Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Trump administration reversed the grant cancellations late on Wednesday.
The Trump administration on Wednesday reversed course on major funding cuts to addiction and mental health programs it had issued the day before, according to four sources familiar with the decision.
The about-face would spare, at least temporarily, thousands of organizations that receive funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
While the exact funding cuts enacted on Tuesday remained unclear, the scope was vast. Multiple sources told STAT that the number of overall grants originally canceled could number as high as 2,800, with the total dollars affected as high as $1.9 billion — over one-quarter of the agency’s overall budget.
One high-level SAMHSA source told STAT that the agency’s staff were not aware of the cuts, which were not planned in consultation with agency staff or announced internally.
The reversal came after near-universal condemnation from organizations across the mental health and addiction treatment field, which warned that suddenly zeroing out grants that had already been awarded would lead to layoffs, threaten patient care, or force them to close altogether.
Wednesday evening, 100 members of the House of Representatives, including three Republicans, wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees SAMHSA, condemning the cuts and demanding justification for them.
In letters informing grantee organizations of the funding cuts, SAMHSA said it was canceling grants to better align its spending with agency priorities, and informed recipient organizations that the decision was final. Documents reviewed by STAT showed that the cuts affected organizations providing a broad array of services, including comprehensive opioid treatment; addiction care for people experiencing homelessness; helping adults transition out of prison; HIV and hepatitis C prevention; and more.
“If these terminations stand, it’s going to put people’s recovery in question — the disruption is going to be immediate,” Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer at the National Alliance on Mental Health, said earlier on Wednesday. “It’s shortsighted and dangerous.”
The cuts did appear to spare certain programs, however, like Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, specialized facilities that offer 24/7 mental health and addiction care.
In its first year in power, the Trump administration has decimated SAMHSA, laying off hundreds of staffers and gutting entire teams devoted to school-based mental health or overseeing grant programs that worked to advocate for the rights of adults with serious mental illness. In 2025, the agency already terminated roughly $2 billion in grants for state behavioral health programs and overdose prevention.
It has never appointed a leader for the agency, instead installing an addiction counselor, Art Kleinschmidt, as a top aide and leaving him to run the agency as the highest-ranking deputy. Kleinschmidt left SAMHSA last month for a role at the Department of Homeland Security. The current acting head of the agency is Chris Carroll, a two-decade agency veteran.
The attempted cuts were especially notable given that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees SAMHSA’s parent agency, is in long-term recovery from addiction to heroin and alcohol, and while running for president in 2024 repeatedly pointed to the addiction and mental health crisis as a top priority.
SAMHSA did not respond to STAT’s request for comment.
O. Rose Broderick contributed reporting.
STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.
