Domestic Violence Services Have Been Absolutely Decimated By Trump Nonsense

Guess preventing violence against women is DEI!

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

There have been many truly unfortunate casualties of the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts and other nonsense in the five months since he’s been back in office — anything a bunch of unqualified morons have deemed to be “duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary.” They’ve accidentally fired and tried to rehire innumerable federal workers working on programs related to everything from nuclear power to bird flu and deleted any government pages featuring or government programs described by words they decided only applied to “DEI” things — words like “women,” “female,” “victims,” “sex,” “trauma,” “disability” and what have you. It’s been, as you have likely noticed, a bit of a trainwreck.

In a completely unsurprising development, given the priorities of this administration and the number of people involved in it who have been credibly accused (or “held liable” for) of domestic violence or sexual assault, it turns out that some of the biggest cuts have come out of federal programs and grants for domestic violence services. Because hey! Who really cares about actual victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence when there are heterosexual men out there who are feeling a tad lonely? After all, it’s hardly easy to talk about domestic violence without using scary DEI words like “women,” “female,” “victims,” “sex,” “trauma,” “disability” and so forth.

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According to an extensive report from The19th, all of the cuts, firing and information purges have managed to practically decimate 40 years worth of federal resources, programs and grants related for domestic violence shelters, victim assistance, prevention and other things that would remain priorities for any normal administration.

So far, there has only been one reported case of a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women being revoked, but hundreds of grants already issued by the Office of Justice Programs were abruptly canceled because they no longer aligned with the administration’s priorities. Even while some of the cuts were reversed, the moves created uncertainty that makes it impossible for victims services organizations to plan, increasing the stresses of work that is already difficult and traumatic.

Then it was not just current funding, but future provisions that came under fire. The Office on Violence Against Women removed all open notices of funding opportunities from its website on February 6. New versions weren’t released for three months, disrupting the grant cycle that must conclude by September 30, the end of the government’s financial year. Revised notices included major changes to department priorities and a longer list of activities ineligible for funding.

Earlier in the year, the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women deleted all grant opportunities from its site, replacing them several months later with a bunch of 1984-esque new priorities and criteria for qualification. For instance, organizations that focus on specific ethnic populations or sexual or gender minority groups are pretty much shit out of luck, because “that’s DEI!” Apparently Attorney General Pam Bondi is just entirely unaware of the fact that different populations often require different approaches when it comes to things like domestic violence, and is just assuming that this is just another way to hurt the feelings of straight, white, cis men.

Priority will be given to programs that are more focused on helping the government achieve its own aims, specifically in terms of demonizing undocumented immigrants and redirecting funding to small towns and rural areas, rather than focusing on, you know, helping victims.

Via the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women:

1. Measures to combat human trafficking and transnational crime, particularly crimes linked to illegal immigration and cartel operations, that support safety and justice for trafficking victims who have also suffered domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and/or stalking.

2. Projects to support enhanced victim services, especially housing, and improve law enforcement response in rural and remote areas, Tribal nations, and small towns that often lack resources to effectively combat domestic violence and sexual assault.

Each of the grants also features a number of disqualifying criteria, like “activities that frame domestic violence or sexual assault as systemic social justice issues rather than criminal offenses”; “inculcating or promoting gender ideology”; “promoting or facilitating discriminatory programs or ideology, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ programs”; “Programs that discourage collaboration with law enforcement or oppose or limit the role of police, prosecutors, or immigration enforcement in addressing violence against women”; “Initiatives that prioritize illegal aliens over U.S. citizens and legal residents in receiving victim services and support”; “awareness campaigns”; “research”; and “promoting or facilitating the violation of federal immigration law.”

As you can imagine, these criteria have resulted in the elimination of some very successful and necessary programs. FORGE, the nation’s only domestic violence program dedicated to helping trans and non-binary victims, lost $500,000. This is certainly an interesting development, given the fact that one of the major issues for TERFs is that they don’t want trans women at domestic violence shelters. I’d say “So where would they like them to go?” but I think we all know the answer to that.

Additionally, domestic violence programs need to focus on providing help to victims of violence, not on the administration’s anti-immigration hysteria. The ban on programs that “oppose or limit the role of police, prosecutors, or immigration enforcement in addressing violence against women” is straight-up dangerous and will only result in people deciding they can’t risk getting assistance for domestic violence issues. It’s worth noting that a big part of the reason why “Sanctuary Cities” are a thing is because we don’t want undocumented immigrants to not report crimes because they are worried about being taken in by ICE.

It’s not remotely surprising that they want to pretend domestic violence is not a systemic issue, but rather an issue of individual criminality, as it seems they want to pretend there is no such thing as a systemic issue across the board.

Nearly all the workers at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention were purged earlier this year, including everyone associated with the Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancements and Leadership Through Alliances (DELTA) program. This has, naturally, resulted in the defunding of several programs that have successfully led to a reduction in intimate partner violence, particularly in teenage relationships.

In an op-ed for The New York Times published Monday morning, domestic violence expert Rachel Louise Snyder detailed how just one organization that randomly lost its funding has been affected by the cuts:

Recently, the roof started leaking in a shingled white house in Androscoggin County, Maine. The boiler also went out. There is nothing remarkable about this house, except that it shelters victims of human trafficking. At capacity, it has room for six. It is always at capacity. In years past, the organization that runs the house, Safe Voices, would have ponied up the $30,000 required to fix these issues. But the uncertainty unleashed by the Trump administration’s policies made it difficult to make financial commitments like this.

So all six residents and one dog piled into a minivan owned by Safe Voices and lugged their belongings in multiple trips to a 17-bed domestic violence shelter nearby, where they had to double up in rooms; the house now sits empty. […]

“We pulled the plug on the project because it was so risky to move forward,” said [Executive director Rebecca] Austin. It won’t get any of the money back that it spent. “It sounds really dire because it is really dire,” she said. Meanwhile, in the past month, Safe Voices had more than 100 new requests for shelter.

So good to know that this administration isn’t wasting any money!

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“On Thursday, Democratic Reps. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin and Debbie Dingell of Michigan, and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, will join a coalition of intimate partner and sexual violence groups for a day of action on Capitol Hill to discuss the importance of federal funding,” the 19th reports. It’s real nice of Fitzpatrick to support this and other domestic violence-related initiatives, but it would be even better if he didn’t otherwise vote for the Trump agenda.

Will that do anything? Probably not! But it’s still pretty freaking important to draw attention to the abject cruelty of this administration, to who they’re hurting and why and how.

[New York Times]

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