Edit: Literally one day after saying it was cutting $2 billion in addiction and mental healthcare funding, The Department of Health and Human Services is now apparently reversing 180 degrees to reinstate that funding, although it has offered no actual public statement to that effect. The planned cuts to grants awarded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, alarmed physicians and mental health providers, not to mention members of Congress, who all responded with withering criticism. Apparently at least this one time, we’ve found an issue on which RFK Jr. can be publicly shamed?
There’s an incalculably wide gulf that exists between the things that the Trump administration says, or claims to care about, and the things it then turns around and does. What, for instance, is the stated rationale behind why the U.S. military has blown up at least 35 vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific since the autumn, killing at least 115 people, including ones clinging to the wreckage of their destroyed boats? That would be “to combat drug trafficking,” despite the fact that Venezuela produces cocaine instead of the deadly fentanyl that Donald Trump is always invoking, and despite the fact that even the Venezuelan cocaine was primarily sent to Europe rather than the United States. But still, fighting the drug trade was always the proffered reason, even in the wake of the U.S. abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and not-so-shocking reveal that hey, it was really about regime change and oil (which we have little use for) all along. The message, at least, is meant to be that Donald Trump and co. care about drugs and addiction–he did, after all, put a former heroin addict and brain worm survivor in place as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Positive representation and all that.
So naturally, the Trump administration just cut another $2 billion from nonprofits that treat addiction, homelessness and mental illness, overnight. Nor did they inform anyone of the decision, effective immediately, which may leave hundreds of acute addiction treatment programs immediately in the lurch, unable to treat their patients. Which is all to say: People will almost certainly die, as a result of the decision that not even the staff of the agency in question say they were aware was being made.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within HHS, is the one who awards the grants, and the one who reportedly sent out hundreds of letters late on Tuesday informing countless nonprofits and charities that their grants were being terminated immediately. According to Stat News, a source from within SAMHSA said that the agency’s rank and file staff had no idea the cuts were coming, nor were they planned in consultation with staff of the agency, announced to them, or shared with grant recipients in order to aid in any transition. The news quite literally came out of nowhere, with the agency’s top officials saying that it was canceling scores of grants “to better align its spending with agency priorities,” which could also be phrased as “the Trump administration’s priorities.” How do we know? Well, the Republican-controlled Congress also cut Medicaid funding by 15% in 2025, which likewise has gutted providers of addiction and mental healthcare.
Trump administration: Record-high homelessness is caused not by housing costs but by mental illness and addiction.
Also Trump administration: We’re decimating the programs that treat mental illness and addiction.
— Brian Goldstone (@brian-goldstone.bsky.social) Jan 14, 2026 at 12:22 PM
The total number of grants axed overnight could apparently be as high as 2,800, totaling $2 billion or more in funds, although the full scope of devastation to addiction and mental health treatment in the U.S. is difficult to grasp thanks to the sheer size of the numbers involved. That $2 billion figure would be more than a quarter of SAMHSA’s overall budget, which had already been slashed in 2025, both via other grant terminations and the lay-offs of hundreds of staffers. As has become a frequent Trump administration tactic, the agency has never even bothered appointing itself a permanent leader during Trump’s second term as President–it installed a temporary one in the form of addiction counselor Art Kleinschmidt, who left SAMHSA last month to take a new role at the much-loved Department of Homeland Security. SAMHSA is now apparently being run by another “temporary” or acting head of the agency, Chris Carroll.
Programs and nonprofits directly affected by the grant terminations will include programs for comprehensive opioid withdrawal treatment, addiction care for homeless people, HIV and hepatitis C treatment and prevention, and programs tailored to help adults leaving prison avoid drug relapses.
“If these terminations stand, it’s going to put people’s recovery in question,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer at the National Alliance on Mental Health, to Stat News. “The disruption is going to be immediate. It’s shortsighted and dangerous.”
The Trump administration can’t pretend to want anything but this result: Despite justifying foreign invasions by pretending to fight drug trafficking, and despite saying that America’s homelessness epidemic is driven by addiction, the people running our country could not be less interested in actually providing care and treatment to those whose lives have been upended by those very same drugs. Just as Republicans love to talk about mental health care in the wake of a mass shooting, but then immediately vote to strip funding from that care a week later, they’ll only pretend to be interested in any policy that benefits the public good for as long as it takes to secure a vote or a sound byte.
“Waking up to nearly $2 billion in grant cancellations means front-line providers are forced to cease overdose prevention, naloxone distribution, and peer recovery services immediately, leaving our communities defenseless against a raging crisis,” said Ryan Hampton, founder of national advocacy nonprofit Mobilize Recovery, speaking with NPR. “This cruelty will be measured in lives lost, as recovery centers shutter and the safety net we built is slashed overnight. We are witnessing the dismantling of our recovery infrastructure in real-time, and the administration will have blood on its hands for every preventable death that follows.”
