Acting on recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency, the Justice Department is cutting grants to hundreds of programs across the country that provide services to crime victims, according to a former DOJ official familiar with the matter and documents obtained by NBC News.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has reversed some of the cuts, the former official and a current Justice Department official said. One restored cut was for a program that provided funds to domestic violence shelters so that they can accommodate the pets of victims.
The current Justice Department official noted that Bondi “has been an advocate for victims of crimes against women and for animals her entire career.”
Jennifer Pollitt Hill, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, said in an email to NBC News that the group received a cancellation notice for one of its grants, “and then 24 hours later we got an email saying that the termination notice was rescinded and our grant is still active.” She added: “I have no idea what changed, but we are grateful. All I can say is chaos, confusion and whiplash!”
Staffers at Safe Futures in New London, Connecticut, which runs a domestic violence shelter and other services, were also surprised when they got a termination notice by email on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., followed by a reversal Wednesday just after 7 p.m. in an email that read, “Please be advised that the grant award will not be terminated,” according to Margaret Soussloff, the chief operating officer.
Soussloff said the money allows the shelter to take in domestic violence victims who have pets, which they consider to be part of victims' families.
The current Justice Department official said the grants “were meticulously reviewed to ensure that services to victims would not be impacted.” The official added, “If any group can prove the opposite, we allowed a 30-day appeal window and the money can be turned back on if direct impact to victims can be thoroughly established.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how a “meticulous review” was consistent with grant cuts being reversed within 24 hours.
In a post on X, Bondi announced that the Justice Department “has started cutting millions of dollars in wasteful grants.”
“Great work by @AGPamBondi @TheJusticeDept,” the DOGE account on X posted.
A list of cuts obtained by NBC News included grants to the National Criminal Justice Association, the National Association for Victims of Crime and the National Crime Victim Law Institute. Several of the grants were described as “increasing options and expanding access for victims of crime.”
The National Center for Victims of Crime said in a statement it was notified late Tuesday that more than $2.8 million of its federal grant funding was immediately terminated because it no longer “aligned with DOJ priorities.”
“Unless promptly reversed, this careless decision will result in the immediate closure of the VictimConnect Resource Center, a 100% federally funded national hotline that has served tens of thousands of crime survivors since 2015, including more than 16,000 in the last year alone,” the statement said.
“We’re shocked that an administration that claims to care about protecting victims would leave so many vulnerable Americans without access to an essential lifeline,” said Renée Williams, the center's CEO, said in a statement.
The former DOJ official said that even if some of the programs are restored, the cuts will still be hugely disruptive.
“When programs are halted they have to drop everything and go to great lengths to prove what we already know and could have been verified if they had just done their due diligence,” they said.
NBC News reported Thursday that a bipartisan duo in the House had written a letter to Bondi expressing “deep concern” that the Trump administration has put at risk funding grants for programs that help survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. That letter appears to be referring to a separate set of cuts.
“This administration can’t claim to care about things like supporting crime victims, curbing gun violence, and reducing opioid deaths while slashing grants to entities that do the hard work to achieve these goals,” said Stacey Young, a former DOJ official who co-founded Justice Connection, a group dedicated to raising awareness about changes at the Justice Department.
