The Trump administration has halted $1 billion for mental health services for children, saying that the programs funded by a bipartisan law aimed at stemming gun violence in schools were no longer in “the best interest of the federal government.”
Lawmakers authorized the money in 2022 after a former student opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers and injuring 17 others. The measure, known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, broke a decades-long impasse between congressional Republicans and Democrats on addressing gun violence by focusing largely on improving mental health support for students.
But just as some of the mental health programs are starting, the Education Department canceled the funding this week and informed grant recipients that they would have to reapply for the money because of potential violations of federal civil rights law.
The department did not specify a civil rights law or provide the grant recipients with any evidence of violations, according to the notice reviewed by The New York Times.
An Education Department spokeswoman confirmed that the grants had been discontinued because of a particular focus on increasing the diversity of psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.
“Under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” said Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications. “We owe it to American families to ensure that taxpayer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health.”
Ms. Biedermann declined to provide applications that the department viewed as discriminatory, citing privacy laws. Instead, she offered examples of specific provisions pulled from lengthy applications.
A provision in one application set a “diversity goal” of hiring eight nonwhite counselors out of a total of 24. A line in an additional application included training for mental health professionals that included helping counselors “recognize and challenge systemic injustices, antiracism and the pervasiveness of white supremacy to ethically support diverse communities.”
Another highlighted the importance of handling “racial stress and trauma” of students. One applicant’s training included understanding “the influences of racism and white privilege in education practice.”
The grant cancellations were reported earlier by The Associated Press.
Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who helped negotiate the legislation, said it was illegal for any president to halt funding approved by Congress and called on Republican supporters to stand up for the law. Three Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who wrote a column in support of the law three years ago, did not return calls seeking comment.
“I’m raw about this because I sat in the room for a long time negotiating a really delicate compromise on a really tough issue,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “What’s the point of being in Congress and writing laws if the president can just ignore them? So, I’m angry that my Republican partners are not out there raising objections to what the president is doing.”
Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who has spearheaded the assault on critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, posted screenshots on social media this week of some grant applications, which he said was proof that the program was “being used to advance left-wing racialism and discrimination.”
“No more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health,” Mr. Rufo wrote.
But Mary Wall, a former deputy assistant secretary for education involved in setting up the process to solicit bids for the program under the Biden administration, said it was a “gross overstep” to equate mental health services with the radicalization of children.
The application process favored programs that reflected the communities they served, she said. Programs aimed at training mental health professionals for predominantly minority communities, for example, received extra consideration if they could show how the training would be aimed at professionals with similar backgrounds. Ms. Wall said this was “a common-sense practice” with proven results.
“One of the first questions after every single school shooting is whether the student had access to mental health support and services,” Ms. Wall said. “It is no stretch to say that taking away this support introduces the risk of harm to school communities and students.”
