EXCLUSIVE: Trump Justice Department Cuts Transgender Grants, Will Use Money To Fund Law Enforcement

WASHINGTON—The Department of Justice is taking funds that it formerly granted to groups supporting transgender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and using these funds to support United States law enforcement, documents obtained by The Daily Wire show.

The move is reflective of President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to weed out government use of taxpayer funding for woke or ideological purposes. That’s particularly significant in the Department of Justice, where, under President Joe Biden’s administration, Americans were targeted and investigated for practicing their faith, participating in peaceful pro-life protests, or pushing back against explicit gender ideology and sex education in schools.

After news broke that the Justice Department was slashing $811 million in grants, legacy media outlets fear-mongered that the department was targeting victims of “hate crimes, child abuse, school violence, and more.” Curious about the Justice Department’s large-scale review of its federal grant programs — and what grants the department had been funding — Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, first obtained by The Daily Wire, asking Bondi to explain the Justice Department’s grant review and appeals process.

The department’s response, also first reported by The Daily Wire, reveals that the vast majority of grants the Justice Department has cut were grants awarded to non-governmental entities — “not to states or local jurisdictions that directly serve our communities.”

Senator Chuck Grassley and Attorney General Pam Bondi (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A sample of terminated grants reviewed by The Daily Wire shows that the Justice Department had previously awarded grants explicitly tied to ideological causes misaligned with the priorities of the current administration.

For example, the Diversity Center of Oklahoma was awarded $200,000 “to provide culturally responsive services” to marginalized groups, specifically “Black and Brown women, including Black transgender women,” in the Oklahoma City and Folsom Metro areas. The grant specifically mentions that it will fund services including “gender affirming medical care,” which is a common euphemism for transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers.

Another of the Justice Department grants funneled over $700,000 to the Wisconsin-based F.O.R.G.E. INC., to be used to address “major types of violence/crime” against trans-identifying individuals and to “add a particular focus on the experience of trans women and girls of color” — meaning men and boys who identify as females. Part of this effort would mean “convening 23 listening sessions of trans survivors” and a “stakeholders advisory group” made up of “providers and trans community members.”

The Justice Department also awarded $50,000 to the Texas-based Civic Heart Community Services to create a “youth-led anti-gun violence mural art” as well as a “launch” of that mural “celebrated by a song and creative arts expression.”

And, perhaps most significantly, a fourth Justice Department grant awarded $250,000 to the Washington State Department of Corrections in 2022, during the Biden administration, to promote transgenderism within the state’s prisons, where men who identify as women are housed with female prisoners. The Biden administration kept the grant alive even after female inmate Mozzy Clark filed a lawsuit in December 2024 accusing a male prisoner who identifies as a female of repeatedly sexually assaulting her in a Washington State prison.

The grant’s deliverables include “hiring a Transgender Housing and Program Manager” and pushing to reduce “misconceptions among staff and incarcerated individuals about transgender and non-binary individuals.”

“This grant is intended to foster an environment that promotes sexual safety for all transgender and non-binary individuals remanded to the custody of DOC and serve as a change model for the rest of the nation to follow,” the grant stated.

Meanwhile, Clark was imprisoned with Christopher Scott Williams, a “6 foot, 4 inch biological male who was known to be a violent, convicted sexual predator,” in the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Williams requested a transfer to the women’s prison in 2021 and was granted one, even though he had a lengthy history of violence and serious violations in male prisons, as The Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

Clark’s story is not the only one of its kind. Across the country, hundreds of men identifying as women have moved to women’s facilities despite their history of violent crimes against women and children. In California, a two-time baby killer identifying as a transgender woman successfully transferred to a women’s prison where the mother of his child was housed. And the Wisconsin Department of Corrections housed a trans-identifying man who raped his own daughter with women, forcing a female prisoner to bunk with him despite the inmate’s sexually aggressive comments, constant masturbating, and aggressive behavior.

The Justice Department will reallocate the funds that were going to these types of grants to future awards that align with the Trump administration’s goals, such as “supporting law enforcement operations, combatting violent crime, protecting American children, supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault, and enhancing coordination among law enforcement at all levels of government,” the attorney general’s office told Grassley in a letter late last week.

The Justice Department’s former grant recipients who have been given termination notices won’t have to return any of the funds they had been given, but they will not continue to receive funding in the future. And they can appeal their grant termination within 30 days of receiving the termination notice if they believe their grant should not have been cancelled.

“If an appeal is deemed successful upon review by the Department, the Department will rescind the notice of termination and promptly reinstate the award,” the Justice Department told Grassley. Some have already been restored, as Reuters reported.

The reallocation of funding to law enforcement operations matches the Trump administration’s emphasis on simultaneously beefing up American defense while cutting down ideological priorities, in contrast to the previous administration.

Earlier this month, the White House released Trump’s discretionary budget request for the fiscal year 2026, showing big increases in border and defense spending as well as massive cuts to woke funding priorities instituted by the Biden administration. Defense spending will be increased by 13% under the proposed budget, and appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security will be increased by almost 65% “to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete the mission.”