President Trump hardly mentioned children in his State of the Union address this week, mostly using his platform to praise the First Lady’s interest in them and to vilify immigrant and LGBTQ kids. 

He boasted about kicking children and families off Medicaid and stripping away their food assistance to give tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations. He declared a “war on fraud” that JD Vance will lead. The last war on fraud — the failed DOGE initiative — disproportionately targeted children’s programs for cuts, delivering grievous harm in the name of “program integrity” and “efficiency”.

(The new effort seems to be off to an inauspicious start as well, with the Vice President freezing Medicaid funds in Minnesota. Medicaid covers more than 436,000 children in Minnesota, including more than 130,000 preschool-age children. Children make up 44% of Minnesota’s Medicaid recipients, despite being 24% of the state’s overall population.)

The President mentioned the Child Tax Credit in his address but skipped saying that it fails to cover even half of inflation since 2017 and that his own vice president promised more than twice the current amount during their campaign. It’s likely he doesn’t realize that the current CTC also leaves nearly 20 million children — including babies — with partial or no credit because their parents make too little, they had a parent die or are victims of a natural disaster.

He also promoted his “Trump Accounts,” but didn’t reveal that they are really just adult benefits masquerading as child benefits that will greatly exacerbate generational income disparities.

In fact, during the first year of his second term, President Trump did far more harm than good for the nation’s children. A very top line recap shows that he: 

  • Enacted the biggest cuts to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in U.S. history 
  • Dismantled institutions designed to protect children 
  • Sowed distrust around children’s health care
  • Authorized deliberately harmful immigration policies
  • Rescinded funds that support children

Learn more about these polices in our recent update.

But the President has another chance to prove he cares about kids. Last year, President Trump’s budget proposed significant cuts to children’s programs and large-scale divestment in their well-being. His FY 2027 budget, due out soon, offers another opportunity to propose plans and policies to support the children his Administration professes to care about. 

With any luck, he’ll take it.