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A rally against hate crimes in Brooklyn, New York, 2020
More than 100 members of Congress have written to Attorney General Pam Bondi about the situation, while 11 community organizations are suing over the loss of a conflict resolution service.
Hate crimes no longer appear to be a priority for the U.S. Department of Justice, especially those based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender. Now members of Congress and activist groups are pushing back.
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The congressional representatives have written a letter expressing their concerns to Attorney General Pam Bondi, and a coalition of activists has filed a federal lawsuit seeking the restoration of the Community Relations Service, an agency within the DOJ that has provided conflict resolution services around the nation since it was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Community Relations Service staff has been reduced to one.
“We write to express our significant concerns that the Department of Justice is refusing to properly enforce federal hate crime statutes and to urge you to prioritize the Department’s work to prevent, respond to, and prosecute hate crimes against all marginalized communities,” said a letter sent to Bondi this week by 105 members of Congress.
They were led by Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Mark Takano, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Grace Meng, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat, Democratic Women’s Caucus Chair Teresa Leger Fernández, and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clark.
Related: Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have risen around the world since 2020: report
In April, they noted, the DOJ canceled over 370 grants from the Office of Justice Programs, totaling an estimated $500 million, which supported local law enforcement agencies; victims’ services organizations; substance use and mental health treatment, research, and evaluation; public safety initiatives; and more. Also, the Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget calls for cutting all grants authorized under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and other programs to combat and prevent hate crimes.
The DOJ “may be prioritizing certain classes of hate crimes over others,” they wrote, especially those based on the victim’s religion. But while these are important to investigate and prosecute, the department’s work “must encompass the entirety of the protected classes and cannot focus nearly exclusively on one protected class,” they continued.
They urged the department focus on preventing and responding to all hate crimes, including those based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Since January 20, they added, the Community Relations Service website has been scrubbed of "numerous references to its work to address hate crimes based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, or disability, and the CRS training video on ‘Engaging and Building Relationships with Transgender Communities’ has been removed." This may be due to Donald Trump’s executive order denying the existence of trans people, the signers remarked.
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“Reports indicate that you have decided to eliminate CRS as a component, placing it within another component with a single employee, and sent out the Reduction in Force notice to all remaining employees on September 29,” the letter continued. “With these changes, CRS would be unable to perform its statutorily required functions with just one staff member. The dismantling of CRS is not only unlawful, it is also particularly concerning given the rise in community unrest, where CRS’s peacebuilding and mediation services would play a vital role.”
Julius Nam, who led CRS from January 20 to October 11 and held high-ranking positions before that, expressed his dismay in an interview with The Advocate. “Reducing CRS to one person is really making the work of CRS impossible,” he said, and he's glad the congressional letter is addressing the situation. The agency had 57 employees after political appointees resigned with the change in administrations, and he would like to see it restored to at least that level, although it wasn’t enough. He doesn’t plan to go back; he resigned after receiving the reduction in force notice and is looking for another job. “I do hope that the rest of my colleagues are able to return,” he said.
CRS has provided conciliation assistance in cities around the nation “quietly and without fanfare” since its establishment, says a legal brief seeking a preliminary injunction against the agency’s dismantling. Early in its existence, it worked to restore peace in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, after civil rights protesters were attacked by police in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” the suit notes.
Other assignments have included defusing tensions over desegregation of the Boston public schools in the late 1970s; helping to bring various Los Angeles populations together in the wake of outrage over the police beating of Rodney King; preventing retaliatory violence against Arab and Muslim communities after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and supporting survivors of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando.
A coalition of 11 community groups filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts in October opposing the dismantling of CRS. They include faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, education-focused nonprofits, and Native American community advocates, and are represented by the Washington Litigation Group. They first sought a temporary restraining order that would keep the DOJ from shuttering the agency; that was denied, but only because the organizations hadn’t detailed the services they need, says a request for a preliminary injunction filed Tuesday. A preliminary injunction would be in place longer than a temporary restraining order, blocking the DOJ’s action while the case is heard.
Regarding the training video on transgender communities, its removal creates “a real gap in beneficial education for law enforcement,” said Daphne Felten-Green, the former DOJ employee who helped develop it in collaboration with trans activists from around the nation. Among other DOJ assignments, she was chief of staff and senior counsel at CRS and worked on this video between 2012 and 2014.
The video is designed to help police investigate crimes against trans people and to interact respectfully with trans survivors and witnesses, she said. It’s also aimed at building bridges between law enforcement and trans communities, she noted.
“Having relationships before a hate crime occurs is always beneficial,” she said. The video “helped build bridges where there weren’t any bridges before,” she added.
The removal of the video and the dismantling of CRS are “horrible” actions, Felten-Green said. “People need to feel that their government cares,” she pointed out.
Felten-Green retired from the federal government four years ago after 20 years at the DOJ and seven at another federal agency. But she’s still working to combat hate crimes.
She is founder and president of DSFG Solutions, which trains police and prosecutors around the nation on how to investigate and understand hate crimes and how to work with survivors. She also consults with the Divided Community Project at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, which provides dispute resolution.
Meanwhile, the congressional representatives want answers from Bondi. They want to know how many hate-crime investigations were open January 20, when Trump took office, and how many have been opened since then. They want to know the bias category for each. They want information on the work CRS was doing before the reduction in force and in the previous year, and they want to know why the DOJ isn’t seeking funding for the agency. They have given Bondi 60 days to respond.
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