The Opinions - The G.O.P. Fought for This Bill. When Trump’s Cuts Came? Silence.

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

In the wake of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed the most substantial bipartisan legislation around guns in decades. As part of the bill, Republicans pushed for mental health treatment as a solution to school violence. In April the Trump administration abruptly cut $1 billion in funding for that program. Not one Republican has spoken out since. Our senior producer, Jillian Weinberger, tells the story of how this historic legislation came together, why it fell apart and what that says about the state of the Republican Party today, under President Trump.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur, Vishakha Darbha and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker, Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. Had to sum up Donald Trump's second term in one word, that word would be cut. USAID, cut. Department of Education. Cut. Thousands of federal jobs. Cut. With so much breaking news, it's hard to stop and fully document the impact of all these cuts. But then in April, I heard about one that made me pause. The Trump administration cut about a billion dollars in funding for a program that Trump's own party had pushed for.

How did this happen? That's the story I'm going to tell you today. The rise and fall of a program Republicans championed just three years ago, a program funded through a rare bipartisan agreement, and how in 2025, no Republicans who fought for it seemed to care, that it's being gutted. The law that created this program came together after a tragedy. Can you tell me a little bit about where you were

and what you were thinking when you heard about the Uvaldi shooting? I was actually presiding over the Senate. On May 24, 2022, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, was at work. I was sitting in the Senate president's chair when on my phone I started to see notices of a school shooting in Yuvaldi, Texas. We're coming on the air with breaking news of a shooting at an elementary school. At least 19 children were killed and two adults at the Rob Elementary School in Yuvaldi.

We're going to take your right to Texas where many parents spent the night waiting for word on whether their children survive. For me, when any of these school shootings happened, but certainly when Yuvaldi happened, the first thing I started thinking about was my friends in Sandy Hook, the parents that I'm now so close to, And I know that every time another one of these school shootings appears on the news, they have to relive the horror of that day. I went through some of that day with them. I was at the emergency response site as the parents were told that their kids were dead. But, of course, I was just an interloper. Yuvaldi looked so familiar, the scenes outside of the school, the parents waiting around to hear about their children. And so I knew it was going to be even harder for the parents.

Sandy Hook. Murphy has become a major advocate for gun control. On the day of the Uvaldi shooting, he took his politics to the Senate floor. I came down from the dais and I went straight to my desk in the Senate. I'd written down just a few words on a piece of paper while I was sitting there. Senator Chris Murphy is speaking on the Senate floor. Let's listen. What are we doing? Why do you spend all this time running for the United States? Senate. Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job of putting yourself in a position

of authority? If your answer is that as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing. What are we doing? A couple of my Republican colleagues heard that speech, and within almost hours, we were off and running on a negotiation, the first really substantive of one in 30 years. Senator Murphy got a bipartisan group together. Lawmakers ready to take action to prevent school shootings. Most of the Democrats were for stringent gun control measures, like an assault rifle ban. Republicans quickly coalesced around mental health treatment.

Republicans had always said that this gun violence epidemic is not a question of guns. It's a question of mental health. And it was clear that if Republicans were going to get in a room and have a conversation, with me about what I wanted, changes to our gun laws, then we were going to have to talk about what they wanted to talk about, which is mental health reform, mental health investment, as a mechanism to reduce violence. You can hear that in interviews Republicans gave as they tried to negotiate this bill back in 2022.

Here's Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, where Yuvaldi happened. People who do have mental health problems, we want to make sure they have access to mental health care. This young man in Yuvaldi was literally circling down the drain from a psychological standpoint, and obviously not only took the lives of others, he took his own life in the process. And we'd like to try to find some way to intervene to stop that before it occurs again. In the end, Murphy's bipartisan group created a bill that would address gun laws and mental health. It got a lot of Republican support. Even Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, fought for the bill.

Democrats came our way and agreed to advance some common-sense solutions without rolling back rights for law-abiding citizens. The result is a product I'm proud to support. This bill was a big deal. It enacted the first new federal restrictions on guns in nearly 30 years. And it included about a billion dollars in school-based mental health programs. school-based because, as one researcher told me, kids are six times more likely to go to therapy when it's offered in school rather than in the community. The program also invested in universities

to train new social workers to address shortages in the field. President Biden signed the bill into law on June 25, 2022. Across the country, in Hope, Arkansas, a school administrator was watching. I was very excited because, it was something that both sides said as a nation, we've got to address this. My name is Phoebe Bailey and I'm director of Southwest Arkansas Education Cooperative in Hope. I want to get to the federal grant program, but I wanted to ask you first, the grant program came about because of legislation that passed after the school shooting in Uvaldi, Texas.

I'm curious if you remember hearing about that incident. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like yes. So, yeah. And then, I mean, it brought back memories. When I was still in the classroom, we had a shooting in my district. Oh, my God. No one was killed that we had two students that were injured.

And I taught the shooter. And I would have never picked Colt out as the shooter. He wasn't causing me problems. He wasn't hanging from the ceiling. He wasn't beating up kids. He wasn't stealing, you know, all the things that the quote-unquote bad kids do. But he didn't have friends. He was very withdrawn.

And those were signs that as a young teacher, I had no idea I was supposed to look for. So anytime that there's a school shooting, my mind always goes back to that day. And like I said, we were just lucky. that we only had injuries, but just the sounds and the screams. So you were in school when that happened? Mm-hmm. Phoebe left the classroom in 2000. As an administrator, she now spends her days supporting teachers

for the 11,000 kids in her area. Some of these students have a lot of needs. About a fifth of the people in Phoebe's region live below the poverty line. In any given year, there are a lot of students her area who could really use help with mental health, but that was especially true when the post-Evaldi legislation passed in the wake of the COVID pandemic. So, Phoebe applied for one of the school-based mental health grants. It was administered through the Department of Education. Can you remember the

feeling of getting the grant? Like the best Christmas gift ever. Her region got about $4 million over five years. And with all that money, Phoebe hired seven counselors and therapists. to do one-on-one and group therapy with students. They also help schools put together safety plans, and they help with threat assessments. Like if someone said, so-and-so said he has a hit list, so-and-so said he wants to kill himself, what is the procedure and the steps?

The therapy program has been incredibly popular, even with parents. Parents show up with their kids and say, I need help. You know, I hear that somewhere in this building, there's somebody that can talk with my kids. In every spring, I'm like, you guys cannot take on anybody else. You're killing yourself. You're going to burn out. You don't.

But the need, you know, they just do whatever the need is. The counselors she hired are also there to help when there's a crisis. Like in the first year, Phoebe had the grant. There were two cousins that were being raised by grandparents. still to this day, it just depends on who you ask. They either were playing around and one accidentally shot the other or that one was angry with the other. I don't know, but there was a shooting and one passed away.

Each boy had his own group of friends. You have the factions of your friend did this on purpose. You know, he meant to kill his cousin. and then that group of friends are saying, no, it was an accident. They were both defending the memory and or the honor of the boys. I mean, there was literally a time I was down there with a team working on a different project, and you hear this big commotion in the hall, and that's what it was. So I'm out there calling my team saying, okay, we need to get down here,

We need to do more. We need to get them back in groups. What did they do in those groups? Initially, it was handled like a grief group. Because for some of them, it may be the first person, their age, that they've lost. So giving them coping skills, talking through the grief process. It's okay to be angry. It's, you know.

But then as it evolved and continued throughout that year, more. How do you handle it? Yes, we said it was okay to get angry, but you can't get stuck there. We can process and brainstorm on not just how do we act or react when someone dies, but when anything causes that anger, emotion, what do we do with it? How do we work through it? How do we not get stuck in the depression, in the anger, in whatever the emotion was? Yeah, I mean, those sound like great skills for,

the rest of their lives, not just... Exactly. That's what we're hoping. Yeah. Right. This grant has made a huge difference in the schools under Phoebe's supervision. Teachers can focus on teaching rather than on student mental health. Classrooms are calmer. There are fewer fights in the hallways, fewer suspensions. One school that started out with an F in accountability,

based on graduation rates, attendance, and test scores, rose to a sea. Earlier this spring, Phoebe was getting ready to hire an eighth counselor. She had just started advertising in the local paper when she got an unexpected letter. When I opened it, I just, I read it, and then I reread it and could not make myself really comprehend that this was true. truly where we were going. And it was just an email. The letter told Phoebe her funding for school mental health would end on December 31, 2025. Phoebe is desperately searching for other funding.

But for now, it looks like the seven counselors Phoebe has hired will be out of a job in the new year. And her students will lose all that support and expertise. Phoebe sent me this letter. so did some other districts. They're all nearly identical. The letter says that the original grant included funding for programs that conflict with the Trump administration's priorities.

In what way? It lists a couple of reasons. It says the programs violate federal civil rights law and, quote, conflict with the department's policy of prioritizing merit. I talked to more than a dozen school administrators in states across the country for this story,

and most of them thought the cancellation stemmed from one small part of the grant proposal. Do you remember what the grant application said about diversity? There's a section in there, and it just talks about looking for diverse staff, just to increase the diversity of your providers. When we wrote the grant, we just wanted to mirror our area, mirror our community. but by that same token, when we advertise there's nothing in our ads at all that say, you know, this round we're trying to be more diverse.

I truly do not know the race of the people until they show up at the interview. But we have one African-American, two Hispanics, and the rest are Caucasians. And that mirrors our demographics. Probably if we were actually going to go totally by the demographics, we'd need more African Americans. But, you know, what I need are people that can help the kids. Right. And I think the part that bothered me the most was that the letter was like

we were trying to break some civil rights. rights law. I mean, if you don't like that piece of the grant that says have a more diverse staff, take that one little section out. I talked to the Department of Education about this. A spokesperson was unhappy with me for describing these grants as canceled. These grants, she told me, were, quote, non-continued. What's the difference? Well, she said, the Department of Education plans to re-compete the grants. So this money, will be made available again. Schools can reapply

under new Trump-approved priorities. She told me that these priorities would be, quote, more aligned with resolving students' mental health and not divisive or ideological plans. But calling this a non-continuation seems like a euphemism. As of January 1st, for a lot of schools,

this government funding will no longer exist. Whether or not the administration lets schools reapply for the grants under different criteria is beside the point. This funding has been canceled, and it is unclear when these grants will actually be re-competed. I asked Senator Murphy what he made of this.

They're not going to repurpose this money. This money's gone. It's gone. Have you heard from any of your Republican colleagues on this? Yeah, sure. I don't talk about those conversations publicly, but I've talked to some of my Republicans who voted for this bill

who, you know, don't understand what Trump has done, but, you know, by and large, you're not willing to say it publicly. I did my own search for Republicans who had worked on this bill to see if anyone would speak with me. I reached out to Senator Collins, Senator Tillis, Senator Cornyn, 10 and all. Only the former U.S. senator from Missouri, Roy Blunt, agreed to see me. He left the Senate in 2023, and he's now a lobbyist in downtown D.C. Hi, Senator. How are you?

Yeah. Nice to meet you. Senator Blunt did a lot of work on mental health while he was in office, and he saw mental health as key to stopping school shootings. And the thing you could do, in my view, that would create the most school safety would handle these significant behavioral health issues that, you know, even young kids in the social media environment, the post-COVID environment, have as part of their background.

I'm curious if you remember in the negotiation over what would be in the Bipartisan Act, how this particular program became part of the bill. Well, I think there were a lot of people that wanted to be sure that there was a school focus. And frankly, I think that school focus turned out to be. one of the pilot ideas. And the problem with pilots is that they are pilots. And, you know, often the government will have a pilot and it'll go for two or three years and you can say, okay, the pilot was successful. We know that works. Which really the message to the Congress is, now if you want to do that for everybody, you can do it for everybody, but the pilot is over. Nowhere in this legislation

was this funding called a pilot. While this program was time limited, It was supposed to run for five years. Congress funded it for a full five years. The Trump administration cut it off after three. I told Senator Blunt what a problem this was for Phoebe's region. I've been talking to one school in particular in Arkansas, and they were able to hire, I think, seven counselors for 11,000 kids. They oversee like nine school districts, so it's a lot of kids.

And they're going to have to cut it off in December now because of the cancellation. So what would you say to them? What do you think they should do now? Well, I don't know what you pay. Would you say seven counselors in total of nine districts, less than one counselor per district? You know, sometimes you just have to decide what your priorities are.

That doesn't sound like a mountain that you couldn't possibly climb if you wanted to. So, you know, the federal government can't solve every problem. I wanted to see what Phoebe would make of this. So I played this clip for her. So, you know, the federal government can't solve every problem. Your expression says a lot. Yes, I don't have a poker face. It's easy to say, oh, yeah, seven people, that wouldn't be that much money

until you understand education funding. Okay, but you're talking seven, highly trained people that are making around, what, 70,000, so you add benefits, it would take probably almost 100,000 per person for a year. $100,000 per counselor, $700,000 in total. Yeah, $700,000. Maybe Missouri has more school funding than we do. I need to check that out, but that's a big pot of money.

Yeah. And that's just one year. It's an ongoing commitment. He's in Missouri. He's not that far. Come down, see my kids, see what they're going through, talk to my schools, talk to my principals, to my teachers, and let them tell you what this is doing. Then talk to my superintendents and tell me where we're going to get the money. I mean, do I think that we've had wasteful spending?

Sure, I did. There are definitely things that we need to cut, but not at the risk of our future, and that's what these kids are. And getting them healthy will help prevent the next you've all did. In the cancellation letter, Phoebe got, the Department of Education said she could appeal their decision within 30 days.

Phoebe submitted an appeal on May 15th and hasn't heard anything back. There is one way this funding could be restored. The courts could step in. I talked to a Georgetown law professor about this. He told me that this cut is illegal. School districts could come together and challenge the White House in court. But many of these districts are dependent on the Trump administration for other funding. Would they really want to put that in jeopardy by joining a lawsuit?

Case in point, I reached out to dozens of school administrators for this story. A lot of them wouldn't even talk to me because they're so worried about retribution from the White House. That means it's up to Congress to speak out. Back in 2022, after Yuvaldi, Republican said, we want to treat mental health, not restrict access to guns. That will prevent school shootings. That will save lives. they mostly got their way.

Now, not one Republican senator is speaking out to save this program. The story of this funding cut is the story of the GOP and Donald Trump's second term. We are watching the legislature surrender its most important purpose. It's giving up its power over funding. The Republican Party will not stop this administration from cutting whatever they want, whenever they want, from whoever they want. Even from one of the reddest states in the country. Even the funding they fought so hard for just three years ago.

If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzik. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amman Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski.

The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.