Senate appropriators to weigh in on Justice Department revamp

Ryan Tarinelli, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 9, 2025

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Senators are set to weigh in this week on Trump administration proposals to overhaul parts of the Justice Department and cut funding for key federal law enforcement agencies.

The administration’s fiscal 2026 budget request seeks to end the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as a separate component, wipe away the Office on Violence Against Women’s status as a separate office and cut appropriated funding for the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Senate appropriators are expected to have their say Thursday with the scheduled release of the fiscal 2026 Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations draft bill, an indicator of how much deference GOP appropriators will afford to the administration’s plans to overhaul the Justice Department.

The draft text will also show where lawmakers stand on the administration’s lesser-known budget initiatives, including reduced funding for Justice Department’s National Security Division, the zeroing-out of grant initiatives aimed at addressing hate crimes and cuts to grants that go toward helping domestic violence and sexual assault survivors.

The text could also provide insight into whether the Senate will agree with an administration proposal to slash funding for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, a watchdog tasked with finding waste, fraud and abuse.

The administration’s proposal to fold the work of the ATF into the Drug Enforcement Administration is meeting opposition from groups on both sides of the gun debate, though for different reasons. Republicans are skeptical and Democrats are hostile to the idea.

Congress for years has included the ATF as its own line item in spending bills. The fiscal 2024 government funding bill also stipulated that no funds may be used to “transfer the functions, missions, or activities” of the ATF to “other agencies or Departments.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations ranking member, told Attorney General Pamela Bondi at a hearing last month that current appropriations law requires congressional approval to make the merger a reality.

Subcommittee Chair Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said he’s heard concerns from state and local law enforcement in his state about the ATF-DEA merger idea.

“I’ve also heard serious concerns from Second Amendment advocates,” he said at the hearing, raising an issue about associating the right to bear arms with “truly evil things” such as fentanyl, methamphetamine and Mexican cartels.

The budget request would also seek 26% less in fiscal 2026 for ATF salaries and expenses, compared with what was appropriated for fiscal 2025.

The bill text release will also offer insight into lawmakers’ views of a White House proposal to remove the separate-office status of the Office on Violence Against Women, a move that advocacy groups say would hamstring the office’s visibility and saddle victim grant programs with more bureaucracy.

The White House budget proposal included language that would delete a subsection of law that requires OVW to be “a separate and distinct office” within the DOJ, with a director who reports to the attorney general and has “final authority over all grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts awarded by the Office.”

Senate appropriators could also diverge from the Trump administration when it comes to funding for major federal law enforcement agencies.

Moran, speaking at the subcommittee hearing, said he’s concerned about the depth of some of the proposed cuts.

“This includes, most importantly, cuts to DOJ law enforcement agencies and cuts in the DOJ grant programs that support state and local law enforcement,” he said.

He also pointed to the administration’s proposed $112 million cut in appropriations for the DEA.

The administration’s budget proposed $10.1 billion for FBI salaries and expenses funding, about a 5% cut from fiscal 2025.

FBI Director Kash Patel said at a hearing on Capitol Hill in May that he was working to avoid the deep cuts proposed in the White House’s budget request. He told lawmakers such cuts would force him to fire hundreds of employees.

Patel reversed course a day later at a separate hearing, giving his full support to the administration’s request.

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