After Philadelphia’s gun violence spiked during the pandemic, the city started to stem the bloodshed, with shootings trending steadily downward. But now, officials and violence prevention workers worry that the end of one major federal funding stream and President Donald Trump’s threats to slash over $1 trillion more nationwide could imperil their progress.
In addition to Trump’s potential cuts, for the first time in five years, Philadelphia is without hundreds of millions in federal COVID-19 relief funding. At the same time, some Philadelphians are concerned that the decline in gun violence — with homicides dropping by 35 percent last year and 29.5 percent so far in 2025 — may lull policymakers into believing that funding should actually be reduced.
“We’re just waiting like everybody else for the hammer to drop,” said Dorothy Johnson-Speight, founder of Mothers in Charge, Inc., a Philadelphia nonprofit that supports those who’ve lost loved ones to violence.
Johnson-Speight’s 22-year-old organization receives about half of its resources from a federally funded state agency, she said. “I’m thinking now about what else we can do. We’re trying to think now how we maybe can get foundation money or corporate dollars, which is something we probably should have been thinking about all along.”
Philly is already losing millions in federal funding
Trump has empowered advisor Elon Musk to slash federal spending. In late January, the president initiated a freeze on hundreds of federally funded programs operated by states, schools, hospitals, and nonprofits. The freeze also cut funding for more than 100 Department of Justice programs, including the Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative. The freeze was lifted days later, but many believe it foreshadowed what may be coming.
While it’s not yet clear exactly how Trump’s federal funding cuts could affect Philadelphia, city leaders already know that they will have millions less in federal aid next fiscal year. The city received nearly $1.4 billion from the $350 billion American Rescue Plan Act, which President Joe Biden signed in March 2021 to counteract the COVID-era financial losses that states and local governments suffered. More than $200 million of that funding was earmarked for initiatives to reduce and prevent violence. Part of that money supported two gun violence prevention programs that city officials tout as being instrumental in reducing shootings: Group Violence Intervention and the Community Crisis Intervention Program.
For the current fiscal year that began July 1, 2024, Philadelphia’s Rescue Act funds amounted to $472.4 million, or 7.6 percent of the city’s $6.3 billion operating budget. The city spent the last of those dollars in December, as required by federal guidelines. Moving forward, it’s not clear how officials will fund those two programs. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker previously said she is open to working with the Trump administration. She’s scheduled to present her fiscal year 2026 budget proposal to the City Council on March 13. Joe Grace, her spokesperson, declined to discuss specifics.
Parker’s deputies, though, have promised to maintain the city’s progress. “We have agency over what we have agency for,” Adam Geer, the city’s public safety director, said at a February 24 news conference. “We’re public servants, and we’re not going to use anything as an excuse to (not) get done what we need to get done. So, we’re just going to keep working.”
Statewide initiatives could also see some fallout. In Pennsylvania, the Commission on Crime and Delinquency distributes the millions it receives from the federal government to local governments and nonprofits, including Johnson-Speight’s, to address public safety issues.
While the commission’s federal funding stream has not yet been affected by the Trump administration, Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis said officials are vigilantly monitoring for any disruptions.
“We expect the federal government to honor its legal obligations to the Commonwealth — and the Shapiro-Davis Administration is working to ensure that happens,” he said in a written statement to The Trace. “We continue to monitor federal guidance, executive orders, program eliminations and actions of the courts to determine the impacts on the Commonwealth.”
‘We don’t have all our eggs in one basket’
Violence prevention workers are also trying to stay ahead of the funding issue. Stanley Crawford, founder of the Black Male Community Council of Philadelphia, said that he recently had a virtual meeting with U.S. Senator John Fetterman’s staff to learn about accessing existing federal grants.
“We just can’t say, ‘Well, Trump’s doing this, Mayor Parker’s doing this, Governor Shapiro’s doing this,’ and walk away from the table as if that’s not our money,” he said. “If we leave the table, we are doing our people a disservice.”
Crawford said he is stepping up his efforts to seek funding from corporations and foundations. “I’m looking at what’s going on, and I’m saying to us as an organization, ‘We need to be able to make sure that we have access to resources to bring back to our people,’” he said. “We’re meeting with people that know how to write grants and how to find grants on all levels. So this way, we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.”
Assistant District Attorney William Friske, who heads the Gun Violence Task Force in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, said he hopes his plan to apply for federal grants to upgrade technology for the task force will not be in vain. “It kind of seems like everything is paused right now,” he said. “Everyone is just wondering what’s going to happen next.”
Friske said he hopes that the typical streams of federal funding that come into the District Attorney’s Office — about $4.46 million this year, according to a spokesperson — stay “the same because we’ve all worked really hard to lower the crime rate, and we want it to continue.”
But some worry that Philadelphia’s recent successes in reducing violent crime could actually backfire. Adam Gerber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a statewide gun safety nonprofit organization, said he’s concerned that the progress could lead some in government and in the private sector to believe the gun violence crisis is over.
“In Boston and Chicago, about 10, 12 years ago, after community violence prevention programs succeeded in driving shootings down, people said, ‘Look, we did the job, we succeeded. We don’t need to continue those resources,’ and they pulled back and shootings went back up,” he said. “I hope that’s not part of the conversation here. I don’t think it is yet.”
Johnson-Speight shares this concern. “The numbers are down because of the work that we have been doing,” she said. “Now, if you stop that, it’s going to go back up again.”
The Trace’s reporting in Philadelphia is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.
