Trump freezes $10 billion in childcare aid to 5 Democratically-led states, baselessly claiming “widespread fraud”

A $10 billion federal child care funding freeze targets California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, with an impact that early childhood experts say could be “absolutely catastrophic.”

The Trump Administration has abruptly frozen $10 billion in federal funding for social services, cash assistance for low-income families, and child care subsidies in five states, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York – all led by Democrats – citing “widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs,” The New York Times reports. 

The five states will lose access to $7.3 billion in cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which helps low-income households with children, $2.4 billion in child care assistance from the Child Care and Development Fund, and about $870 million in social services grants reserved for children. While states have had relative freedom to disburse these funds, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services say that the five states must now justify spending with receipts and other documentation before funds are released. Because “the states very likely do not have that data on hand,” and “it is not a quick, easy lift for them to get… they will not be able to access the funds,” according to Ruth Friedman, former head of the DHHS’ Office of Child care, now senior fellow at Century Foundation, a think tank.

“Thousands of parents and children depend on these child care programs to help them make ends meet, and now their livelihoods are being put at risk,” said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. In addition to homelessness and hunger, childhood poverty is linked to lasting cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems, as the American Psychological Association notes – citing research showing that living in poverty is associated with differences in structural and functional brain development in children and teens, particularly in regions critical for learning, communication, social emotional processing, memory, language, and executive functioning. 

Radha Mohan, executive director of the Early Care and Education Consortium, told The Guardian the move will also have a massive impact on childcare workers and parents, especially mothers, as centers will close and – having no place to take their children – parents will have to leave their jobs. 

“Very, very quickly, hundreds of thousands of families across these five states will not get the childcare assistance they need,” Freidman added. “That is going to have reverberating effects on the programs, on the families themselves, create chaos, and really, really could be absolutely catastrophic.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called the freeze “immoral and indefensible,” adding that it “has nothing to do with fraud and everything to do with political retribution that punishes poor children in need of assistance. I demand that President Trump unfreeze this funding and stop this brazen attack on our children.”

Last week the administration paused $185 million in aid to Minnesota’s day cares, with prosecutors alleging that members of the state’s Somali community had cost the state over $1 billion through welfare fraud schemes. This new move is seen as an extension of that earlier freeze. 

“Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, in a statement. “Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes.” But while prosecutors say 59 people have been convicted in the Minnesota scandal, there is no evidence of similar issues in the other four states, despite the Trump administration’s claims.