In a May 2 letter to the White House, the lawmakers urged Trump to reinstate more than $150 million in Justice Department grants that were abruptly canceled last week. The cuts have jeopardized at least 65 community-based programs across 25 states, forcing some organizations to consider laying off employees or closing down entirely.

“This funding, appropriated by Congress, directly contributes to making communities safer,” the letter reads. “We urge you to honor the grants already awarded and to implement this funding as Congress directed.”

The letter was led by representatives Robin Kelly, Maxwell Frost, Shontel Brown, and Lucy McBath, and it was signed by 43 other House Democrats.

The Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The grants were operated largely by the Justice Department’s Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, a central component of the Biden administration’s public safety strategy. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law in 2022, required the department to set up the initiative and provided $250 million for grants through 2026. 

As The Trace has reported, the grants sent a historic influx of funds to programs seeking to reduce shootings through street outreach, mentoring, hospital-based interventions, restorative justice, and other community-led strategies, sometimes in partnership with law enforcement.

“Although these proven strategies have been researched, cited in academic literature, and supported by law enforcement, they remain chronically underfunded at every level of government,” the letter says.

At the same time last week, the Justice Department terminated an additional 300 grants for crime victim services, addiction recovery programs, and a range of other initiatives. Those grants were worth about $660 million.

The cancellations marked yet another setback for efforts to combat gun violence under the Trump administration. The Trace reported last month that layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had decimated the agency’s Division for Violence Prevention, which manages millions in research dollars and public health initiatives. Meanwhile, the Department of Education slashed $1 billion in Safer Communities Act funding meant to drive down school violence by supporting students’ mental health.

The Justice Department canceled the grants with no prior warning, cutting off recipients months and even years before their funding was scheduled to end. In notices to the recipients, the department wrote that it had shifted priorities to “focus on, among other things, more directly supporting certain law enforcement operations, combatting violent crime, protecting American children, and supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault, and better coordinating law enforcement efforts at all levels of government.”

Lyle Muhammad, the executive director of the Circle of Brotherhood, a violence intervention program in Miami that was awarded $2 million in 2022, said he got an email terminating the grant at 5:35 p.m. on April 22.

The grant, scheduled to run through early 2026, helped the Circle of Brotherhood expand its team from five full-time staff members to 50.

Muhammad estimates that $600,000 remained on the grant, and his group can no longer request reimbursements for expenses it has already incurred. Now, Muhammad is worried about making payroll. “I can probably make one more payroll without having to lay folk off,” he said. That the cancellation happened shortly before the start of the summer, when violence traditionally spikes, is particularly concerning. “It’s almost a death wish to take this kind of money out of our communities.”

Aqeela Sherrills, director of the Community Based Public Safety Collective, which provides technical assistance and training to community groups nationwide, said the cuts have forced programs to weigh shutting down, reorganizing, or reducing staff as they scramble to find replacement funding. After learning that its three-year grant had been terminated, Sherrills’ organization had to lay off 20 employees. 

“It makes our communities less safe, and it also makes law enforcement less safe,” he said. “Cutting funding is significant. We’re talking about $150 million from community-based agencies. For some of them, it’s a lifeline because it was their only funding.”

Fatimah Loren Dreier, executive director of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, a national nonprofit that supports hospital-based programs to reduce retaliatory violence, pointed out that the expansion of prevention programs coincided with historic drops in shootings in cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Indianapolis. She fears the Trump administration’s cuts could reverse that trend. 

“It’s upending what had been working well and growing,” Dreier said. “What happens now? How many lives that could have been saved won’t be?”