One helpful attribute of the Trump Administration: it often says the quiet part out loud. But not always.
Flying under the radar is a 400-page proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would make it easier to defund children’s programs pretty much overnight.
A proposed rewrite of the Uniform Guidance — the rulebook that governs how every federal grant in the country gets awarded, managed, and (now) taken away — would let an agency end a grant whenever it wants, for any reason it wants. The proposed changes also would hand political appointees a veto over science, First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley writes, and, because of the way children’s programs are funded, would directly and specifically target them.
“Congress decided those children deserved help,” he writes. “Federal grants are how those commitments become real in supporting kids who are sometimes in desperate need of support. Unfortunately,…[under the proposed new rule these programs] could end without warning, without a hearing, and without any requirement that anyone in government ask what happens to the kid on the other end.”
First Focus on Children joined nearly 2,000 organizations in a letter opposing the proposed rule and also filed comments urging OMB to withdraw the rule.