The grim accounting continues to roll in regarding the Trump Administration’s catastrophic cuts to gun violence prevention funding. The latest report from Reuters shows that Trump has terminated more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention programs in the U.S., cutting $158 million in grants that had been directed to groups in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
The majority of the grants were originally funded through the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, part of a push by former President Joe Biden to stem the rise of gun violence in America, including establishing the first White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention. The grants supported programming to prevent shootings, which included funding to train outreach teams to de-escalate and mediate conflict, hire social workers to connect people to services and employment, and support hospital-based programs for gun violence victims.
The White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention was shut down literally the day Trump took office. A Department of Justice official told Reuters the gun violence grants were eliminated because they “no longer effectuate the program’s goals or agency’s priorities.”
Gun violence prevention and other groups continue to work in state and national coalitions to continue their work in the face of the cuts.
