This story was updated on Jan. 15.
Early Tuesday morning, Brian Marshall, the Chief Executive Officer of MashUp Nashville woke to a wall of text notifications and missed phone calls. MashUp is a nonprofit that primarily serves Nashville’s Black LGBTQ+ community by connecting residents in need to an array of U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration-funded health organizations across the city and providing health education. And those services came under threat. In only a few hours, termination letters had to be sent to staff members to make up for the gaps in funding as a result of the Trump administration’s decision.
“There was a lot of uncertainty because they weren’t really sure of the real [reason] behind this, and people were in the midst of planning programming and having appointments with clients,” Marshall said.
Marshall told the Banner that the queer community is already under attack at the local level, and it’s having an effect on the help organizations are able to provide to those who need it most.
“They’re trying to take away the very thing that is helping people stay alive,” he said, referring to policies that restrict gender-affirming care and the surge in housing prices that have led to an increase in homelessness.
“On top of all the things that happened even in our state of Tennessee against our community, for our federal government to also compound additional issues on us and take away services that are so vital to our very existence, it is very troubling,” Marshall said.
Less than 24 hours later, the Trump administration reversed course. Marshall explained that even that is harmful to the work they do, and the communities they serve.
“To go into the reversal of it… [it] doesn’t make our community feel good, he said. “For something that happened that quickly… for you to go to sleep and wake up and your entire life is shifting, who’s to say that tomorrow, next week or next month, that they’re [not] going to think about something else to take away from us? It’s unsettling times for people who are working in the field, and also people who receive services.”
But, Marshall said MashUp Nashville and the community it serves will continue to move forward. In 2017, the organization was founded as a space to provide community, education and advocacy when Trump’s first administration released a wave of policies impacting LGBTQ+ communities.
“During [President Donald Trump’s] first term, we didn’t have any grant money, but we had community,” Marshall said. “We had no financial support, but we had examples of what family looks like, what chosen family looks like. We built our organization on community support… We persisted.”
President Trump sent a letter Tuesday morning outlining the termination of multiple grants provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), cutting nearly $2 billion in federal funding for thousands of programs across the country that address addiction, homelessness and mental illness.
In Nashville, numerous nonprofit organizations devoted to providing addiction recovery and mental health services to the community lost crucial funding that offered training, counseling and other resources to those in need. In total, the grants have provided up to $1.36 billion in funding for mental health resources across Tennessee, according to the SAMHSA Grants Dashboard.
“We had a grant that was cut overnight without prior notice that funded evidence-based mental health and suicide prevention training throughout Middle and West Tennessee,” said Amber Hampton, executive director of the Mental Health America of the MidSouth (MHA MidSouth).
Known as the oldest and largest mental health advocacy organization in the U.S., MHA MidSouth provides mental health awareness training and education to address service gaps across Tennessee.
The grant allowed the organization to train up to 9,000 first responders, students, educators and community members, also providing suicide-safe scholarships for schools.
“With prevention funding cut,” Hampton told the Banner,“it leaves people and their communities more vulnerable and without the skills they need when crisis hits. People should be able to access help when it is needed the most.”
“Cutting prevention doesn’t save money,” she added. “It simply shifts costs into the future, where they will grow exponentially when crisis arises.”
Overnight, Centerstone, a nonprofit health system with touchpoints in Tennessee, Illinois, North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Florida, received a letter stating they’d lose $14.35 million, affecting 28 grant programs specializing in training, drug screening, intervention, recovery court programs and more, across all of their locations. Director of Media and Public Relations Rance Burger told the Banner that in its Nashville location, six grant programs will be affected, amounting to a $3.4 million loss.
“We’re scrambling to try to find ways to establish a continuum of care or some continuity for those patients who are in the midst of a treatment plan or a care program,” Burger said. “Long-term loss of these funds runs the risk of reducing access to mental healthcare and treatment for thousands of people.”
Before the cuts, Burger said Centerstone expected the programs to serve more than 12,000 individuals through 2030. In 2025, 3,000 patients were served.
“It’s safe to say this is something that can impact the lives of thousands of Tennesseans and families and limit their access to quality healthcare,” he said. “A cut like this and an impact like this is so wide and vast that the impact is just catastrophic.”
A spokesperson from the mayor’s office said that the Metro Public Health Department, the REACH program and the Office of Family Safety were not affected by the cuts. Allison Tarpley, director of Davidson County Recovery Court, told the Banner that her court does not receive SAMHSA funding and was also not affected.
However, while Davidson County was not as affected, cuts reverberated around the state, including in places like Jackson, which sent letters yesterday that it was closing its drug court.
The Williamson County Veterans Treatment Court was one of the local programs heavily affected by the cuts. Judge Tom Taylor, who was elected in 2014 and oversees the program, called the road ahead “pretty daunting.”
“We only accepted the [SAMHSA] grants,” he said, “because we knew there was a need to support veterans who are trying to change their lives.”
He said that the court feels an obligation to support veterans who have committed crimes because they served their country.
“It’s a big disappointment to all of us,” he said. “It’s going to make it much more difficult to support veterans with [our programs].”
While the court does have some funds in reserve, he said the decision will have a “ripple effect across the treatment community.” Now, the court will have a hard time paying its staff, and veterans who relied on court-funded transportation to get to therapy appointments will have to make other arrangements.
Other court employees described the situation as a “big predicament,” and that after the services came to a “screeching halt,” there is “no light at the end of the tunnel.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.