Nicole Scott was driving when the decision got here. It was imagined to be excellent news. 4 months earlier, her small nonprofit, The BRidge Company, was awarded a federal grant to increase programming to scale back violence in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Recognition, lastly, for a decade of grassroots work maintaining Black youth out of jail, away from violence and at school. However the voice on the opposite finish was not calling to have a good time.
The cash was gone — the grant had been cancelled with zero warning.
“I needed to pull over on the facet of the highway,” Scott stated. “I took sick [leave] for every week, after which I simply needed to regroup, discuss to my counselor, discuss to my private therapist.”
Scott’s nonprofit had constructed its plan for the yr round that cash — $250,000 to rent youth mentors, pay stipends to youngsters in its summer season management academies, even ship just a few to Louisiana’s state capitol, to see what political futures would possibly appear like for teenagers who’ve grown up caught in a cycle of violence. Now, with 80% of its funding slashed, there was nothing left however volunteers, prayer and exhaustion in a state that incarcerates youth at double the nationwide common.
The Baton Rouge nonprofit was one of many greater than 500 organizations impacted when the Division of Justice abruptly terminated tons of of grants in late April. This pulled the plug on an estimated half a billion {dollars} in excellent funds administered by the division’s Workplace of Justice Packages (OJP), an evaluation by The Council on Prison Justice discovered.
The cuts have induced chaos in felony justice grantmaking, making a notion that the method is more and more aligned with President Donald Trump and the Mission 2025 agenda — whilst some selections contradict the administration’s personal acknowledged targets.
“We have now seen the Division of Justice weaponized to be in service of President Trump’s political agenda and weaponized to go after his opponents and critics and enemies,” Insha Rahman, vp of advocacy and partnerships on the Vera Institute of Justice, stated.
DOJ funding underneath the second Trump administration now serves the president’s agenda of mass deportation and a “legislation and order” strategy to lowering crime, Rahman stated. The DOJ terminated $5 million in excellent funds to Vera, who, for 64 years, has run on a platform of felony justice reform achieved by analysis. Rahman stated the nonprofit had unwavering assist from the federal authorities up to now. Now, Vera is amongst these organizations that sued to reinstate the funding.
Along with grassroots anti-violence nonprofits, native police departments, prosecutors and courts, state departments of corrections, nationwide felony justice nonprofits and researchers needed to pause or reduce applications, discover different sources of funding, depart positions open or lay off workers. Equal Justice USA (EJUSA), a nationwide nonprofit whose work included funding grassroots organizations supporting victims of violent crime or working to stop violence additionally shut down.
“The chance to assist a President’s agenda could also be larger by way of OJP grant funding than it’s by way of any of the federal authorities’s different grant-making elements,” Gene Hamilton, a DOJ official throughout Trump’s first administration, wrote within the chapter concerning the division in Mission 2025’s Mandate for Management.
Since its creation in 1984, OJP has aimed to make the federal authorities a serious supporter of state and native governments’ efforts to scale back crime, typically by way of analysis, analysis and improvement — and grants to encourage new applications, or to assist promising fashions. The workplace is answerable for grants that switch billions of federal {dollars} to state and native businesses making up the felony justice system, in addition to analysis and nonprofit organizations.
OJP gives site-based grants, which fund native governments or nonprofits to implement applications specifically locations, analysis grants to check the effectiveness of applications, in addition to coaching and technical help grants that share experience to assist native applications greatest use their funding. Coaching and technical help grants, typically to nationwide nonprofits like EJUSA or Vera, have been the toughest hit within the April cuts. They accounted for greater than $578 million in unique funds, the Council on Prison Justice discovered.
The Justice Division informed grant recipients that have been terminated that their work “not effectuates this system targets or company priorities.” A termination letter reviewed by The Marshall Mission stated the division was specializing in direct assist and coordination for legislation enforcement, “combatting violent crime”, “defending American youngsters,” and supporting victims of trafficking and sexual assault.
Nevertheless, most of the grant cuts have been in these areas. Whereas police departments weren’t the first recipients of terminated grants, the Justice Division ended grants aimed toward supporting police. The division ended a grant that expanded police officer security wellness coaching as a part of a broader police psychological well being and wellness initiative. It additionally terminated a coaching and technical help grant to assist rural legislation enforcement businesses implement plans to scale back violence. Past technical help, that grant additionally funded just a few small, centered company applications to confront violent crime issues.
Outdoors of legislation enforcement efforts, group violence intervention applications have been laborious hit — almost half of all grants on this space have been terminated, a Reuters evaluation discovered.
The division pulled coaching and technical help funds for youngsters’s advocacy facilities that reply to little one abuse and neglect. On the identical time, it ended assist for a program that provided victims of home violence and sexual assault assist discovering jobs, counseling, and assist teams in Arab, Center Japanese, Muslim, South Asian communities, and one that might have up to date a toolkit for responding to transgender victims of sexual assault.
The Justice Division didn’t reply to The Marshall Mission’s request for extra particulars about its reasoning for terminating grants.
Moms on a Mission in Shreveport, Louisiana, is a gaggle that’s centered on supporting victims of violent crime — one thing Trump has stated ought to be a precedence since a minimum of his first time period.
Martha Tyler based the nonprofit in 2022, after she stated she felt powerless towards the fixed cycle of grief induced by the gun violence in her group. The $250,000 grant, which got here by way of EJUSA, was transformational. It helped increase grief assist teams, cowl hire at a neighborhood church corridor for conferences and pay trauma counselors. By April, the funding had been minimize off — Tyler had solely obtained three months of funds.
With gun violence at all times within the background, 100 moms now obtain companies from the group, with 50 extra on the ready listing. “We have now a capturing daily or each different day,” Tyler stated. “It’s horrific.”
The telephone nonetheless rings, displaying no indicators of stopping after the cash has run out. “It’s not like we weren’t doing what we have been imagined to do with the cash,” Tyler stated. “We have been boots on the bottom right here. We do the work.”
For moms like Belinda Grey, Mothers on a Mission has grow to be a lifeline. Grey first noticed the group on Fb after her son had been killed. She scrolled previous the posts, suspicious.
Grey had identified Tyler from highschool. “I noticed Martha had this factor, some ‘Mothers on a Mission,’” Grey recalled scoffing. “What’s she doing right here with these things? Speaking about individuals killing individuals. I don’t wish to hear that.”
Tyler messaged Grey on Fb; she had heard about Grey’s son’s passing and was ultimately in a position to persuade her to cease by one in all their grief assist conferences. Grey stated she needed to simply sit within the again and hear. However at her first assembly, Grey was moved by her religion to talk and was embraced by the opposite moms. “[Their] arms was carrying burdens like me,” she stated. “They knew how I felt, and I may really feel the love and the power.”
Tyler nonetheless has large plans for Mothers on a Mission. She believes the nonprofit advantages the group past grief counseling and that its work can stop extra violence. When younger individuals attend the group’s grief assist conferences, they’re taught battle decision. Tyler believes that by addressing victims, they’ll cease the cycle she calls “You kill me, I kill yours,” in a metropolis the place fixing homicides is uncommon.
The April termination letters provided grant recipients the chance to enchantment, and a few organizations have been in a position to have their cash restored. Others have sought reduction by way of the courts.
In an early June declaration within the lawsuit introduced by Vera and 4 different organizations, Maureen Henneberg from the OJP stated her workplace restored 14 grants shortly after the April revocations. Of the 225 awards that recipients appealed, Henneberg stated the division had thus far sustained three and denied one, whereas the remaining stay pending.
The OJP and DOJ didn’t reply to a request for extra particulars concerning the restored grants.
In Savannah, Georgia, Kate Blair, govt director of Brightside Little one and Household Advocacy, stated she was already stretched skinny when the cuts got here. Her group is a accomplice of the Nationwide CASA GAL, a company that gives youth with advocates within the court docket system, and has been awarded greater than $48 million unfold throughout three grants.
Blair stated Brightside, which homes one in all Georgia’s largest CASA applications, strives to stop little one abuse and neglect with its after-school program, court-mandated visitation house, and at-risk youth mentorship program. Blair shared that subgrantees like herself had been suggested by the nationwide CASA group to overview their award grants’ language for phrases which may have been flagged by the Trump administration following his inauguration. The grant’s point out of an HBCU partnership was rewritten to keep away from any of the Trump administration’s earlier assaults on DEI.
Blair had began rolling out a pilot program to incentivize CASA volunteers who have been already overwhelmed by their variety of instances. This system was aimed toward hiring extra males and folks of coloration to be CASA volunteers. Brianna Boyd, a CASA volunteer with Brightside, stated the motivation program had already enormously diversified the volunteers of the largely Black and Latino foster care inhabitants in Chatham County.
On Aug. 7, Nationwide CASA GAL notified its subgrantees that their grants had been restored by the OJP. Nevertheless, this leaves Brightside unable to increase its grant or backfill for the pause of award cash from April to now. With solely a fraction of the $100,000 grant anticipated to come back by way of, Blair stated Brightside will in the end fail to satisfy its targets.
All three subgrantees echoed the identical sentiment — even when the cash has run dry, the work should proceed. As important elements of their communities, the organizations have all turned to their group members for assist. The BRidge Company, Mothers on a Mission and Brightside have continued to rally the financial assist of the very communities they got down to change.
In early July, U.S. District Decide Amit Mehta dominated on a movement to dismiss the lawsuit introduced by Vera and the opposite organizations, calling the Justice Division’s rescinding of the awards “arbitrary” and “shameful.”
“It’s more likely to hurt communities and people susceptible to crime and violence. No federal company, particularly the Division of Justice, ought to conduct itself in such a fashion,” Mehta wrote in his opinion.
Nevertheless, the court docket didn’t have jurisdiction over the case, Mehta acknowledged. He dismissed the case and denied the organizations’ request for an injunction blocking the grant terminations. The organizations have appealed.
Previous to the decrease court docket’s choice, U.S. Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi opened up one other, extra political, avenue for restoring grants as she testified earlier than a Home subcommittee concerning the president’s finances request for the division. In her testimony, she stated the division had restored 13 grants after individuals reached out to her.
“If in case you have, on both facet of the aisle, any grants that you simply imagine ought to be again on, I might love to satisfy with you and work with you on that,” Bondi stated.
While the grant terminations pulled funds from applications centered on rural communities removed from the cities Trump has singled out for surges in federal enforcement, in addition to applications fashionable with police or prosecutors, many cuts mirror the administration’s willingness to withhold federal funding to advance its imaginative and prescient for the felony justice system.
It’s frequent for a brand new administration to steer funding to its priorities, however that is sometimes by way of new budgets and solicitations, not reducing off present grants midstream.
Rahman, the Vera vp, stated the group has obtained federal funding throughout Democratic and Republican administrations, together with throughout Trump’s first time period.
“I’d say all of us, regardless of which a part of the federal authorities you’re working with, have seen a change that’s night time and day from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0,” Rahman stated.
The Justice Division ended a grant to the Washington State Division of Corrections by way of a program for lowering sexual assault underneath the Jail Rape Elimination Act. The grant would have funded a place to handle insurance policies and workers coaching to deal with transgender individuals within the state’s prisons. In a prelude to the slew of cuts to OJP grants, the Justice Division withdrew funds from the Maine Division of Corrections over its insurance policies for incarcerating transgender individuals.
A Marshall Mission evaluation of the grants terminated in late April discovered that greater than 9% of grant descriptions talked about phrases associated to gender identification or sexual orientation and over 40% of grant descriptions talked about ones associated to race, ethnicity or immigration standing.
The cuts to OJP grants included cuts to Mission Secure Neighborhoods, a longstanding partnership between native and federal legislation enforcement and prosecutors that usually makes use of federal prosecution for gun costs to try to discourage violence. The partnership has a big analysis part aimed toward evaluating and sharing the methods totally different communities perform this system. Whereas the administration pulled funds for native violence intervention teams working with this system in addition to nationwide technical help suppliers, the president’s proposed 2026 finances doubles funding for Mission Secure Neighborhoods, because it reorients this system to immigration enforcement.
Trump’s tax and coverage invoice, handed in July, prohibits utilizing Byrne Justice Help Grant funding for violence prevention, resisting latest calls to make use of the funds for measures like group violence interruption along with enforcement efforts it has historically funded.
For the reason that April cuts, OJP has solely introduced new funding alternatives supporting applications for victims of crime. The notices say {that a} program won’t be funded if it “immediately or not directly, violates … federal immigration legislation or impedes or hinders the enforcement of federal immigration legislation.” In August, state attorneys basic sued the Justice Division over these restrictions. The administration, they stated, is utilizing the funds for crime victims to drive states into aiding the federal authorities’s push to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.
“It undoubtedly appears extra politicized now,” Kara Davis, the district legal professional for Wasco County, Oregon, stated. Oregon counties, notably rural ones like Wasco, rely closely on grants, to pay for sufferer companies, like advocates who assist crime victims perceive the justice system, notify them about updates of their instances and accompany them to troublesome hearings. The advocates additionally take part in groups answerable for sharing details about stories of kid abuse, elder abuse and crimes the place individuals with disabilities are victims.
The funding consists of federal {dollars} approved underneath the Victims of Crime Act which are handed from OJP by way of the state of Oregon. Davis stated her workplace now faces shedding 80% of their grants and, as a way to keep away from layoffs, can not rent a further particular person to assist work with victims. “Everyone is struggling. It was very sudden,” Davis stated.
