Six months after the Justice Department cancelled over $800 million in federal grants, scores of community safety organizations remain in crisis. The terminations affected programs nationwide — from school violence prevention and rural police training to domestic violence support and hate-crime prevention — and hit hundreds of groups, most of them nonprofits.
Attorney General Pam Bondi framed the moves as eliminating “wasteful grants,” and singled out programs serving transgender and LGBTQ communities. NPR spoke with 10 affected organizations; a small number regained funding, but most have laid off staff, drawn down reserves, or scaled back services.
“These cuts are significant and unprecedented,” said Amy Solomon, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and former head of the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs. Solomon noted that grant awards shape budgets and hiring cycles, and cancelling funds midstream breaks those commitments.
At Washington Technology High School in St. Paul, Minn., Principal Elias Oguz said he scrambled to keep a restorative practices coordinator on staff after a “Stop The Violence” grant was cut. Robyn Strowder, who held the role, helped mediate student conflicts and build community; Oguz redirected about $50,000 from school supplies and other local funds to preserve the position for now, but long-term funding is uncertain.
Other organizations have taken deeper blows. Strength In Peers, a Virginia nonprofit serving people with substance use and mental health challenges, laid off two employees after one of its federal grants was terminated. The group spent roughly $90,000 from the grant and is still awaiting reimbursement for more than half that amount. Many agencies reported similar unpaid expenses and say their appeals to the DOJ have gone unanswered. Several have filed lawsuits alleging the cancellations were unlawful and seeking reimbursement.
The Justice Department told NPR that a government shutdown is slowing its ability to process appeals and reimbursements, even though the cancellations happened months earlier.
Solomon and other advocates warned that the pattern of cutting mostly nonprofit grants signals a broader shift in how the administration views public safety. “The old-school thinking is that it’s only police that can keep communities safe,” she said. Community-based groups often work alongside law enforcement to prevent violence and support vulnerable residents; cutting those programs can weaken local safety networks.
DOJ communications to Congress emphasized that the cancellations mainly affected nonprofits rather than states or local jurisdictions directly, but critics say that understates nonprofits’ vital role in prevention and intervention.
Organizations such as the Teen and Police Service Academy in Houston and the community-violence intervention group Roca reported severe staffing cuts. Everette Penn, co-founder of the mentoring program, said federal funds had long filled gaps private donors will not, and losing that support forced painful reductions. Roca’s executive vice president, Dwight Robson, said the DOJ told the group its work “no longer effectuates” administration priorities despite clear overlap with stated goals; Roca eliminated roughly 50 positions and is seeking alternative funding but worries about long-term sustainability.
Leaders across the affected groups describe lingering uncertainty: grants could be ended at any time, appeals and reimbursements are stalled, and essential services for children, victims, and at-risk residents are at risk. Many organizations are racing to find new funding, reassure staff and participants, and await responses from the department or the outcomes of legal challenges.
