With cuts to Fresno program, Trump shows he is OK with people shooting each other | Opinion
President Trump must like the idea of people shooting at each other.
How else to explain the decision by the U.S. Justice Department to pull its $2 million grant from a Fresno program that is helping young men susceptible to gang life chose a different way to resolve their problems other than gun play?
Revoking the grant given to Advance Peace Fresno is, frankly, a shortsighted decision. If it was done in the spirit of fighting “woke ideology,” given that many of the participants in the program were Black or Latino, that would suggest racism in policy making from the administration.
Stopping people from shooting each other is always — always! — the right thing to do. It does not matter what race or ethnicity they come from. Making life safer for the few makes it safer for all.
How can the administration not get that?
Fresno gang members helped
Maybe Trump and his lawyers at the Justice Department are unaware of Fresno’s history of gang-related shootings. Here is a lesson:
In 2020 Fresno had more than 70 people shot to death. The same gruesome total occurred in 2021. Only Oakland had a worse murder rate (total shootings vs. population) at that time among California’s largest cities.
Enter Advance Peace. The program began in 2009 in violence-prone Richmond, which is near Oakland. Police knew fewer than 30 men caused 70% of the city’s gun crimes. If those men could be taught to resolve differences without shooting bullets, Richmond’s public safety would improve.
From 2010 to 2016, Richmond had a 55% drop in gun-related murders and assaults.
Advance Peace Fresno began in 2020. In a study done two years later, UC Berkeley Public Health found that there was a nearly 36% drop in shootings in southwest Fresno, a neighborhood where much of the gun violence occurred.
Men who have the propensity to use guns in crimes are identified, and the list is verified by Fresno police. The potential shooters are then invited into the program.
Advance Peace features mentors who counsel participants to find constructive ways to settle differences, as well as deal with emotional and mental hurts holding them back from success.
The person running Advance Peace Fresno is Aaron Foster, a former gang member who described himself to Bee columnist Marek Warszawski as “one of the most violent people you’ll ever meet” before he got reformed. He later lost a son and daughter to gun violence.
Foster told Bee staff writer Melissa Montalvo that the funding cut “is a detriment to the great work we have been doing to successfully decrease violence in Fresno.
“We are deeply concerned about the potential outcome and impact to our community that needs us the most. Our goal moving forward is to continue to do the work.”
Trump budget cuts
Conservatives have long disliked Advance Peace. A key reason why is that the program pays monthly stipends to participants to be in the program and stay out of trouble.
In 2019, as the Fresno program was being considered, then Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare posted online that the idea of “paying criminals to be nice” was another reason why California was “going off the rails.” The Fresno City Council backed funding for the program, but then Mayor Lee Brand vetoed the approval. It would be another year before Advance Peace could start locally.
Now comes the funding challenges brought by the Trump administration. Advance Peace Fresno will continue its work, but will have to be scaled back.
Ending the Fresno grant is in line with how the federal government is going after similar programs across the country.
According to Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Justice Department has cut $811 million nationally to community groups involved in violence prevention, as well as helping victims of domestic and sexual violence. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the programs signified “wasteful spending.”
Bondi has no idea what she is talking about.
It is clear after Trump’s first 100 days that he would rather arrest suspects and lock them up as the solution to crime, rather than engage in any program to help them become better people. How costly, how shortsighted.
Let the shootings resume in Fresno, President Trump.
This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 12:00 PM.
