As the election dust settles, we’re beginning to see the outlines of what a second Trump Administration could mean for America’s children.
Overview
| U.S. investment in the nation’s children has fallen for the third year in a row, according to First Focus on Children’s recently released Children’s Budget 2024, and actions planned by the incoming Trump Administration threaten to accelerate that trend. The report finds that the U.S. allocates less than 9% of the federal budget to children — who make up roughly one-quarter of the population. Overall, U.S. investment in children has declined nearly 6% from Fiscal Year 2023, according to the report, largely driven by deep cuts to food assistance and other life-sustaining programs. But it’s been worse: namely, during the first Trump Administration. In 2019, under President Trump, the United States spent more servicing the national debt than it did on the nation’s children for the first time in history. By FY 2021, President Trump proposed eliminating 59 children’s programs, slashing $21 billion from their services, and reducing federal investment in children to just 7.32% of the budget, the lowest level since First Focus on Children began tracking in 2006. |
Biggest Threats
- Health care: More than 37 million American children — or more than half of all kids — receive their health insurance through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As has been widely reported, with Medicare and Social Security off the table as the Administration seeks $2 trillion in cuts Medicaid could become the budget cutters’ ATM.
- Past as prologue: In 2017, Congress let CHIP expire, interrupting the care and treatment of 9 million children for more than four months. Just days after CHIP was restored, President Trump tried to raid the program’s contingency fund in order to offset half of his tax cuts for wealthy adults. The uncertainty surrounding children’s health care led to the first increase in the percentage of uninsured children in two decades. Find a complete timeline of events on X.
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: RFK Jr. Has made no bones about his antipathy toward life-saving vaccines. But his views on Medicaid, CHIP, Head Start, child care subsidies and other children’s health issues remain a mystery. Before the Senate confirms him as Secretary of Health and Human Services — a post that would give him dominion over all of these issues — it must fully explore Kennedy’s qualifications, policy priorities, and commitment to advancing the well-being of children.
- Education: The president-elect has made clear his desire to eliminate the Department of Education, a move that would undermine students’ civil rights and would disproportionately harm low-income students and students with disabilities. He also supports a national school voucher plan. Supporters often refer to vouchers as “school choice,” “education savings accounts,” “opportunity scholarships” or “tax credit scholarships.” But the impact and intent are clear: Vouchers divert taxpayer dollars to private, often religious, education, disenfranchising the 90% of American students who attend public schools. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint whose authors and ideas Trump has embraced for his new Administration, outlines a plan to shutter thousands of public schools, end supports for low-income students, and divert taxpayer funds to private education.
- Linda McMahon: The former World Wrestling Entertainment executive, tapped for Secretary of Education, once served on Connecticut’s State Board of Education and had a stint on a university’s board of trustees. She is chair of the board of the conservative research group America First Policy Institute, which strongly supports vouchers. In addition to that troubling policy position, Ms. McMahon has also faced charges of enabling child sexual abuse in the wrestling world and lied about her credentials in education. As with the nominee to head HHS, the Senate must fully vet Linda McMahon.
- Hunger and Nutrition:The second Trump Administration also is likely to look for savings by cutting food aid to children. Ideas on the table include ending summer meal assistance and community eligibility, which allows schools in high-poverty areas to feed all children without making them qualify individually and covers 20 million American children. The incoming Administration also is targeting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — better known as food stamps — with aggressive new restrictions, additional work requirements and other constraints that would significantly increase hunger for millions of children and spike nutrition-related diseases. SNAP feeds nearly 14 million children, who make up more than one-third of all recipients. As an added bonus, eliminating the safety regulations on baby formula is also under consideration.
Wild Cards
- Child Tax Credit: President Trump is eager to extend or make permanent his 2017 tax cuts, which expire in 2025 and will likely be the first order of business. The fate of the Child Tax Credit — increased to $2,000 by the 2017 tax package and to $3,600 under the Biden Administration — hangs on these deliberations, with no clear path ahead. During the campaign, Vice President-elect JD Vance proposed increasing the CTC to $5,000 per child. Trump has shown no interest in this proposal and his party has in the past balked at lesser increases. Still, with pronatalists such as Vance and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk advising the president, lawmakers may be moved to give families with kids a bigger tax refund.
- Birthright citizenship: Though enshrined in the Constitution, revoking birthright citizenship is a priority of the new Administration. It’s unclear whether the issue is a shiny bauble meant to distract from other controversial policies or an idea with an orchestrated plan behind it. But it seems that anything can happen in this Brave New World. If President Trump ends birthright citizenship, it will take its greatest toll on the nation’s babies.
| President-elect Trump is drawing many of his cabinet members from authors or supporters of Project 2025, the ultra-conservative policy agenda intended to serve as the “playbook” for his second term. For comprehensive analyses of how Project 2025 would impact the nation’s children, please review our briefs on education, health care, poverty, child care, and other topics. |
