Justice Connection released a video highlighting how the Trump Administration’s proposed defunding of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will make our country less safe.
The video features Pam Hicks, who served as ATF’s chief counsel until she was terminated by Attorney General Pam Bondi in February 2025 after working for the department for 23 years.
“I don’t know how you can say you are an administration that is focused on cartels and violent crime and cut the workforce that gives you so many leads on trafficking to the cartels,” Hicks says in the video. “It is not consistent with the administration’s stated priorities.”
The Justice Department’s 2026 budget proposal seeks to eliminate ATF as a stand-alone law enforcement agency by incorporating it into the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The proposal would reduce its budget by more than $400 million – a 25% decrease from its current operating budget. The cut would eliminate all 541 industry operations investigators, drastically reducing federal oversight of the firearms and explosives industries. Overall staffing would drop from approximately 5,300 to 3,600 people.
“The administration’s proposed budget, it just eviscerates an already too small agency,” Hicks explains in the video. “This is not a bad budget. This is a disastrous budget.”
ATF is the only federal agency tasked with protecting Americans from gun crimes. ATF’s core functions include:
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Solving gun crimes. When there’s a shooting or murder, ATF agents trace the weapon. ATF identified the alleged Trump assassination attempt shooter in under 30 minutes using this expertise.
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Stopping bombing attacks. When a bomb explodes, ATF experts figure out who built it and how. They operate the nation’s only federal laboratory that can recreate bombing conditions to solve cases and catch bombers – expertise that local police simply don’t have.
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Breaking up criminal networks: ATF goes after illegal gun trafficking and violent career criminals.
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Partnering with local police: Community departments rely on ATF’s specialized databases, ballistic evidence analysis, and explosives expertise for cases they can’t handle alone.
“All it’s going to take, sadly, is what it always takes in this area, which is a huge tragedy,” Hicks says. “After they’ve given their ‘thoughts and prayers’ tweet, some people start asking do we have to live this way? Do we have to have bombings? Do we have to have mass shootings? That’s usually how mistakes in this area get corrected, and it’s tragic that that’s what it takes.”
This video is part of an ongoing video project to raise awareness about the vital work carried out by the nonpartisan workforce at the Justice Department and the consequences of this administration’s attacks against the department.
We have expanded our social media presence to Bluesky & X to ensure that Americans understand the grave harm caused by attacks on the Department and its workforce. You can follow us at @justiceconnection.bsky.social and @Justice_CXN.
