The Trump administration is said to to have suddenly reversed slashes in grants for mental health and addiction treatment programs that a source told CBS News were were valued at around $1.9 billion.
Thousands of federal grants supporting the programs were suddenly terminated late Tuesday, sources told CBS News.
The abrupt cancellations at the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration impacted 2,706 of the agency’s discretionary grants, a source familiar with the matter told CBS News.
President Trump’s political appointees moved to terminate the funding, not career officials working for SAMHSA, according to the source.
But by Wednesday evening, those cuts were being reversed, according to reports in The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post and others. Those three outlets say the restoration followed intense bipartisan backlash.
CBS News has reached out to SAMHSA for comment.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, said in a statement to the Times that the cuts should not have been made to begin with.
The reason for the initial cuts wasn’t immediately clear.
When the cuts were still being instituted, CBS News obtained a termination notice sent by a top SAMHSA official saying the agency was “terminating some of its awards in order to better prioritize agency resources” toward priorities “that address the rising rates of mental illness and substance abuse conditions, overdose, and suicide.”
“This was not SAMSHA’s idea,” the CBS News source said, noting that many of the canceled grants addressed those priorities. “This was money going to people on the ground who are providing mental health treatment, substance use treatment, recovery support, and prevention resources, which this administration says is a priority.”
SAMHSA, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, is at the forefront of efforts to improve mental health and address substance abuse across the country. At the national level, the agency leads public health initiatives geared toward reducing the burden of substance abuse and mental illness on communities, while also distributing funds to states and local entities for mental health and addiction services, according to its website.
A source said that among the grants that were being eliminated was one that provided $15 million per year to the Opioid Response Network, a program that offers evidence-based education and training to local authorities managing various types of substance use intervention, including prevention, treatment and recovery services. Another $6 million grant to a program called Building Communities of Recovery, which funds community-based resources to increase the availability and quality of long-term recovery support for people with substance use disorder, was being canceled as well.
CBS News reached out to the Opioid Response Network and a representative for the Building Communities of Recovery program at SAMHSA.
This latest funding loss was to follow the Trump administration’s sweeping Medicaid cuts that impacted a broad array of public health services including some focused on mental health and addiction. Those cuts were set to take effect in full later this year.
