Under Attorney General Bondi's watch, victim service groups face cuts, uncertainty

Miami Herald

24-05-2025

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Pamela Bondi during her Senate confirmation bid pitched herself as a leader with a track record of supporting victims, a history some Republican senators pointed to when backing her nomination.
But after her first months in the role, victim service organizations and their supporters say there's fear and deep uncertainty about the future of Justice Department funding, something they describe as a mainstay in the nation's response to helping victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.
The Justice Department wiped from its website a grant opportunity used to assist victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, only to repost the notice months later. It raised the potential of "consolidating grantmaking work" in certain areas, including the Office on Violence Against Women. And it terminated a swath of grant money directed toward organizations focused on helping crime victims, a decision five groups filed a lawsuit to reverse.
More recently, the White House budget blueprint for fiscal 2026 proposed eliminating nearly 40 DOJ grant programs, but didn't identify which ones.
The moves come amid a broader push from the Trump administration to address what it sees as waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. Bondi weighed in on the grant terminations on social media last month, saying the department had begun cutting millions of dollars "in wasteful grants." In a past statement sent to media, Bondi said the department would "continue to ensure that services for victims are not impacted."
Yet, a group of organizations and victim service providers wrote to Bondi to outline their concerns. There's been bipartisan backing for supporting services for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and other crimes, they said. But the department's recent moves have left "critical lifesaving programs uncertain about their ability to continue serving victims."
Organizations that signed on to the letter include the National Center for Victims of Crime and YWCA USA, but also state-focused organizations, such as the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
"The terminations of grants, programmatic restructuring, loss of staff, disappearance of [grant notices], and lack of communication from DOJ to the field are causing grave insecurity and alarm across the nation among thousands of direct service providers," the letter, dated last month, reads.
That concern extends to rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, legal assistance providers and victim advocates, the letter argued.
"Local, state, and national service providers have been anguished and panicked to receive recent notices terminating their federal grants," the letter says.
Mary Graw Leary, a former federal prosecutor and former chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Victims Advisory Group, said sometimes public officials claim to want to serve victims, only for their actions to not measure up to their claims.
But that "has been taken to an extreme level" under the most recent department actions, Mary Graw Leary, a law professor at The Catholic University of America, said.
"The claim that victims will be a focus - and that the protection and restoration of victims is a priority, will be a priority of the Department of Justice - has been belied by the most extreme assault on victims and funding to victims' programs in recent history," she said.
A Justice Department official, in a statement responding to a request for comment on the groups' concerns, acknowledged that funding opportunity notices from the Office on Violence Against Women had been removed earlier this year.
But the purpose was to review the notices and ensure "they were aligned with the Department of Justice's priorities given the change in administration," the official said. New notices from the OVW were posted when the review was completed, the official said.
Bondi is "committed to protecting and supporting victims of domestic violence, and the new [notices] reflect that priority," the official said. "It is entirely consistent for a new administration to come in, conduct a review and due diligence, and modify grant funding notices where appropriate."
But nonprofits who spoke to CQ Roll Call say the grant opportunities were abruptly taken down. The organizations said they were largely left in the dark from OVW on a transitional housing assistance grant program for victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, receiving little to no official communication from the Justice Department.
The dynamic left them in limbo, fueling uncertainty as the organizations instead pivoted to considering painful contingency plans.
Bondi reputation
It was during her confirmation process that Bondi underscored her past work with victims.
"Nothing has impacted my career more than my experience as a state prosecutor, because I got to know, and still keep in touch with, many victims and their families from when I was a prosecutor," Bondi said in the opening remarks of her confirmation hearing.
Emery Gainey, who worked on Bondi's staff when she was Florida attorney general, described Bondi as a "staunch supporter of crime victims and crime victim rights."
Bondi visited victims in the hospital, at family relocation centers and at conferences for victims of crimes, Gainey said at Bondi's confirmation hearing. She also met with victims one-on-one, he said.
"Her personal compassion was constantly on full display when meeting with crime victims and their families," Gainey said.
In a written response to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bondi said she had prioritized serving the needs of "vulnerable and disadvantaged victims" as Florida's attorney general and as a state prosecutor.
"If confirmed, I will seek to ensure that the Department effectively implements the programs Congress has charged us with, particularly those protecting victims," Bondi wrote.
The Trump White House has also taken part in pro-victim messaging. A proclamation this year regarding National Crime Victims' Rights Week read: "We offer our unending support to every victim of crime."
Grant cuts
Nonprofits aimed at supporting victims say they are grappling with the grant terminations from April and hope the Trump administration will reconsider canceling the grant money.
The National Organization for Victim Advocacy saw the termination of one department grant totaling $870,000. The grant money went toward a program that trains college students to be victim advocates, and places them at community-based victim service agencies across the country, said Claire Ponder Selib, the organization's executive director.
One member of the program was placed at a community-based organization in Washington, D.C., that works with survivors of sex trafficking. The member, she said, was working to expand services to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
NOVA is paying for the program's remaining expenses that would have been covered by the grant, she said. But the program will have to be shuttered if the organization is not able to get a new federal grant, she said.
And the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, which facilitates hospital-based violence intervention programs for victims of violent crime, told CQ Roll Call last month that it's losing millions of dollars in funding due to two DOJ grant termination letters it received.
At least 55 entities it works with have received termination letters, representing more than $115 million in funding cuts, Fatimah Loren Dreier, the organization's executive director, said last month.
There are questions about which officials acted as the motivating force behind the grant cuts. Congressional Democrats, for example, have asked the Justice Department if any of the grant terminations had been made at the direction of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Graw Leary said victims continually experience a lack of access to services when it comes to helping them recover or navigate the criminal justice system.
"It is absurd to suggest that crime victims in America are functioning in a system where there is a lot of fat and a bounty of services to help them," Graw Leary said. "Even today, even with federal funding, it is a skeleton of services for them, the slack of which is being picked up by many nonprofit and state and local organizations."
Meanwhile, a White House budget request has led to concerns that certain funding cuts will harm grant programs aimed at serving crime victims.
Under a section devoted to the Justice Department, the "skinny" version of the White House's budget blueprint proposes $1.02 billion in cuts related to reducing "Duplicative and Unnecessary State and Local Grant Programs."
The document proposes the elimination of nearly 40 department grant programs "that are duplicative, not aligned with the president's priorities, fail to reduce violent crime, or are weaponized against the American people."
The document did not provide specifics on which grant programs the Trump administration is requesting be eliminated.
Congressional response
The grant terminations have spurred an uproar from congressional Democrats, while Republicans have largely avoided criticizing the department's move to terminate the grants.
When asked about the grant terminations, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., who leads the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Justice Department funding, said: "We're looking at it."
"It's too early, [I've] not finished looking at it," Rogers said.
Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., who also sits on the subcommittee, said there should be a pullback in government spending.
"We have to prioritize what gets funded and what doesn't. And at DOJ, law enforcement is our top priority, and Bondi is doing a good job of prioritizing safety and security," Cline said.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said department money has been provided in some situations with "no federal nexus," saying that grant money would be better used on thwarting drug trafficking, for example.
One Republican to raise questions about the grant terminations was Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who sent a letter to Bondi acknowledging that the grant terminations impacted an array of victim services.
"I have long been a strong supporter of law enforcement and crime victims, and I want to ensure that the Justice Department is prioritizing services to both the men and women bravely serving our communities and also victims of crime," Grassley said in the letter.
The department, in a response letter this month, said the agency had reviewed more than 5,800 competitive grants awarded by the Office of Justice Programs and found that certain awards did not "effectuate program goals" or advance critical priorities.
Instead, the department said it has plans to divert those funds to support the agency's priorities, such as fighting violent crime and "directly supporting law enforcement operations." Also among the priorities was supporting "American victims" of trafficking and sexual assault.
Grassley, after receiving the letter, said at a committee meeting that part of the Trump administration's effort to refocus on violent crime included evaluating "inappropriate spending from the previous administration."
In one example, the senator said the government was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a podcast series, blog and academic conference presentations.
"Seems to me we ought to use these resources to prosecute crime instead of just talking about crime," Grassley said.
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