A federal funding freeze on domestic violence programs threatens to shutter shelters, silence crisis lines, and leave survivors with nowhere to turn.
Three days before Christmas of last year, a grand jury indicted Mamta Kafle Bhatt’s husband for allegedly dismembering her body and using a trash compactor to dispose of the pieces.
I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. Took deep breaths. Gulped glasses of water. Nothing worked. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of all the survivors I worked with over the years. Their stories. Their fears.
“That could have been me,” one survivor said, when the news first broke. “At least she worked and her colleagues were looking for her. My husband often threatened to kill me and cut me into pieces. And he would laugh, saying that nobody would even realize that I don’t exist. I wondered if killing myself was a better option, because I did not know there were places that would take me to safety and help me thrive. I wish I could scream at the top of my lungs and tell women like me that there are safe places. I only wish they know where to call.”
This was a survivor’s prayer, just hours before the news of the Trump administration’s orders to cut programs ignited a frenzy. Domestic violence service providers, like many others, were scrambling to understand what it meant for their services from crisis lines to emergency shelter beds. These agencies build and plan critical services after receiving approval of federal assistance—not to mention, the extensive preparation and elaborate data required to submit the applications, rigorous peer review and the comprehensive reporting that is due every quarter or for every grant reporting period. Many advocates and staff I know would rather do anything else than work on these grants, but they realize that critical services and programs are at stake.
A federal freeze or cuts lay ideal ground for abusive partners to hold a vulnerable partner hostage: With funding halted, shelters will shutter, and no one will answer the victim’s call for help.
Domestic violence service providers are already reeling from existing funding cuts from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). The funds available for agencies took a cut from $1.9 billion in 2023 to $1.3 billion in 2024—a reduction of about 31 percent. This deep cut has overburdened an already distressed system to reduce services, eliminate staffing and the overall ability of service providers to provide timely assistance and support.
Domestic violence is, tragically, far from rare: One in four women and one in seven men in the U.S. have been victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. As a domestic violence advocate over the last decade, I have learned that domestic violence knows no skin color, gender, immigration status, education or position in society. It impacts all of us and the communities we surround ourselves with. It is a nonpartisan issue that we are just now able to respond to in a strategic manner. It is not a time to disrupt or destroy. It is a moment to protect and preserve.
An average of 24 people per minute—more than 12 million people each year—are victims of rape, stalking or physical violence by an intimate partner in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Domestic violence largely remains underreported due to the variable definitions and characteristics of what actually constitutes domestic violence, not to mention the emotional complexities, and potential family consequences of reporting, many experts in the field assert.
For immigrant survivors of domestic violence who are either on dependent visas or undocumented, their immigration status and dependency has long been used as a tool for control and coercion. A federal freeze or cuts lay ideal ground for abusive partners to hold a vulnerable partner hostage: With funding halted, shelters will shutter, and no one will answer the victim’s call for help.
Many consider the 1980s to be the first time that “people victimized by crime” were considered a distinct category, after the grim findings of the President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime were published by the Reagan administration. With a lot of advocacy and congressional action, federal grant-making systems began to link financial resources and technical assistance to services that are trauma-informed, culturally specific and offer diverse language access, starting in the early 2000s.
Federal funding in the form of specific grants provide funding for service providers and offer assistance to formulate a specific, co-ordinated response based on the local communities seeking these services. Providers rely on these systems to build necessary capacities that have long been non-existent for historically marginalized communities at risk of domestic violence.
The sudden federal directive to potentially re-prioritize funding—whether a pause, a freeze or something else—yields only one result for survivors: It re-traumatizes them.
For a survivor of domestic violence, this funding could mean the difference between having a roof over their head or getting evicted; the difference between having someone who understands a cry for help in their own language or being silenced, with no one who can understand their life-threatening circumstance. It could mean the difference between subsidized child care (and keeping a job) or being unemployed and homeless. These are complex challenges that survivors struggle with for many months, sometimes years to rebuild their lives—even when trauma resurfaces, triggering old wounds and derailing stability.
The sudden federal directive to potentially re-prioritize funding—whether a pause, a freeze or something else—yields only one result for survivors: It re-traumatizes them. It instills fear in their minds about an uncertain future. It strips their dignity. It reminds them of the very things they are fleeing from: power and control. Only this time the harm doer may be the system that has promised a journey for safety. The politics, parties and priorities are only noise.
According to an urgent action plea by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, “Overnight, all available 2025 notices of funding opportunities were removed from the OVW (Office of Violence Against Women) website, and applicants were instructed to stop working on their applications. This could impact critical programs designed to support victims and survivors of violence. While it is unclear whether these grants will be temporarily or permanently unavailable, any delay in funding will harm survivors who rely on these vital resources and put their safety at risk.”
It’s easy to shake our heads and grieve the effects of domestic violence—but individuals can make a difference, by demanding that vital protections remain in place or be restored. Reach out to your representative or senator today and ask the U.S. Department of Justice to restore these funding opportunities immediately.
