On Wednesday, after news stations declared Donald Trump America’s next president, Chicago trauma surgeon Dr. Tanya Zakrison was in shock.
As she continued to process the results, she wondered: What will happen to the billions in federal funding that’s allowing gun violence prevention work, like hers, to take place in her city?
“I’m at a loss,” she said. Cutting funding, she said, “has the potential to undo everything.”
Zakrison and her peers are trying to curb the impact of gun violence, which peaked in 2021 with more than 4,400 shootings in Chicago. Since then, shootings have decreased on an annual basis: As of the end of October, there were just under 2,500 this year, even though Chicago has experienced a significantly smaller dip than many other cities.
The Trace spoke to three leaders in Chicago to discuss how Trump’s election may affect gun violence prevention. One point of agreement: funding targeting the crisis needs to continue.
Violence prevention work is benefiting from the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which included several provisions like removing firearms from people who abuse their dating partners and clarifying when a gun seller must obtain a federal license. Crucially, it provided more than $13 billion in funding for intervention measures like red flag laws, school safety, mental health services, and community-based violence intervention programs.
In 2022, Chicago’s Metropolitan Family Services, an umbrella organization of several violence prevention groups, received $2 million from the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, partly funded by the legislation. Last year, Chicago Public Schools received $14.4 million to create a sustainable infrastructure for trauma-informed mental health services.
While the Safer Communities Act funding is to last through 2026, the Trump administration could alter its grant programs or shift them toward law enforcement initiatives, which his campaign said he would prioritize. Then there’s the question of what takes the place of that funding in 2027.
Leaders worry it could disappear. “That’s really unfortunate and sad and frustrating because we do know that a lot of violence prevention programs work,” said Veronica Arreola, the 24th District councilor for Chicago’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. “Every time that they prevent a shooting, they are saving two lives — the person who would have done the shooting and the person who would have been shot.”
Beyond saving lives, she added, violence prevention work also mitigates the pervasive trauma that people experience when shootings surround them.
Zakrison, a professor of surgery and trauma surgeon at the University of Chicago’s Level I Trauma Center, said a funding cut would threaten her team. In 2022, she and others at the trauma center’s Violence Recovery Program created a medical-legal partnership, which provides patients with legal assistance. They currently depend on a three-year grant of $4.9 million from the National Institutes of Health.
Zakrison said they would lobby to maintain funding by showing their program’s positive outcomes, in part because she worries that the philanthropic money that could replace government grants may come with strings and limitations.
“When we’re funded on behalf of the federal government, we’re doing work on behalf of the people within the United States,” she said. “That’s our service to the population, coming up with public health solutions.” Zakrison emphasized the importance of maintaining scientific integrity and freedom.
For many years, she explained, the Dickey Amendment passed by Congress did not allow researchers to explore firearm violence. Now, as gun violence has become the Number One cause of death for children and adolescents in the country, Zakrison said it’s vital to continue researching its causes and solutions. “It’s so important to have the best minds in this country, the best community leaders, the best voices from our patients and our families working together,” she said.
Illinois has consistently passed strong gun laws and invested in violence prevention, but Zakrison said it’s important to realize that a lot of grants distributed through the state, city, and county are backed by federal dollars. Federal cuts could directly affect Chicago’s communities.
“If we stop our momentum now, my deep fear and concern is that firearm violence is just going to increase again,” she said.
Leaders like Pastor Corey Brooks, the founder of Project H.O.O.D, a violence prevention organization on the South Side, also emphasized the importance of continuing funding. But unlike Zakrison and Arreola, he does not believe Trump will reduce recent investments.
He said the Trump campaign’s focus on reducing crime and violence assures him funding will continue. “It would be really tough to decrease crime without emphasizing some of these grassroots organizations that deal directly with it,” he said.
Brooks supports Trump’s promises of redirecting and prioritizing funds toward economic and law enforcement needs. One area he saw as promising was investing in opportunity zones in impoverished areas that would establish more businesses and create more jobs. If these areas are more economically viable, he said, there would be less crime.
“President Trump was able to win because people are tired of the crime,” Brooks said. He added that, like himself, many Chicagoans feel that the people causing crime have become emboldened.
“Giving power back to our police departments and allowing them to do the work is only going to make things better for our communities,” he said.
Other Chicagoans, like Arreola, don’t believe that police reduce gun violence. “The Trump administration, the way they talk about things, is just about incarceration, after the fact, which only amplifies the trauma that happens, versus reducing it,” she said. “We want to prevent the harm that happens, the trauma that happens, the lives that are lost or changed.” She said the focus should be on investing in communities and making sure they have equitable access to resources, like jobs.
“People are worried and scared about their families,” Arreola said. Despite that fear, she added, now is not the time to isolate but rather to engage with others and get involved in the community.
Brooks agrees. People need to come together, he said, because they can’t depend on the government to solve their issue.
Some leaders voiced concern that Trump’s broader campaign promises threatened to unravel the societal structures that keep people safe. “The firearm violence we see in the United States is the direct violence that we see from our structural violence,” Zakrison said. While mass shootings garner more headlines, daily gun violence can affect everyone. If a Trump administration rolls back individual and collective human rights — especially ones that protect communities of color and marginalized religious groups — the injustices worsen, she said, which leads to more violence.
“Chicago has a unique opportunity to be the North Star of all cities and all areas across the United States,” she said. “We can take the initiative to invest in our communities.”
Everyone benefits, she added, when kids have access to the best education and health care, and don’t have to worry about dodging bullets on their way to school. “We can’t give up,” Zakrison said. “We have to keep fighting.”
