00:00Madam Attorney General, I wanted to ask about a topic that's of great importance to many Americans, and especially my constituents, which is about hate crimes.
00:10I'm really troubled that your budget proposes to end the grant programs that may help prevent some of these hate crimes.
00:19As you may know, I was the author of one of these programs, the Community-Based Approaches to Advancing Justice Program, which was created in fiscal year 2022.
00:28This program supported local groups working to increase hate crimes reporting, give community members resources in languages other than English, and to improve relationships between local law enforcement and the community.
00:43It was a direct response to the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:50You may recall in March 2021, six women of Asian descent were tragically murdered in Atlanta, Georgia.
00:58My Hate Crimes Act passed through Congress in May of that year with bipartisan support, including from several of my colleagues on the other side of the dais.
01:08For years, I've been hearing from constituents about how scared they felt, and have been hearing from members of these communities, as well as experts,
01:16who've told me that one of the best ways to combat hate in this country is to fund prevention programs.
01:23So not just prosecution, but also prevention.
01:27I have a letter here that hate crime survivors and family members wrote to you in May, expressing their strongest concerns about the termination of these grants.
01:38I ask unanimous consent to enter into the hearing record, this letter from the survivors and family members to Attorney General Bondi regarding the termination of hate crimes related grant programs.
02:00Attorney General Bondi, Attorney General Bondi, I absolutely share your support for law enforcement and for the prosecution of hate crimes in a just way.
02:21But we must combat all forms of hate on all fronts, bringing together law enforcement and community leaders and members of the public.
02:29And these grant programs have helped many communities do exactly this.
02:35So I just wanted to ask and hear from you why there is a proposal to eliminate the three largest sources of DOJ funding for hate crime prevention programs.
02:46Yeah, and ranking member, can you list those three for me again?
02:50And I'm sorry, I have not received your letter yet, but I would welcome working with you on any issue regarding hate crimes in the Asian American community, in any community.
03:03I welcome working with you on that.
03:05Yeah, I would love to.
03:06And this letter was sent May 15th, and we'll make sure that you and your team have received it.
03:12So the programs, one of them, for example, is named the Community-Based Approaches to Advancing Justice.
03:21Three programs have been cut, and one of these programs literally help support our law enforcement departments locally, like our NYPD, to train and respond to hate crimes.
03:33So we have 5,800 grants, chairman, that come, ranking member, excuse me, that come through my office.
03:46365 have been cut so far.
03:48That's approximately 6%.
03:50What I will tell you is we have turned back on 13 of those so far because people have reached out to me.
03:56If you want to reach out and talk to me directly, I will give you my cell phone.
04:00I would love to sit down with you and see if we can work that out.
04:05I'm sorry I'm not familiar with those three directly.
04:08But, again, we will.
04:09If you have on either side of the aisle any grants that you believe should be back on, I would love to meet with you and work with you on that.
04:20We're doing that on a case-by-case basis, and law enforcement is my top priority, especially hate crimes, violence against women, everything I've done my entire career as a prosecutor.
04:31I think we have a former prosecutor in the room, too.
04:34And I look forward to working with you on this and seeing what we can do to help you.
04:39Great.
04:39We'd love to work together, and we will flag all the programs that have been impacted, including those that directly support our local law enforcement, like NYPD.
04:48And just to be more specific, the three programs mentioned are community-based approaches, Jabara, Hire, No Hate, and Shepard Bird.
