The Trump administration wants to cut early education opportunities for needy children and make them and their families hungrier and unhealthier in the process, critics charge.
According to a draft budget document first reported by the Washington Post, President Donald Trump wants Congress to eliminate all funding for Head Start, which provides early learning, health and wellness, family well-being and child care for more than 500,000 at-risk youth and their families.
The proposal is part of a larger plan to slash more than $40 billion from the discretionary budget of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Head Start. The National Institutes of Health would see its discretionary spending reduced from $121 billion to $80 billion, the newspaper reported.
The administration’s approach would place even greater pressures on financially strapped Americans already facing food shortages due to massive cuts to federal food programs.
The administration’s approach would place even greater pressures on financially strapped Americans already facing food shortages due to massive cuts to federal food programs.
According to Food Bank News, Republicans want to cut $500 million from an initiative that provides food banks with crops purchased from local farms, and another $500 million is to be eliminated from an emergency food assistance program. Both are administered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“While food banks have long taken setbacks in funding in stride, the aggressiveness of the combined $1 billion of cuts are expected to take a toll,” the report explains.
“In Texas, El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank has already announced that 20% of its agency partners and 20% of its mobile pantries will no longer receive food from it. Whether food banks measure the cuts in pounds, truckloads or dollar value, they will likely feel the blow.”
Shannon Gleave
And the cuts come as hunger is on the rise, according to Feeding America. The national group said 50 million additional people sought food assistance in 2023, raising the number of Americans experiencing food insecurity to 47 million, including 14 million children.
Children may feel the effects even further with the proposed elimination of $660 million for school meal purchases, the School Nutrition Association warned recently.
“These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs,” SNA President Shannon Gleave said. “With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health.”
“Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health.”
And if the U.S. government’s own assessment of Head Start is any indication, its loss will be devastating to millions of Americans and to the nation well into the future.
“Since 1965, Head Start programs have reached more than 38 million children and their families,” the HHS website explains. “Children enrolled in Head Start programs are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college; have improved social, emotional and behavioral development; and are better prepared to be parents themselves than similar children who do not attend the program.”
Children ages 5 to 9 enrolled in Early Head Start programs experience significantly fewer child welfare encounters related to physical and sexual abuse than other children in that age range, the department adds.
“Research consistently shows a broad array of benefits for children at the end of their Head Start enrollment. While these benefits may appear to diminish in the early grades, economic benefits emerge as children become adults. The Head Start program’s two-generation design — coupled with research-based, high-quality comprehensive services — has the power to change children’s outcomes.”
Yet the agency has announced its cuts to Head Start and other HHS programs is being carried out as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump launched with a February executive order.
As a result, workforce reductions will occur in multiple HHS agencies, including 3,500 from the FDA, 2,400 from the Centers for Disease Control and 1,200 from NIH.
The downsizing and related agency consolidations are part of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again initiative designed to address chronic disease, HHS said in launching the initiative.
“First, it will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year through a reduction in workforce of about 10,000 full-time employees who are part of this most recent transformation. When combined with HHS’ other efforts, including early retirement and Fork in the Road (employment separation plan), the restructuring results in a total downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.”
But U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, condemned the proposals as detrimental to Americans’ health, especially that of children.
“Donald Trump is doing everything he can to destroy Head Start.”
“As he works to give more tax breaks to billionaires like himself, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to destroy Head Start — without a care in the world for the hundreds of thousands of working families across the country who depend on it.”
Patty Murray
The fact is many Head Start locations already have closed, employees have been laid off and children and families left in the lurch, she said.
“Democrats won’t let a proposal like that go anywhere in Congress — but make no mistake: Trump is already doing all he can to wreck the program on his own, withholding funding and shuttering the offices and firing the people who get local Head Start centers what they need to serve families. Now, we’re seeing the ruinous consequences.”
A survey by Lake Research Group found a significant majority of Americans believe more, not less, should be spent on protecting children from hunger and other challenges.
By a 90% to 8% margin, American voters support investing in programs that help children improve their development and the outcome of their lives. Those polled also agree with the argument that “investing in children has a large return in a healthy society and a healthy economy.”
Targeting Head Start isn’t a surprise because its elimination was a goal of Project 2025, the Christian nationalist blueprint for dismantling federal programs, said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children. “And although President Trump has closely followed the extremist agenda’s recommendations, it is still shocking to see an administration consider a proposal that will impose such widespread harm on children.”
Contrary to other available data, Project 2025 claims Head Start is “fraught with scandal and abuse.” It claims one-fourth of children served through Head Start “were abused, left unsupervised or released to an unauthorized person.”
Also against available data, Project 2025 claims Head Start programs have “little or no long-term academic value for children.”
The document also criticizes Head Start for embracing COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements.
A 2017 article in The American Conservative made the case for abolishing Head Start but said such an outcome was “absurd politically” and “never will happen.”