Religious leaders, lawmakers push for $1 billion to secure houses of worship [View all]
Source: NPR
May 24, 2026 8:00 AM ET
At a recent Shabbat service in West Bloomfield, Mich., Rabbi Jen Lader shared plans to lobby Congress to pour more funding into a federal program that strengthens security at houses of worship. "We are not asking Congress to just protect Jews – we are asking Congress to protect every community of Americans that gathers to pray. And we are asking with the full weight of what we have just lived through behind us," she said, referencing the March attack on her congregation of Temple Israel.
The fact that no one was killed other than the attacker is a credit, Lader said, to their security personnel and rigorous staff training. "If we had not had those resources and that funding, this would have been a really different story," she told NPR. "And we cannot allow a single other community to experience something as horrific as we've experienced, knowing that there were resources that could have gone into saving lives."
Lader and over 400 other Jewish leaders travelled to D.C. this week to push for an increase in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which awards funding to nonprofits to enhance security – from installing door locks and security cameras to erecting bollards to prevent vehicles from crashing into buildings.
"It's tragic that we have to be thinking about this in the same way that TSA protects airports and businesses protect their premises, but we have to," said Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, the group leading the lobbying effort this week. The advocacy push on Capitol Hill happened to come just one day after two teenagers attacked a San Diego mosque, killing three men and themselves.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/24/nx-s1-5815007/religious-leaders-lawmakers-push-for-1-billion-to-secure-houses-of-worship
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