Democratic states are leading a push back against planned Trump administration cuts to anti-terror funding.
The White House wants to divert large chunks of a $1 billion terrorism prevention program, launched in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, to states won by the GOP in last year’s election, Reuters reports.
Federal records obtained by Reuters suggest Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio, which all voted Republican in 2024, would enjoy the largest increase in funding. Meanwhile, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. would suffer cuts of 31 percent, 49 percent, 69 percent, and 70 percent, respectively.
New York had initially faced cuts of 77 percent to its security funding, but Trump, a New York native, said he’d reversed that decision on Oct. 3 without providing a reason why, or clarifying whether the revision would also be applied to other states.
Eleven Democratic states and D.C. said they had been expecting $459 million in funds from the Homeland Security Grant Program, and the Trump administration revised that down to $226 million.
Congress launched the program, administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency, after 9/11 to help bolster states and cities’ defenses against future terror attacks.
A DHS spokesperson told Reuters the funding had been altered solely to reflect the “greater weight” of threats from “illegal border crossings” and criminal organizations in the states now due to receive more financing.
“It is flatly untrue to suggest that these changes are arbitrary or politically motivated,” the spokesperson said. “Adjustments in award amounts follow a methodical, risk-informed analysis with the goal of ensuring that every dollar spent yields the maximum benefit for the American people.”
The proposed cuts, which have been temporarily blocked by a Rhode Island federal judge pending the outcome of the lawsuit, come against a wider backdrop of Trump axing funding to Blue states since assuming office for the second time earlier this year.
Earlier this month, his administration nixed $28 billion for infrastructure and energy projects in California, Illinois, and New York. “We’re only cutting Democrat programs,” as he put it at a cabinet meeting on the ongoing government shutdown last Thursday.
The Daily Beast has reached out to DHS for further comment on this story, t
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