If he’s sincere, which is always a big “if”, First Focus on Children has a few important suggestions for making this happen.

• To protect them: Create an independent Children’s Commissioner, which would examine policy choices, issue reports, and make recommendations to Congress and federal agencies on ways to craft policy that acts in the best interest of children. A 2022 survey by Lake Research Partners showed that voters strongly support the creation of an independent Children’s Commissioner to improve oversight and “to investigate and make recommendations on ways to protect and improve the care and well-being of children” by a more than 2-to-1 margin (57-27%).
• To make them healthy: Protect Medicaid, which insures more than 40% of all the nation’s children. Make the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) permanent. The Children’s Health Insurance Program Permanency (CHIPP) Act, introduced in the 118th Congress, would ensure continuous access to affordable, high-quality, age-appropriate care for children, prevent disruptions to coverage that could increase the number of uninsured children, provide financial and health care security to families with children who have asthma, cancer and other chronic illnesses, and prevent lawmakers from continually using the program as a bargaining chip in negotiations. Enact the comprehensive health care agenda outlined in “Making America Healthy Again for Children,” a report from First Focus on Children that outlines ways to protect and enhance Medicaid and CHIP, 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.
• To lift them out of poverty: Establish a fully refundable Child Tax Credit as part of the upcoming negotiations on extending the 2017 tax cuts. As currently structured, the Child Tax Credit leaves behind an estimated 18 million children per year whose parents make too little to qualify for the full credit. It is a federal policy that actively promotes child poverty.
• To give each and every child a chance to thrive: Maintain birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship would increase the very bureaucracy that the Administration says it wants to trim, have long-term negative effects on the U.S. economy, and deplete the workforce needed to support programs such as Social Security and Medicare. “Citizenship is not merely an identity or status — it is foundational for accessing health care, nutrition, early education, housing, and many other services,” said First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley. “Creating bureaucratic obstacles risks delaying – or denying altogether – the support babies and children need at their most formative stages.”

President Trump and lawmakers have many other tools available to them for protecting our nation’s children and ensuring that each and every one of them has the chance to thrive. Find a comprehensive analysis of these tools in our Children’s Agenda for the 118th Congress.

The post The Kid Angle: How Trump can start “protecting American children” appeared first on First Focus on Children.

Here is what journalists, voters, and lawmakers must remember as they listen:

1. Ending birthright citizenship will hurt babies. It will also have long term negative effects on the U.S. economy and would cut into the workforce needed to support programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
2. The President’s budget plan WILL cut Medicaid. The budget under consideration right now proposes $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which would decimate the program and endanger the lives of the 37 million children who currently rely on it.
3. School vouchers will leave America’s children less educated. Public schools are struggling because as a nation we underinvest in them.
4. Cutting USAID programs saves very little money — but will cost millions of children their lives. The U.S. spends less than 1% of the federal budget on humanitarian and development assistance. International children’s programs account for just 0.09% of the entire federal budget.  
5. A child has died of measles — a preventable disease. Vaccine skepticism, promoted by the President’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, has nurtured a measles outbreak that has spread to eight states: Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Texas. More outbreaks of measles and other previously eradicated childhood diseases such as polio are likely to follow. Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has paused multiple vaccine projects.
6. The cost of child care — which continues to outpace annual mortgage payments in 45 states and the District of Columbia — remains out of reach for many families. Candidate Trump suggested that his tariffs, which are set to begin the day he speaks to Congress, would be applied to those costs. Will they?
7. Candidate Trump made taming food prices a central part of his platform. (“When you look at the cost of groceries — the cost of bacon!”) Yet eggs this week hit a record high: $4.95 per dozen. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the price of eggs will rise an additional 40% during 2025. Prices are rising at the same time the President is urging Congress to cut food assistance to millions of children.

The post The Kid Angle: 7 Truths to Remember When Trump Speaks to Congress appeared first on First Focus on Children.

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.

The post The Kid Angle: Less education. More HIV. Where a week of chaos leaves kids appeared first on First Focus on Children.

A new analysis from First Focus on Children finds that more than $101 billion of these cuts — or nearly 20% of the total — will come from programs that support child care, education funding, housing assistance, cancer research and other critical services.

And for what? To fund tax cuts that will enrich corporations and feather the nests and yachts of billionaires (like the ones running the Department of Government Efficiency).

This proposal is egregious, even if we ignore for a moment that children make up nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population but receive less than 9% of our annual federal investment.

The U.S. national investment in children fell in FY 2024 for the third straight year, according to Children’s Budget 2024, dropping 6% to just 8.87% of the total federal budget. The new disinvestments proposed by the Department of Government Efficiency would include:

• $35.766 billion in support offered to veterans caring for dependent children
• $26.445 billion in education funding for K-12 students
• $12.272 billion in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start
• $10.688 billion for children from Tenant-Based Housing Assistance
• $8.746 billion from the Child Care and Development Block Grant
• $1.839 billion in funding for children’s health initiatives at the National Institutes of Health, including childhood cancer initiatives and environmental health research
• $1.808 billion (at minimum) in international support for children
• $ 805 million in funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
• $417.7 million in Juvenile Justice and Safety programs
• $388.7 million in funding for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth Training Programs

First Focus on Children shared the report this week in a letter to tech moguls Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who launched the Department of Government Efficiency.  

Read the full report and the letter.

The post The Kid Angle: New report finds 20% of “efficiency” cuts will come from kids appeared first on First Focus on Children.