Triumph

Working parents, child care center operators and their advocates have reacted with alarm to the Trump administration’s plan to withhold federal child care funding from Democratic states, warning that low-income families and child care workers will be hit hardest by a political attack.

The administration has notified California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New York that it will suspend about $10 billion in funding due to unproven allegations of systemic fraud in various social welfare programs. The Department of Health and Human Services said it will not release the money until it completes a review based on years of data that states must provide.

Christina Killion Valdez, who runs a child care center in Rochester, Minnesota, said the freeze would force operations like hers to cut spaces for needy families and lay off staff. Around 23,000 children in Minnesota benefit from the state’s child care assistance program, which transfers federal money to child care centers that serve low-income families.

“That’s thousands of parents who won’t be able to go to work,” Killion Valdez said on a call Wednesday hosted by Child Care for Every Family Network, an advocacy group. “These are parents who often have second and third jobs and still can’t get by because the cost of everything is going up while their wages aren’t.”

He noted that child care centers often operate on thin margins and loss of funding could force some to close.

“We literally save empty paper towel rolls for our art projects,” Killion Valdez said. “If the children we serve lose their tuition assistance, it will destabilize our entire budget.”

In letters, the administration required blue states to turn over information about recipients to prove they are not illegal immigrants and told states they would not be able to withdraw the funds, citing “recent federal prosecutions and additional allegations” of fraud. – a reference to a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota.

“There are thousands of parents who will not be able to go to work.”

– Christina Killion Valdez, Minnesota Child Care Provider

“The application of what happened there to these other states is not entirely clear, and they have stated in these letters that they sent to the five states that they have reason to believe that the payments are going to undocumented people,” Nick Gwyn, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, told News themezone. “They have not provided any illustration of what led them to that belief, nor any data, information or research.”

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the House committee that oversees targeted federal programs (the Child Care and Development Fund, the Social Services Block Grant and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program) suggested that widespread concerns about fraud in light of recent events in Minnesota justify the freeze in other states.

“There’s no question that billions of dollars have been stolen and fraud has been committed in states like Minnesota and also California, and those are two of the states that have been frozen,” Smith told News themezone. “It is important for any administration to ensure that tax dollars are spent appropriately and without fraud.”

Patrick Smith via Getty Images

The top Democrat on Smith’s committee said this week’s aid cut was pure retaliation. “It never surprises me how far the administration will go to punish anyone they think disagrees with them,” Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) told News themezone.

Together, the programs serve only a few million people nationwide, mostly parents of young children. The money is distributed to states through federal “block grants,” and the funds are then given to smaller state and local governments and local nonprofits that actually administer child care and other programs.

The HHS letters, copies of which were obtained by News themezone, ask states to turn over “the full universe” of administrative data on all grant recipients over the past three years, down to Social Security numbers and everything that was done to verify recipients’ eligibility for assistance.

Ruth Friedman, a child care expert at the leftist Century Foundation, said it may not be easy to meet the administration’s demands.

“The worrying thing when reading those letters is that the states most likely do not have that data on hand, because it is not data that the federal government has previously required them to report,” he said.

While the threat of fraud in the targeted states appears to be entirely theoretical, there have been some well-documented cases in Minnesota. The Justice Department has charged dozens of people in the state over an alleged scheme in which fraudsters made off with about $250 million in child nutrition funds, and Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor said last month that he had uncovered potentially billions more in Medicaid fraud in the state.

“What happened has totally devastated our entire community and taken us back like 10 million steps in terms of what we’re fighting for in this state.”

– Lydia Boerboom, Kids Count On Us organizer

A conservative YouTuber amplified the fraud story late last month by releasing a video alleging that several Minnesota care facilities she visited that are run by Somali immigrants were taking federal money without caring for children. The state said it recently inspected the facilities and found they were operating normally. However, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced Monday that he would not seek re-election.

Lydia Boerboom, an organizer with Kids Count On Us, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that advocates for child care funding, said the vast majority of care providers are sincere and want to root out any fraud in the system. He said it was “inhumane” to withhold funds from them when “there is no credible evidence” of widespread fraud.

“What happened has totally devastated our entire community and taken us back like 10 million steps in terms of what we’re fighting for in this state,” Boerboom said, referring to the right-wing frenzy of the last few days. “There has been a very coordinated effort to ensure that child care is defunded at every level possible right now.”

Elliot Haspel, an early childhood education expert, said allegations of widespread fraud in Minnesota’s child care system date back to at least 2019. Investigators found fraud (which is “nowhere near the epidemic levels” now alleged, he said), prompting new oversight protocols and reforms such as attendance and record-keeping requirements for providers. A recent audit by the HHS inspector general found that there are still inaccuracies in that information system.

But cutting funding to Minnesota and other states now seems wildly disproportionate to any problems that may exist, Haspel said.

“When you carry such a giant rock downhill in an attempt to solve a problem (a problem that, frankly, there’s not much evidence that exists anymore), you’re causing a lot of collateral damage,” Haspel said.

Concern about the freeze has spread to families far beyond Minnesota. Shazia Khalid, a child care advocate with the group Moms Rising, said other parents in her WhatsApp group are “panicking” about whether they will continue to have spaces for their children.

“Many programs are already hanging by a thread and I am afraid of what this could mean for my family and other working families in my community,” Khalid said. “The care and education of our children should never be used as a political pawn.”

Correction: The original story misspelled Elliot Haspel’s name.