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A new Trump-backed attack on domestic violence services just dropped—and this time, it’s targeting survivors’ pets.
Tucked inside the 1,200-page appendix to the White House’s budget request to Congress is a proposal to eliminate a grant program, funded by the Agriculture Department and administered by the Department of Justice, that provides domestic violence shelters with money to support survivors’ pets. Advocates say the program, known as PAWS, helps fill a critical gap despite its relatively small budget of $3 million: Many domestic violence shelters do not allow people to bring their pets with them, which can prevent survivors from leaving their abusers or lead them to return to them, according to a survey conducted by the Urban Resource Institute (URI) and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
“Survivors won’t leave, they can’t leave, if they’re going to leave their pets behind,” said Lauren Schuster, vice president of government affairs at URI, a New York City-based domestic violence service provider that lobbied for the creation of PAWS and received one of the program’s first grants. “Pets are often the only source of unconditional love that a survivor experiences when they’re in abusive relationships. So many leave [abusers] with little more than the clothes on their backs, their children and their pets, and to have them be forced to make a decision [to leave their pets] is too much for them to bear.”
The PAWS funds were first distributed in 2020, after being authorized as part of the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. Since then, more than 44 PAWS grants have been distributed to organizations across 26 states, according to Schuster and Nancy Blaney, director of government affairs at the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization that also lobbied for the creation of the program. URI received a $600,000 grant during the first year of PAWS’ distribution, which funded food, supplies, and veterinary care, Schuster said. Now, all 24 of their New York City shelters are pet inclusive, thanks to private funding and some other government grants the organization has secured, she added.
The proposal to eliminate the program comes as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s attacks on domestic violence services. The DOJ previously canceled hundreds of grants that were reportedly valued at more than $800 million and supported victims of domestic violence and other crimes. Some of those cancelations were subsequently reversed following repots from Mother Jones and other news outlets.
The administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and transgender people have also led domestic violence service providers to purge resources offering particular support for LGBTQ survivors. Trump’s short-lived federal funding freeze also threw the nonprofits providing services to survivors into disarray. The federal budget also proposes eliminating the office focused on violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While this is not the first time a presidential budget has proposed cutting the program—Biden’s proposed budget last year did, too—advocates say the threat feels more pressing now, in light of the ways the Trump administration has already undermined support for domestic violence service providers and survivors.
Congress has signaled they could move forward with decimating PAWS. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee passed a version of their budget bill that lacks funding for the PAWS program.
“It’s disappointing to see the failure to understand the importance of these grants to these individuals and how much it means to provide those resources so domestic violence survivors can get out of a dangerous situation,” Blaney, from the Animal Welfare Institute, said.
The proposal to cut the funds is also puzzling in light of the fact that Attorney General Pam Bondi previously reversed grant cancelations that offered similar support for pets, and extended her personal appreciation to some of those service providers, NBC News reported. “Our understanding is that all the pets grants were reinstated as it is a passion area for the AG,” Jennifer Pollitt Hill, executive director of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, which had its canceled grant for pet support restored, previously told me. Now, though, Bondi’s office could lose grants that offer similar critical support. (Spokespeople for the DOJ, the USDA, and the White House did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.)
Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), who sponsored the House version of the 2017 bill proposing the creation of the grant program, expressed her disappointment said in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Thursday. “By raiding the PAWS Act to give their mega-donors a tax break, Republicans aren’t just abandoning vulnerable animals—they are betraying women, children, and families.”
Stephanie Love-Patterson, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said that shelters often do not allow pets for a variety of reasons, including having lack of access to funds or because survivors may be scared of or allergic to certain pets. But that can have tragic consequences for survivors. Love-Patterson recalled an incident from her days working as an advocate at a domestic violence shelter that did not accept pets. When one of the survivors had to leave her golden retriever at home, and “her husband called her regularly just so she could hear him torturing the dog,” Love-Patterson told me.
“She oftentimes had one foot in the shelter and one foot going back home,” she added. “That was her baby.”
