Published: May 1, 2025 | Last Updated on May 2, 2025, 10:50 PM
OKLAHOMA CITY — Across the city, non-profit groups focused on crime intervention, victim support, and reintegration are seeing calls unanswered and voicemails piling up following the abrupt termination of federal grants meant to help them operate.
These cuts come as the Trump administration continues to haphazardly slash budgets throughout the federal bureaucracy through the recently established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk.
On April 22nd, non-profits nationwide began receiving notification that grants originally awarded through the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs would be terminated for more than 360 organizations and totalling more than $800 million across the country.
Of that total, $5.6 million was axed from non-profit groups based in Oklahoma City, all of which provide victim support or intervention services related to violent crime.
The affected OKC groups include Diversion Hub, the Diversity Center of Oklahoma, LiveFree OKC, family justice center Palomar, and even support for administration training in the DOJ’s own Office for Victims of Crime and National Crime Victims’ Rights Week awareness outreach.
“Politics has been injected into the DOJ to the point where valuable programs are facing serious cuts for political reasons,” Oklahoma House Minority Leader and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cyndi Munson told Free Press. “And we are seeing the effects of that in Oklahoma.”
‘The administration’s priorities’
These cuts and grant cancellations come as the Trump administration is taking particular aim at programs and institutions that it says focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion services, or DEI, which Trump and the Republican Party have framed as “woke” and “illegal and immoral.”
That “DEI” terminology is often used in reference to services that protect gender and racial equality, including hate crimes legislation, inner city outreach, and minority legal support.
News 9 received a statement from the Department of Justice that seemed to imply that these grant terminations were prompted by the rollback of DEI policies.
“This Department of Justice is focused on prosecuting criminals, getting illegal drugs off of the streets, and protecting American institutions from toxic DEI and sanctuary city policies,” the statement read. “Discretionary funds that are no longer aligned with the administration’s priorities are subject to review and reallocation.”
The Oklahoma City organizations that have lost grant funding work largely within minority groups.
LiveFree OKC’s mission statement details efforts to reduce gun violence across all demographics, but programs have focused heavily on gun violence within OKC’s Black community.
LiveFree OKC reported the loss of $2 million in grant funding.
The Diversity Center of Oklahoma is located in the 39th Street District, colloquially known as OKC’s “Gay District”, and states that their mission is “to reduce barriers in the Gender Diverse & LGBTQ+ communities.”
The Diversity Center saw $600,000 worth of grant funding terminated.
Reports have shown that DOGE administrators have been scrubbing federal departments for search terms that they have deemed to fall under DEI terminology, often leading to unintended cancellations and complications for programs entirely unaffiliated with DEI policies.
‘Meet the need’
Oklahoma City’s family justice center, Palomar, was informed that grants totaling $500,000 would be terminated in the purge.
Those funds were awarded in multi-year grants that still had more than half of their total amount unreceived and unspent.
“We hadn’t drawn down on $320,000 of that $500,000,” Anden Bull, Chief Operations Officer of Palomar, told Free Press by phone. “So we had over half of that $500,000 left that we had budgeted for that we won’t ever see.”
Those funds, Bull said, were allocated for a specific program within Palomar operations that provides longer-term “wraparound” assistance to clients with more complex and continuing needs.
They learned of the immediate cancellation of those grants through the same boilerplate email sent to all of the affected groups.
“It was definitely boilerplate,” Bull said. “It was basically like ‘your proposal no longer aligns with this administration’s priorities,’ but it didn’t give an example of how we didn’t align with their priorities.”
Palomar provides legal services and protections for victims of domestic violence, but makes no distinction in their operations for specific demographics on any racial, ethnic, or gender lines.
“The email we received said that these funds from the Office of Victims of Crime would go to enhance law enforcement services to ‘protect victims of crime and American children,’ she explained. “So again, I don’t know how we don’t align with those priorities when we partner with multiple law enforcement agencies every day and are serving American children and victims of crime every single day.”
Additionally, Palomar is expected to break ground next week on a new facility funded in part by $2 million allocated by the City as part of MAPS 4.
“That’s a building three times our current size,” Bull said. “So we have to grow to meet the demands and to be able to operate that building. If we’re constantly trying to just fill these gaps, then maybe we aren’t laying off staff today, but we also can’t grow to meet the need.”
Next steps
Like many of the organizations affected by these grant terminations nationwide, Palomar has already sued to protect their funding against what they believe are undue cancellations.
“We appealed this termination within two days, so that’s already been taken up by the administration,” said Bull. “But we’ve been working really closely with federal and local representatives to advocate not just for us, but for family justice centers across the country.”
In addition to those lawsuits and appeals, Munson is calling on state residents to demand that Oklahoma’s congressional members take steps to protect these organizations.
“I encourage Oklahomans and lawmakers to reach out to our federal delegation to push back on these dangerous cuts to save valuable services in Oklahoma,” Munson told Free Press. “We remain committed to doing whatever we can in the state legislature to protect Oklahomans who rely on these programs and protect the future of Oklahomans who may need these programs later.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
