Every year, the federal government distributes billions of dollars to programs that support public safety at the state, local and tribal level. These funds support training and supplies for local police and firefighters, substance abuse treatment centers, public communications, mental health programs, climate resilience and so much more.
Your Security: Safe and Sound (or Not?)
When you hear about public safety funding cuts, you probably worry about disaster response, wildfire safety, or who’s tracking terror threats — and wonder things like…
What if I wasn’t sure help would be there? Where does all of this public safety money go? What if the whole town is blocked in after a storm, how will anyone get to us? What if a child is taken across state lines? What if a lot of people in town have become addicted to a new drug? Who runs the domestic abuse hotline? Someone is still tracking terror threats against our public infrastructure, right? What if we don’t get a reliable warning that the disaster is coming? What if there’s no one to answer the phone when we call for help? What if fire season comes, and we aren’t ready? What if the nonprofits holding communities together collapse? What if community safety programs disappear?
It makes sense that the first people to arrive to help a community after a disaster would be the nearest group of people trained and prepared to help. In many of our communities, those people are National Guardsmen. More than half of the 450,000 members of the National Guard participate in disaster response each year. National Guardsmen can be called up by their State Governors and work in conjunction with FEMA during natural disasters. But now, FEMA is being cut and the domestic duties of the National Guard are being redefined.
State National Guard Units are critical to disaster response. They perform search and rescue missions, reopen roads, distribute food and water & provide critical support in fighting wildfires.
In late March of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it is withholding and potentially cancelling counterterrorism training grants from several major cities in retaliation for Governors’ failure to comply with policies of the Administration. The Administration has also withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in public safety grants, including those to organizations that research and track domestic extremist groups.
11 States and the District of Columbia have sued DHS over deep cuts to counterterrorism grants. The DOJ has brought fraud charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks domestic extremist groups.
Many public safety services are delivered by nonprofits: shelters, hotlines, addiction treatment centers, youth programs, and violence-prevention groups. And most of them rely on federal grants to fund at least part of their difficult and unglamorous but very important work. In fact, federal grants make up about one-third of nonprofit revenue nationwide. And tens of thousands of organizations rely on them for more than half their funding.
More than 35,000 non-profits rely on federal grant money for more than half of their revenue.
Without these organizations, many communities would lose access to many public safety and prevention services.
More than 3,500 jobs have been cut from the National Forest Service, which stands at the frontline of wildfire prevention. Training at the National Firefighters Academy – which trains up to 100,000 firefighters a year – was paused without explanation from March to June 2025. Meanwhile, a massive reorganization of the National Forest service will shutter most of the agency’s research stations across the country.
Almost 1/3 of us live in areas at risk of wildfire. More than 18,000 structures – including many homes – were destroyed by fire in 2025.
Where are the fires currently? Have a look here.
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