[in the news] Federal grants can save the lives of abuse victims. $200 million is sitting unspent.

More than $200 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to help victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and trafficking last fiscal year still hasn’t been paid out to the nonprofits and other entities that form the safety net for those impacted by gender-based violence.

The Office on Violence Against Women in the Department of Justice is tasked with administering grants prescribed by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), first passed in 1994.

Congress appropriated $713 million to the office in fiscal 2025, which ended September 30. Only $472 million of that has been distributed, according to an analysis of publicly available documents by The 19th. An additional $36 million went toward financing the management of the office itself, per the DOJ grants budget.

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That leaves at least $204 million as of April 9 that has not been allocated to groups that depend on those grants.

The undistributed grants include funding meant to help older adult survivors of abuse, strengthen responses to dating violence on college campuses and provide culturally specific assistance for sexual assault survivors.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice confirmed the amount of 2025 funding that has been distributed and said the department could not speculate about when the rest would be given out.

An executive order issued last year is contributing to the holdup by adding a new step to the evaluation of federal grantmaking, requiring that all grants be approved by a senior political appointee. The order explicitly takes aim at research funding distributed by the National Science Foundation, which President Donald Trump accused of supporting “anti-American ideologies,” and the National Institutes of Health, but its impact has rippled far beyond the scientific community. The DOJ spokesperson did not respond to inquiries about who would approve grants for the Office on Violence Against Women.

Federal grant administration had already been disrupted for months prior to the August 2025 order.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting initiative terminated grants that mentioned gender or diversity. Last year, grant applications on the Office on Violence Against Women’s website were abruptly removed, reemerging three months later with new restrictions. At least one didn’t surface at all: The office did not solicit applications for a grant targeting underserved populations, the primary vehicle to fund LGBTQ+-specific programs. In fiscal 2024, the last time the program accepted applications, it distributed over $10 million to projects supporting religious minorities and queer, Deaf or disabled survivors.

Moreover, the department has deviated from the typical grant application cycle, putting at risk the $720 million in 2026 appropriations meant to combat gender-based violence across all states, territories and tribal nations. Only one opportunity, out of what should be dozens each year, has been posted so far.

By April, the department should have opened and closed applications for multiple grant programs, said Marnie Shiels, who worked as an attorney in the Office on Violence Against Women for over two decades. Shiels took an early retirement last year due to changes in the administration. She had been one of eight attorneys at the office; now there are four.

Applications are subject to a multistage evaluation that can include external peer review and take months. If grant applications aren’t released soon, funding may not get to nonprofits by the end of the fiscal year.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said more grant applications could come in the next few weeks but could not give a firm timeline.

VAWA grants are the lifeblood of the country’s gender-based violence response system, as dedicated funds from states, counties and cities vary widely. Unless another source of funding is found, without them, nonprofits won’t be able to fund programs and staff, fewer survivors will get help and more lives will be lost: Half of women victims of homicide are killed by a current or former partner.

Mariel Padilla contributed analysis. 

Domestic violence services remain operational throughout the country. Confidential, anonymous help is available 24/7 through theNational Domestic Violence Hotline at (1-800-799-7233) or online

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated how the Office on Violence Against Women was created.