
After a frenetic week of executive orders, memos, rescinded memos, and other assorted confusion, here’s what you need to know about kids:
School vouchers, which undermine public education by diverting public funds to private, often religious schools, could become the nationwide norm: President Trump signed three executive orders on education this week, including one to promote school vouchers nationwide. In addition to being illegal —Congress has not given the Administration the authority to spend funding outside the designated scope — the expansion of voucher programs across the country could financially decimate public schools, according to a new brief by First Focus on Children, increase discrimination, widen the income divide, and ensure that the United States has two different education systems with vastly disparate resources. Euphemistically called “school choice,” a national school voucher scheme would provide anything but. Read more here.
Kids overseas may — or may not?? — be getting life-saving HIV drugs. No one knows: As of this writing, the Trump Administration has placed a blanket freeze on poverty-focused development assistance. This means that any new maternal and child health programs that keep babies alive and healthy have been halted. So too are clean water, routine vaccination, malaria and other infectious disease control and nutrition programs – all stopped. Further, previously congressionally appropriated funding for current programs has been stopped. This means, for example, that programs with HIV drugs already in hand will lack the funding to distribute them out in the field. More babies will be born HIV-positive (an estimated 1,471 per day) and more children will die of HIV because they do not receive their treatment. Without treatment, one-third of babies who are HIV-positive will succumb to infections and die before their first birthday. The State Department provided a vague waiver yesterday for some emergency humanitarian assistance, but it remains unclear exactly what constitutes an “emergency” and what doesn’t.
If confirmed, RFK Jr. holds the keys to the health of 73 million children: Even as we send this note, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick for health secretary, is being grilled by Senators in a second confirmation hearing. In a comprehensive agenda called “Making America Healthy Again for Children,” First Focus on Children urges the prospective cabinet member to protect and enhance Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which together insure half of all U.S. children, improve infant and maternal health, upgrade pediatric emergency and cancer care, and use his position to address the systemic challenges facing children, from inadequate access to health care to the impacts of poverty, neglect, and inequality. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has long been the cornerstone of the federal government’s response to these challenges, overseeing programs including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act (ACA), community health centers, maternal child health programs, mental health and substance abuse, public health, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), child welfare programs, early childhood programs like Head Start, and runaway and homeless youth programs, which together have transformed the lives of millions of children. Read Making America Healthy Again for Children.
Federal funding for programs including Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start and other critical services still in danger: The White House has said that despite a judge’s injunction federal funds are still frozen. As with the executive order on vouchers, this impoundment order also is illegal. That said, without confirmation of whether the freeze will continue — or to what programs it could apply — First Focus on Children estimates that the directive to freeze all federal loans, grants and assistance could endanger more than $329 billion in children’s programming — or an average of $4,500 per child — in aid to children for food, homelessness, health care, child care and myriad other issues, according to calculations based on Children’s Budget 2024. See the chart above for specifics.