The Impact on Kids of the Trump Administration’s First 100 Days

There is increasing concern in the child advocate community about the impact on children of budget cuts either enacted or proposed by the Trump administration. Spotlight spoke with Bruce Lesley, the president of First Focus on Children about programs that could be most impacted, including looming potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. The transcript of the conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Thanks for making the time to speak with us Bruce. First Focus on Children has tried to document the impact of the Trump administration’s first 100 days on children. Are there particular policies that you think have been most negative and hurtful thus far?

I think it comes in a number of buckets. It certainly is programs, and we’re certainly very worried about the potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP and those kinds of things that we’re seeing in the budget reconciliation process. But then there’s also the appropriations process where we’re seeing the impoundment stuff that’s happening. They eliminated the Office of Lead Abatement and they’re threatening Head Start and public health programs and the Maternal & Child Health Bureau seems to be gone. We have rampant maternal and infant mortality rates, so I guess the question is, what are we doing? We should be investing more, not less. And the thing about it is the public wildly agrees.

The third bucket would be the elimination of government functions by DOGE or other things. And then there’s the policy stuff. Voters overwhelmingly oppose eliminating the Department of Education and the use of vouchers and those kinds of things. And they also oppose eliminating birthright citizenship by wide margins. And I think one of the things that’s missing in some of these debates is the impact on kids. If you go on social media and look at the debate on birthright citizenship, there’s constitutional arguments and there are immigration arguments. What’s missing is that the people who would be targeted for harm are babies. Babies.

You’re basically subjecting every child born in America to a new process where they have to apply for citizenship. And by definition, according to current law, babies cannot access Medicaid or SNAP until some government bureaucrat says that they’re a citizen. And depending on the application, they may have questions, and they may ask for paternity tests, and they may want to know about your grandparents. You have this process that we have no idea what it looks like or how it would work. It’s stunning. And then at the end of it, where some people get citizenship and others don’t, those kids are stateless and subjected to a life in the shadows and exploitation and poverty. What did babies do to deserve that? What law did they violate?

So, it’s a combination of all these various buckets. And we know that kids don’t have political power and there’s not a lot of advocates. So, how do we fight all these battles across all these different fronts? Another area is the growing degree of misinformation around immunizations. We have kids dying from the flu, measles, and a pertussis epidemic. And because the flu and measles are so bad, no one’s even talking about pertussis. So again, what are we doing here? I would argue, and I think fairly so, that kids are disproportionately targeted for harm.

You just raised the question I was going to ask you. You’re an organization with a limited budget and resources and you have to pick your battles. How do you devise a strategy when everything is on fire? Do you pick a couple of things to go all in on?

I think that we are trying to respond to everything we can. We’re trying to raise awareness. We’re trying to participate in coalitions—we’ll do sign-on letters and things like that because there’s no way we can visit all 435 members of Congress. We try to combine issues so when we go in and talk to people, we have a full agenda. I’m not just going in there and saying, don’t cut Medicaid. I’m saying, don’t cut Medicaid, don’t cut SNAP, don’t cut Head Start. It’s a crazy time.

I think that one of the things that is beginning to break through a little bit on the Hill is we’ve always been in a circumstance where some indicators for children are moving in a negative direction, and some are moving in a positive direction, But this is just one of those times where it’s pretty much everything’s moving in the negative direction. I think that when people see the full picture, it’s very disturbing. We have rising infant mortality rates. We have rising child poverty. We have rising uninsured children. We have a children’s mental health crisis. We have a continuing epidemic of gun violence. We’re now seeing vaccine rates decline and kids are dying from this, deaths that are totally preventable.

And then of the agencies that they’ve really gone after, the Department of Education is the one seat at cabinet-level that’s kid focused. And so now they’re trying to get rid of that.

Do you think that any of these issues can break through with some perhaps remorseful Trump voters or can spur bipartisan action on the Hill?

I think there’s three actually. I think that people are beginning to see through the administration’s misdirection on Medicaid, this idea that we’re going to make deep cuts but only by cutting fraud. I think that’s beginning to be exposed. Today, the CBO report came out and makes even clearer that if you make these cuts, people are going to get hurt. And this is from CBO, not come advocacy group. I think if you cut Medicaid by the magnitude of $880 billion, it’s gone. I don’t think you get it back.

The second one would be childcare. I think there’s some agreement on a bipartisan basis to do something about childcare. From the GOP perspective, you can’t ask people to have a bunch more babies and ask them also to work and then not do anything about childcare.

And then third, I really do think there’s growing possibilities of doing something positive on the Child Tax Credit. One of the best meetings I’ve had this whole year is with Senator (Josh) Hawley (R-MO), actually. I wanted to talk to him and his staff about the Child Tax Credit, and he brought in his healthcare people who were also saying that they didn’t agree with cutting Medicaid.

Would he still want some kind of work requirement attached to the CTC?

It’s unclear. He definitely wants it more refundable though I wouldn’t say fully refundable. But he gets that it’s inconsistent to support people having more babies but then have them lose their Child Tax Credit because they might lose income when they have a child. Whether they support it for anything beyond babies and young children is unclear, but at least they’re thinking about it.

What about a program like WIC, which traditionally has had really remarkable bipartisan support. What are you hearing there?

I have to say, I’ve kind of been stunned by people who have sort of backed away on WIC and Head Start. I mean, there’s been attacks on both things and people have been reluctant to make up shortfalls and whatnot, but at the end of the day, they do it. And I’ve been very distraught actually about it, because I think that those two things are just so fundamental in the early childhood stage.

And what about SNAP?

SNAP I’m really disturbed by. This whole budget reconciliation process is a little bit like a balloon—the more success we have on Medicaid means that other programs are under greater attacks. When we started off this year, no one was talking about work requirements in the kids space. And now they’re talking about anybody over the age of five or seven, the parents and the kids, could lose SNAP benefits if they’re not meeting work requirements. That’s really scary.

And then you have these other attacks, right? For example, I can see the argument against soda, but the problem with any of that is where is that line? And there’s no clear line, right? Are you going to deny a parent from buying a birthday cake for a child? And it’s just so paternalistic. Having grown up in El Paso, Texas, I’m very worried that certain ethnic foods could be eliminated. Do enchiladas have too much cheese? And it’s also just really burdensome to small businesses and families.

I’m also concerned about TANF and the Social Services Block Grant, which some people are talking about eliminating completely. And I would note that the way TANF works, because of work requirements, 70% of the beneficiaries in TANF are children. You cut those two things and kids will be disproportionately harmed yet again. With all the problems kids are facing, we should be making investments in them, and instead we’re pulling the rug out from under them.

Right. And In a country that doesn’t have a great, a great track record with kids to start with.

That is absolutely right. We’re at the point now where there was a Katherine Rampell article in the Washington Post that was headlined, “Donald Trump’s War on Children.” And then there was a ProPublica piece on the cuts in the agencies titled, “The Trump Administration’s War on Children.” And to be bipartisan for a moment, where’s the big agenda from Democrats? Where’s the alternative vision on childcare, on paid leave? I mean, those bills are coming, but it’s May. What are you doing?