime Victim Law Institute (Oregon) lost $500,000. The institute provides legal services for victims of crime with disabilities both in Oregon and across the country. Those services are now in jeopardy.
The Department of Justice claimed to be “discerning” which grants they chose to cancel. But we know it wasn’t—unless it purposely excluded dozens of lifesaving programs like the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, the Asiyah Women’s Center in New York, and Community Resources for Justice, which provides domestic violence intervention for over 900 people each week.
Other resources were taken away from support systems for LGBTQ+ people, despite the fact that more than 13,000 hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people have occurred since 2010. Still more cancelled grants went to organizations dedicated to helping Black and Brown communities, who face disproportionate levels of gun violence.
Perhaps most galling, the White House claimed that these grants were terminated in part because they want to focus on “protecting American children.” Let’s be clear: gun violence is the leading cause of death of American children and young people. Community violence intervention programs and their staff confront this public safety crisis head-on with limited resources to protect kids and families on the ground level—and Trump has now intentionally made that harder.
Trump Is Making It Harder to Reduce Crime
In Trump’s attempt to generate headlines and “cut costs,” he’s even undermined his own constituents. Republican voters listed violent crime as a top five issue in the 2024 election. But now, Trump is destabilizing the very foundations of violence prevention programs across the country, while simultaneously cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from agencies like the ATF, which is the only federal agency dedicated to enforcing our nation’s gun laws.
Republicans and Democrats alike support lowering crime rates—and that’s what was happening, thanks to community violence intervention programs. In April, Baltimore had the lowest number of homicides it has ever seen. In December, Philadelphia reported its lowest homicide rate in a decade. In January, Detroit saw the lowest number of homicides it has seen since 1969, and in Newark, the city had a 23% decrease in murders, reaching its lowest homicide rate since the 1940s. We’re seeing the same story repeat itself in even more cities across the country.
But these evidence-based programs require consistency and reliable funding to save lives on the community level. Voters who wanted to see a reduction in violent crime will now see the opposite, as all of us face a more dangerous future.
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