Trump administration reportedly freezes all childcare payments to all states | Trump administration
A Donald Trump administration official announced that the Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all child care payments to all states. He told ABC News in a report published Wednesday:. States funds will be released “only when states prove that these funds were legitimately spent.”
The report came after Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, the HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Appeared in a video message on Tuesday evening. O’Neill explained that the department has “activated our spend advocacy system for all ACF child care payments across America” and will now require “justification, receipt, or photographic evidence before paying.”
Initially, O’Neill and Adams’ message was interpreted as an announcement that HHS would stop funding child care in Minnesota, but not in all 50 states. But the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that the freeze would apply to every state and that all states must submit more documentation about their child care programs before receiving federal money.
The department did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment to clarify the nature of the freeze, but HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told ABC News that “it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that these funds, these federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, are used for legitimate purposes.”
Recipients of child care funds will be required to submit comprehensive documentation to HHS, including “attendance records, licensing, audit and monitoring reports, complaints and investigations,” Nixon added.
Changes to U.S. child care are in response to a viral video by a self-described “independent journalist” and right-wing influencer that allegedly exposed massive fraud at daycares run by Somali Americans in Minneapolis.
However, other news sources also We could not verify the claims Made in video. Allegations of abuse of Minnesota’s social safety net have also been covered extensively in local and national news media over the past several years. Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint alleging a grand plan During the Biden administration.
In recent weeks, Trump has intensified his xenophobic attacks against Somali Americans; This includes his longtime nemesis, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American who came to the United States as a refugee. He said Omar was “trash” and Somalia was “not good for some reason.”
“We don’t want them in our country when they come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting in December. “Let them go back where they came from and fix it.”
Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, who is running for re-election this year, condemned the Trump administration’s freeze on Minnesota’s funding as part of “Trump’s long game.”
“We’ve spent years fighting fraudsters. This is a serious problem, but that was his plan all along,” Walz said in a statement Tuesday. Publish on X.
