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    US state department stops issuing visas for Gaza’s children to get medical care after far-right campaign

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    The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.“All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,” the state department said in a message posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, from which Loomer was banned before it was purchased by Elon Musk.In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, Loomer had shared video of badly injured Palestinian children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims that their shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and that they were “doing the HAMAS terror whistle”.View image in fullscreenLoomer also falsely claimed that she had “exclusively obtained” the two video clips she shared. One was copied from a medical aid charity’s public Instagram account and the other was from the Houston Chronicle’s YouTube channel.After misrepresenting the children, including amputees arriving to get prosthetic legs, as “Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone”, Loomer demanded to know “who at the US State Department under @marcorubio signed off on the visas for Palestinians from a HAMAS hot zone”.“Is Rubio even aware of this?” Loomer wrote, in reference to the secretary of state who was at the time in Alaska meeting Vladimir Putin. “Why would anyone at the State Department give visas to individuals who live in Gaza, which is run by HAMAS?” Loomer wrote, before falsely stating that “95% of GAZANS voted for HAMAS.”In fact, Hamas got 44% of party list votes in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections across Gaza and the West Bank, and lost three of the five districts in Gaza to the secular Fatah party. There has been no election since then.After the visa program was halted, Loomer declared victory. “This is fantastic news,” she wrote in response to the state department announcement. “Hopefully all GAZANS will be added to President Trump’s travel ban. There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world’s hospital!”Republican Congressman Randy Fine explicitly commended Loomer after the visa change was announced, in a sign of her sway over some US policy. “Massive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and making me and other officials aware. Well done, Laura,” Fine wrote on X.The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a US-based charity, called on the Trump administration to “reverse this dangerous and inhumane decision.” Over the last 30 years the charity has evacuated thousands of Palestinian children to the US for medical care, it said in a statement.“Medical evacuations are a lifeline for the children of Gaza who would otherwise face unimaginable suffering or death due to the collapse of medical infrastructure in Gaza.”The Council on Islamic-American Relations said the block on visas was “the latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump’s ‘Israel First’ administration knows no bounds” and added that it was “deeply ironic” that the Trump administration was meanwhile “rolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from the Israeli government.”“This ban is just the latest example of our government’s complicity with Israel’s genocide, which is increasingly rejected by the American people,” it continued.Paul Graham, co-founder of the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X after the visa halt was announced: “If Laura Loomer had been around in 1940, she’d have been trying to prevent Jewish refugees from entering the US. You know she would. And if Trump had been president then, she’d have succeeded.” More

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      Ohio requires buses for private school kids. Public school students have to find their own ride

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      For about 2,000 students attending high school in Dayton, Ohio, there won’t be a bus in sight when they walk out the door for the beginning of the school year this week.Ruben Castillo, an 11th grade student at Meadowdale Career Technology Center, is one of them.Ohio law means that public school districts such as Dayton’s are responsible for transporting students who attend private and charter schools. When they fail to do so, they risk fines of millions of dollars.A shortage of drivers and buses combined with the threat of fines, means that public school districts in Dayton and around Ohio find themselves relegating their own students to the back of the transportation line.“I’m going to have to use Uber, and it’s going to cost me $25-$30 a day to get to and from school,” says Castillo. “In wintertime, when demand is higher, it’s probably going to be more.” At 180 school days over the course of a year, that’s thousands of dollars he is set to fork out from his own pocket.For the past several years, school administrators in Dayton, Cincinnati and elsewhere have been trying to get around the problem by issuing students with bus passes for public transportation.But children riding public buses have reported being subjected to a variety of dangers. Public transportation administrators have also reported difficulties trying to serve the public and thousands of students all at once.The situation came to a tragic head on the morning of 4 April when 18-year-old Alfred Hale III was shot dead at the public bus hub in downtown Dayton while en route to class at Dunbar high school. Shortly after Hale’s killing, Ohio lawmakers introduced a law making it illegal for Dayton public schools (DPS) to buy public bus vouchers for students.The burden of getting children to school now falls on students’ parents, grandparents, local churches and charities, say officials. Families who choose to continue to have their students use public buses to get to and from school will have to fork out at least $540 per high school student a year.“There seems to be an aggressive approach to the most vulnerable families and people in America,” says DPS’s superintendent, David Lawrence.“Not only is it unfair, it’s onerous that public schools have to provide transportation to non-public school students.”What’s happening in Ohio is a result of a wider effort by conservative politicians to push for more children to attend charter and private schools, many of which are run by religious organizations.Republican politicians hold a supermajority across Ohio’s legislature and have built up a $1bn fund in the form of vouchers for families who want to send their students to private and charter schools.Ohio is not alone.Republican-dominated state legislatures have been pushing for or have already enacted laws that see billions of dollars of taxpayer money directed to funding private school voucher systems in Texas, Florida, Iowa, Tennessee and elsewhere.In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where political control is largely split between Democrats and Republicans, public schools are required to provide transportation for students attending non-public schools. In January, Donald Trump signed an executive order steering taxpayer funds from public schools to private schools.Many in Democratic-leaning cities say they are being targeted.In Cincinnati, children as young as 13 are being forced to use public transportation to get to and from school due to funding shortages that this year will see more than 100 yellow bus routes cut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Columbus, where more than half of all students are African American, the public school system is required to bus students of 162 private and charter schools.About 1.8 million, or 80%, of all school-going students in Ohio attend public schools and nearly two-thirds of students attending Dayton public schools are African American. In July, the state passed a budget that saw the smallest increase in spending on K-12 public education in more than a decade.“It’s simple – if we did not have to bus non-public school students on our transportation, we could transport every single one of our K-12 students on yellow buses,” says Jocelyn Rhynard, a member of the Dayton public school board. DPS transports between 4,000 and 5,000 charter and private school students every school day.“It’s a direct result of the legislation from the extremist Republicans at the Ohio statehouse mandating that we must transport non-public students as well as public students in our district.”But Republican politicians disagree.“We had an 18-year-old get shot and killed. The environment for the students is not good down there. The NAACP interviewed the children, they don’t want to ride the public transportation buses, they want to ride the yellow school buses,” says Phil Plummer, a Republican party state representative who spearheaded the budget amendment banning DPS from giving its students public bus vouchers.Plummer says he and others “found 25 school buses” that DPS could purchase. “They decided not to transport their kids,” he says.DPS administrators, who pay drivers the highest rates in the region, say about 70 buses would be required to meet the need, a number that could take up to two years to procure. Lawrence says the process of buying buses and training drivers is not simple.“It’s an 18-month cycle. [Buses] are $150,000 to $190,000 each to buy, and ones with backup cameras and air conditioning are [even] more expensive. Then drivers have to take at least 10 tests before they become fully qualified,” he says.With the law coming into effect just months before the new school year, parents, students and public school managers have been left in a difficult situation.“I’m a single dad raising two kids on my own. We all have to be at school at the same time. That’s a big dilemma,” says William Johnson, an educator at DPS whose daughter is no longer able to get to school using a bus provided by or paid for the district.“I’m lucky that my 80-year-old father is going to help out taking them to school. But I ask the state [politicians] – please come up with a solution. We’re going to lose a whole generation of kids if this continues.” More

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      Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down

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      In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s.The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law.Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying.These orders “provide students with really important protections against discrimination”, said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. “They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they’re assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they’re violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.”The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a “joint stipulated dismissal”. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general’s office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal.“I’m not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,” said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. “The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it’s supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there’s no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.”Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree.“No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. “This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we’re now getting America refocused on our bright future.”But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.”In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist.Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating.Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white.Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so.According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Separate but equal doesn’t work,” said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. “The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they’re going to be shut out, whether that’s from AP classes, whether that’s from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.”“Public education isn’t just about education for the sake of education,” he added. “It’s about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It’s on our democracy writ large.”Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision “signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation’s schools”.“Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,” he said. “The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they’re not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.”Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a “slippery slope” in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration.“The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,” he said. “I worry that we’re going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.” More

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      Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proposes free childcare. Is it finally a winning policy?

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      Maggie Stockdale hadn’t given much thought to childcare before welcoming her first child last year. But once she learned the high price of full-time daycare tuition in Brooklyn, New York, she knew she had to find another solution.Now, her care duties are split between Stockdale’s parents, who relocated from Wisconsin to help out, and her husband, who cut his hours down to part time and arranged with his employer to let him bring their 10-month-old to work several days a week.“You feel fragile,” said Stockdale, lamenting that so many families have to choose between financial stability and their child’s wellbeing.So when Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a platform of affordability, proposing free childcare for children aged six weeks and older, it made her feel that the pain she and other parents had experienced had not gone unnoticed.Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblymember who won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor last month, has put forth a variety of kid- and family-focused ideas, including distributing baby baskets containing formula and postpartum supplies to new parents, building up mental health infrastructure in schools and closing off high-traffic streets adjacent to school zones. But what’s garnered the most attention is his promise of free childcare, a system he plans to fund by raising taxes on corporations and the city’s richest residents.As he told supporters in his victory speech: “We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle … where childcare doesn’t cost more than [college].”For Stockdale, seeing these policies at the center of a major political campaign has underscored how childcare affordability is not only a core concern for voters – but also a winning issue.“It’s got so much support,” said Stockdale, also an organizer with the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Childcare. “People have started to realize that this should be a key component of any candidate’s platform.”In many ways, Mamdani’s platform responds to the surge of activism that New York has seen in favor of making childcare a public good – activism that first emerged at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the importance and fragility of the country’s childcare system was laid bare. Since then, elected officials have begun to take the issue seriously, explained Allison Lew, senior organizer with New Yorkers United for Child Care.A report released from the New York City comptroller’s office this year shows the average cost of center-based care across the five boroughs was $26,000 a year, and that to afford the cost of care for a two-year-old in New York City, a family would need to earn $334,000 annually. “People are draining their savings, going into debt, borrowing on their 401ks [retirement funds],” said Lew. “You have to be wealthy in order for childcare to not be an issue.”For many would-be parents, the inaccessibility is affecting their family-planning decisions, causing them to delay having kids or to only have one child, despite wanting more. “We would love to have another, but financially, we don’t know if we can afford it,” said Nancy Keith, who is raising a 15-month-old in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Keith says that she and her husband waited until they were in their late 30s, and more settled in their career, to have a child. Even still, they need financial assistance from their parents to afford the $26,000 a year they pay for childcare.Should Mamdani win the mayoral election in November and make his childcare vision a reality, these challenges could become things of the past, experts say.Most immediately, parents and childcare workers alike would experience improved financial security. Families would see thousands more dollars in their bank accounts every month, while childcare workers would be paid salaries and receive benefits at parity with New York public school employees.Gregory Brender, chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council of New York, explains that pay parity has been a priority for the provider network for decades, making it a relief to finally see it be a legislative priority. “Early childhood education depends on a talented and educated workforce, and they need to be compensated appropriately,” he said.These family-focused policies would also improve equity in the city, as more parents – especially women – would be able to remain in the workforce. And in making the city more affordable for everyone, families from diverse backgrounds with a range of incomes would be able to remain in their communities.Down the line, such policies would also bolster the city’s economy. Collectively, New Yorkers spend as much as $15bn on childcare every year. And in 2022, families not being able to afford childcare cost the city $23bn between lost tax revenues and workplace departures as parents were forced to drop out of the workforce.“We just cannot afford to not have universal childcare,” Lew said.Universal childcare isn’t cheap. But the city has the money, said Justin Brannan, a New York City councilmember representing parts of Brooklyn and chair of the city’s committee on finance. “We have been stuck in this cycle of false austerity where we are supposed to believe that we have to choose between little and even less, and it’s just not true,” Brannan said, noting that the city’s budget totals almost $116bn (universal childcare would cost $12bn per year). “We just need to do a better job of spending our money,” he said.Implementing such a system may not be as simple as carving out room in the budget, however. Some facets of the plan – like raising taxes – need to be approved by the state legislature and the governor. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, has already said she will not raise income taxes. Mamdani has acknowledged these challenges, saying in an interview with Morning Edition, “Any mayor that has an ambition that meets the scale of the crisis of the people that they’re seeking to represent will have to work with [the state].”Still, the ideas have momentum.New York has been a pioneer in accessible childcare infrastructure for several years, including universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds (known as pre-K and 3-K). And although many doubted Bill de Blasio’s ability to pull off his promise of universal preschool when he ran for mayor more than a decade ago, the program is now a national model. Before that, the city instituted a voucher program that enabled low-income families to access childcare for children aged six weeks to 15 years – although seats are limited. As a result of those developments, advocates like Lew say some degree of publicly funded childcare is now a “non-negotiable” for many New Yorkers.Mamdani says his campaign promises to build on those past successes. “These platform planks are rooted in very recent New York City history,” he said in an interview with the Nation. “Universal childcare is something that many candidates are in support of because of the success of universal pre-K.”New York isn’t alone in its quest for solutions to the nationwide childcare crisis. In 2022, New Mexico made childcare free for most families. That same year, Washington DC raised childcare workers’ wages through a tax on the district’s wealthiest residents. And in 2023, Vermont guaranteed financial support for childcare for all families with incomes below 575% of the federal poverty level – amounting to 90% of families in the state.Hailey Gibbs, associate director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, said it’s an issue that crosses the political aisle. “Folks, regardless of what state they represent or how far they sit in the political extremes, understand that the lack is meaningful,” she said.“It’s a unifying issue,” echoed Karen Schulman, senior director of state childcare policy at the National Women’s Law Center, pointing out that even staunchly Republican states like Alabama, Georgia and Montana have created early childhood education funds.But Mamdani’s campaign is the first in the country to put children and childcare front and center – and win, at least at the primary level. “That’s pretty bold for the US,” Gibbs said. More

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      Trans youth fight for care as California clinics cave to Trump: ‘How can this happen here?’

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      Eli, a 16-year-old Los Angeles student, is spending his summer juggling an internship at a natural history museum, a research project, a physics class and cheer practice – and getting ready to apply for college.But in recent weeks, he has been forced to handle a more urgent matter: figuring out how he is going to access vital medical treatments targeted by the Trump administration.Last month, Eli was stunned to get an email alerting him that Children’s hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) was shutting down its Center for Transyouth Health and Development, which had provided him critical healthcare for three years. The center, which has served transgender youth for three decades, offered Eli counseling and helped him access gender-affirming hormone therapy that he said allowed him to live as himself and flourish in school.CHLA said it was shuttering the center due to the federal government’s threats to pull funding, part of the president’s efforts to eradicate trans youth healthcare. The move has forced Eli and his mother to scramble for alternatives, taking time out of his busy summer to contact new providers and ensure he doesn’t run out of medications.California became the first sanctuary state for trans youth healthcare in 2022 and has long positioned itself as having the strongest protections for LGBTQ+ children. Now, for families like Eli’s, it feels like that safety is rapidly disappearing.View image in fullscreen“I was always worried for people in conservative states and had a lot of fear for my community as a whole. But I never thought it would directly affect me in California,” Eli said on a recent afternoon, seated with his mom at a Latino LGBTQ+ organization in Boyle Heights. “I wish people understood they’re doing so much more harm than they could possibly imagine – that so many lives will be hurt and lost and so many people torn apart.”Eli is one of nearly 3,000 patients who learned on 12 June they would be abruptly losing their healthcare at CHLA, one of the largest and most prominent centers in the nation to treat trans kids. Then, on 24 June, Stanford Medicine revealed it had also paused gender-affirming surgeries for trans minors and 18-year-olds, with reports that some families had appointments suddenly canceled and leaving other patients fearful it was the beginning of a wider crackdown on their care.Families across California told the Guardian they were exploring options to stockpile hormones, researching how to get care outside the US, growing increasingly fearful that parents could face government investigations or prosecutions, and discussing options to permanently flee the country.CHLA, in a letter to staff, said its decision to close the trans center was “profoundly difficult”, but as California’s largest pediatric safety net provider, it could not risk losing federal dollars, which makes up a majority of its funds and would affect hundreds of thousands of patients. Stanford said its disruption in services followed a review of “directives from the federal government” and was done to “protect both our providers and patients”.“This is Los Angeles – how can this be happening here?” said Emily, Eli’s mother, who is an educator; the Guardian is identifying them by only their first names to protect their privacy. “My parents left their Central American countries for a better life – fleeing poverty and civil war, and I cannot believe I’m sitting here thinking: what would be the best country for my family to flee to, as so many immigrant families have done? I never thought I might have to leave the US to protect my son.”‘This care gave me my life’Katie, a 16-year-old film student who lives two hours outside Los Angeles, started going to CHLA for gender-affirming care in 2018 when she was nine. For several years, the care involved therapy and check-ins, but no direct medical interventions. Throughout that time, Katie was consistent about her identity as a girl, which CHLA providers supported.“It was so meaningful and incredible for them to say: ‘We see you for who you are, but also you can be who you are,’” recalled Katie, who asked to go by a pseudonym to protect her privacy. “It was like, I have a future. I’ll get to have my life.”In gender-affirming care, young children may first socially transition by using new names, pronouns and clothes. When youth are persistent about their gender, doctors can consider prescribing puberty blockers, which pause puberty, and eventually hormone therapies that allow for medical transition. Trans youth surgeries are rare.View image in fullscreenThe treatment has for years been considered the standard of care in the US, endorsed by major medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, and linked to improved mental health. In recent years, Republicans have passed bans on gender-affirming care in more than 25 states, and Trump has called the treatments “chemical and surgical mutilation”. There has also been a growing international backlash against the care, including in the UK, which has banned puberty blockers for trans kids.Last month, the US supreme court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Families and civil rights groups have argued the bans are discriminatory, as cisgender children can still receive the same treatments; cis boys with delayed puberty may be prescribed testosterone, for example, while trans boys cannot.Katie, who was eventually prescribed puberty blockers and hormones, broke down crying recounting how the care saved her. “Sometimes I think: What would my life be if I never got this?” she said. “And I just don’t see myself here. I can’t see myself at 16 if I didn’t come out and transition … Losing this now would destroy my life.”Sage Sol Pitchenik, a 16-year-old CHLA patient, who is non-binary, said the care helped them overcome debilitating depression caused by their severe gender dysphoria: “Every day, I couldn’t even get up because I just didn’t want to see myself, not even my reflection in the window. I was so terrified to look at my body.”They compared the care to the essential treatment their twin brother had earlier received at the same institution: a liver transplant. “CHLA saved my life, just like they saved my brother,” they said.Eli, who came out as trans while in middle school during pandemic lockdowns, said it was hard to return to school when he felt so uncomfortable in his body. At the start of high school, he avoided making friends: “I’m really sociable. I love talking to people and joining clubs, but I felt restricted because of how embarrassed I felt and scared of how people would react to me.”The testosterone therapy helped restore his confidence, he said, recounting “euphoric moments” of his transition: growing facial hair, his voice deepening, staying in the boys’ cabin at camp. His friends celebrated each milestone, and his mom said the positive transformation was obvious to his whole family: “It was like day and night – we are a traditional Latino Catholic family, but they were all loving and accepting, because he is such a happier kid.”View image in fullscreen‘Treating our kids as disposable’CHLA started treating trans children around 1991, and that legacy was part of its appeal for parents. “It’s not just the best place in LA to get care, it’s also one of the most important research centers in the country,” said Jesse Thorn, a radio host who has two trans daughters receiving care there.Critics of gender-affirming care have claimed that vulnerable youth are rushed into transitioning without understanding treatment consequences, and that there is not enough research to justify the care. CHLA, Thorn said, countered those claims; families have appointments and build long-term relationships with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers. The process is slow and methodical, and the center was engaged in extensive research on the effects of treatments, he said.“The youth most in danger with the clinic closing are those with parents who aren’t sure about this care,” Thorn added. “That’s a lot of parents. They’re not hateful bigots. They’re overwhelmed and scared, and the institution means a lot.”View image in fullscreenOne LA parent, who requested anonymity to protect her trans son’s privacy, said she knew parents who traveled from Idaho to get CHLA’s care: “It really was a beacon of the entire western United States. It is a remarkable loss.”Parents told the Guardian that they were putting their children on waitlists at other clinics and beginning intake processes, but remained worried for families who have public health insurance and fewer resources.Like CHLA, Stanford has long researched and championed trans youth healthcare. The prestigious university’s recent pullback on care only affects surgeries, which are much more rare than hormone therapy and puberty blockers. But families whose care has remained intact, for now, say they are on edge.“There’s a constant feeling of not knowing what you need to prepare for,” said one mom of a 17-year-old trans boy, who said her son waited six months to first be seen by Stanford. “We all understand the pressures the doctors and institutions are under. But ceding the surgeries doesn’t mean the pressure will end. It’s just showing us our kids are seen as disposable.”Parents and advocates say they fear that other institutions could follow CHLA and Stanford, particularly as the White House significantly escalates attacks in ways that go far beyond funding threats.Fears of prosecutionTrump’s focus on California trans youth and gender-affirming care has been relentless. The president has directly attacked a 16-year-old trans track runner, with the US justice department and federal Department of Education fighting, so far unsuccessfully, to force the state’s schools to ban trans female athletes and bar trans girls from women’s facilities. Trump has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in education funding over a state law meant to prevent schools from forcibly outing LGBTQ+ youth to their parents.Perhaps most troubling for families and providers, the FBI has said it is investigating providers who “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care”, and the DoJ said this week it had issued subpoenas to trans youth clinics and doctors.This has led to growing fears that the US will seek to prosecute and imprison clinicians, similar to efforts by some Republican states to criminally charge abortion providers. Many parents say they worry they could be targeted next.“There’s an outcry of terror,” said another LA mother of a trans child. “It feels like there is a bloodlust to jail any doctor who has ever helped an LGBTQ+ kid. There’s this realization that the world is constricting around us, and that any moment they could be coming for us.”Some families hope that California will fight back, but are wary of how committed the governor, Gavin Newsom, really is. Newsom faced widespread backlash in March when he hosted a podcast with a conservative activist and said he agreed with the suggestion that trans girls participating in sports was “deeply unfair”.California’s department of justice, meanwhile, has repeatedly emphasized that when institutions withhold gender-affirming care for trans youth, they are violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws.A spokesperson for Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, said Trump was “seeking to scare doctors and hospitals from providing nondiscriminatory healthcare”: “The bottom line is: this care remains legal in California … While we are concerned with the recent decisions by CHLA, right now we are focused on getting to the source of this problem – and that’s the Trump administration’s unlawful and harmful threats to providers.”A CHLA spokesperson shared a copy of its staff letter, noting that Trump’s threats to its funding came from at least five federal departments, and saying it was working with patients to identify alternative care and would “explore” reassigning affected employees to other roles. A Stanford spokesperson did not answer questions about how many patients were affected by its recent changes, but said in an email it was “committed to providing high quality, thorough and compassionate medical services for every member of our community”.Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that Trump has a “resounding mandate” to end “unproven, irreversible child mutilation procedures”, adding: “The administration is delivering.”Katie’s mother said she expected the state’s leaders to do more: “The quiet from the governor and others on trans rights is very unsettling. My husband and I grew up in California, went to public schools here, and always thought we’d be safe here and that the state would hold the line. It’s hard to tell right now if that’s true.”Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s spokesperson, defended the governor, saying in an email that his “record supporting the trans community is unmatched”.“Everyone wants to blame Gavin Newsom for everything. But instead of indulging in Newsom-derangement syndrome, maybe folks should look to Washington.”‘We can’t be quiet’Affected youth are increasingly speaking out. Since the news broke, protesters have organized weekly demonstrations in front of CHLA to call for the healthcare to be restored.At one recent evening rally, organized by the LA LGBT Center, families and supporters marched and chanted outside the busy hospital on Sunset Boulevard, holding signs saying “Trans joy is resistance” and “blood on your hands”, and at one point shouting: “Down with erasure, down with hate, shame on CHLA!”View image in fullscreen“We can’t be quiet any more. We’ve been polite for too long and taken so much bullshit from people who hate us,” said Sage, who spoke at an earlier rally. “I didn’t stand up just for myself or the people affected by this, but also for the trans people who came before us who still have incorrect names on their graves, who don’t have a voice.” Sage, who is now in a creative writing program, said they hoped to become a journalist.Katie, who aspires to be a television writer in LA, said she could not be silent as anti-trans advocates force families to consider fleeing: “How dare you try to drive me out of the place where I was born, where my best friends are, where the job I want to do is, where I’ve experienced my whole life? This is my home.”Eli said he didn’t feel as if he was being an activist. He was simply asking for the “bare minimum”: to be left alone and able to access basic healthcare. “Trans services like hormone therapy truly saves lives,” he said. “We just want people to be able to live their lives. I’m just asking for what is commonsense.” More

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      Childcare is a hellscape for most US families. Why isn’t there a bigger push for change?

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      In 2021, Bri Adams was pregnant with her first child and began signing up for waitlists for childcare – eight, to be exact. She was thrilled when she found a spot, but was quickly horrified when the childcare shut down abruptly.It “kind of broke my brain a bit”, said Adams, a 34-year-old tech director from Falls Church, Virginia. Scrambling again, she found a new location close to the family’s home.Like Adams’s household, two-thirds of US families with young children – including middle- and upper-middle-class families who frequently command politicians’ attention – have had all available parents in the workforce since the late 1990s. Yet parents still struggle mightily to access quality childcare; large majorities say it is hard to find and afford care, and the cost of care continues to rise at a faster rate than inflation.As near-universal as these challenges are, there is a persistent and surprising lack of a mass movement demanding major childcare reforms. US parents are basically on their own to figure out solutions for their families. Adams “considers herself lucky” that she and her husband, who take home $11,000 each month after taxes, can spend more than $50,000 a year on their two kids’ childcare. Childcare remains their biggest expense, costing a whopping $4,300 a month – $800 more than their mortgage. As Adams asked: “If I am feeling such intense financial stress when we make $300,000 a year, how on earth are people managing who make so much less and have zero safety net?”View image in fullscreenOther countries like Canada, Germany and Ireland have made transformative changes to their previously inadequate systems, partly spurred on by parents like Adams. In February 2020, for instance, more than 30,000 parents and childcare providers flooded the streets of Dublin, an event credited with elevating childcare to a top-tier political issue and securing more public funding. Despite the long-broken American childcare system, there has never been a successful and sustained mass mobilization demanding the government do something to fix the problem.So what has held the US back from achieving such a program, even though polling suggests it would be widely popular for families, and a boon to our communities and economy?The historical divide in childcareThe US has long had a fraught and contradictory relationship with childcare, one wrapped up in clashes over the role of the family versus the state and tainted by sexism and racism. These tensions culminated with an epic failure in the 1970s, the consequences of which still reverberate today.For most of the 19th century, working- and middle-class families lived on self-contained farms or ran small family businesses. Young children worked on those farms or in those businesses, and childcare responsibilities were shared among family members. For families of means, beginning with slavery and continuing well into the present day, women of color have provided unpaid or undercompensated care for upper-class families, even while frequently being unable to care for their own families.During the second world war, with men at war and women taking on the manufacturing jobs at home, the US briefly created a successful, publicly supported childcare system. However, many workplaces restricted mothers from the workplace when the men returned.But by the late 1960s, mothers were entering the paid labor force in droves, representing one of the largest labor market shifts in modern American history. Organizing efforts came together in 1971 to help Congress pass the Comprehensive Child Development Act, a bipartisan bill that would have begun creating a nationally funded, locally run network of childcare centers.View image in fullscreenBy this time, however, the progressive New Deal coalition of the 1930s – riven both by the disaster in Vietnam and cultural conflicts at home – was giving way to a free-market order marked by a distrust of government intervention. The act was subsequently vetoed by Richard Nixon on the grounds that it would assert the government’s authority “against the family-centered approach”.In a span of only 30 years, while the US’s European counterparts began investing in broad-based childcare systems as they needed women to work and rebuild countries devastated by war, the United States went from considering the idea of a federally funded childcare system to entrenched opposition.Childcare as a ‘private family issue’Access to childcare has deep economic implications, and it’s also a social issue mired in cultural policies that ask: who gets to work and who should be at home watching kids? Through the 1950s, many companies explicitly discriminated against married women or mothers in hiring or retention. Popular TV shows of the era, from Father Knows Best to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, reinforced a traditionalist view of gender dynamics around care. Even today, many parents continue to say that it is primarily parents’ responsibility to figure out how to make childcare work.Sandra Levitsky, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied US care movements, explained that deep-seated ideologies were “hard to shift” and believes the leap from being seen as a private issue to a public one is “at the heart” of what needs to change for the movement to expand. “If it couldn’t happen [during Covid] – when women were literally quitting their jobs to care for their kids – what is going to happen now?” she said.On a national level, childcare has what political science calls a “salience” problem. Today’s voters say they support childcare measures, even regularly approving measures on state and local ballots. Yet very few politicians are elected or defeated due to their childcare stance.When parents get politicalHistory has shown that parents can, however, be a remarkably effective and galvanized voting bloc: parents led organizing efforts following the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre by launching Moms Demand Action, and conservative parents concerned about Covid school restrictions responded by forming Moms for Liberty. It was a bereaved parent who started Mothers Against Drunk Driving, while in an earlier era, mothers’ groups were instrumental in the fight against child labor through pamphleteering, hosting public lectures and pressuring legislators.Since the pandemic, multiple major parent organizing efforts with childcare as a main pillar have launched or scaled up, and more philanthropic dollars have flowed to the movement. The increase in childcare advocacy funding is consequential: for decades, childcare organizers have scraped by with limited resources, the equivalent of bringing a horse-and-buggy to the political racetrack.Chamber of Mothers, of which Bri Adams is a part, was formed in 2021 by a group of social media-savvy mothers incensed after $400bn in childcare funding was dropped from the Build Back Better legislation. The chamber now has dozens of chapters across the nation where mothers come together to build community, learn about public policy issues and organize politically. Another group, Moms First, developed out of an effort to create a “Marshall plan for moms” in the midst of the pandemic, and founder Reshma Saujani was the one who asked then candidate Donald Trump a childcare question during the presidential campaign; Trump’s rambling response about how “the childcare is childcare” went viral. Additionally, several philanthropic entities in 2018 created the Raising Child Care Fund, which provides funding to 20 social justice-focused childcare organizing groups. Collectively, these initiatives point to the type of energy and infrastructure that can help issues leap from private matter to public concern.The final piece that is missing is a shared vision.View image in fullscreen“We don’t have a clear definition of what the what is,” said Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a philanthropic collaborative focused on strengthening home-based childcare options. “We don’t have a shared consensus to define what childcare is and who benefits from it, and what those benefits and outcomes look like.” Renew points to the divide between groups that organize for childcare using economic arguments to support parents doing wage labor, and groups that organize for childcare using kindergarten readiness as a means to support pre-kindergarten. “But pre-K is not childcare,” Renew said. “It can be part of a childcare solution, but it’s not childcare.”For all of the challenges, we know change is possible – even on long-held social beliefs – in a relatively compressed period of time. In the past two decades, the US has normalized and enshrined into law the rights of gay people to marry and participate fully in society. We’ve also changed paternity leave from a rare fringe benefit to an increasingly expected workplace leave policy. We may have deeply held beliefs about who takes care of children, but as more generations with different expectations about who can care for their children become parents – and after the wake-up call of the Covid pandemic – we can see a shift potentially beginning to take hold.Renew, too, is heartened by the changes she has seen in childcare policies and structures at the local and state levels, advances that arguably provide a proof of concept. Buoyed by Covid relief funds, localities had a chance to invest in childcare. “We saw cities and towns putting their flexible dollars to childcare, and they became stakeholders in the conversation,” she said. And as states begin to invest more in childcare systems locally notably in Vermont and New Mexico – more localities are beginning to take notice and have seen how such efforts boost their local economies and families’ wellbeing.America’s history, prevailing cultural attitudes and an underpowered advocacy ecosystem have all contributed to the current childcare hellscape. But it’s possible that enough parents have begun to look around and ask: why is the United States making this harder than it needs to be? Real change will come when it’s no longer just parents asking that question. More

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      Republican in South Carolina arrested over distribution of child sexual abuse material

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      A Republican member of South Carolina’s state house whom prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.RJ May was arrested at his Lexington county home after a lengthy investigation and was ordered on Thursday by a federal judge to remain jailed until his trial.The three-term Republican is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.During that timeframe, Joe Biden was in the final year of his presidency before May’s fellow Republican Donald Trump won the November 2024 election to return to the White House in January.Each charge against May carries a five-to-20-year prison sentence upon conviction. Prosecutors suggested May could spend more than a decade in prison if found guilty.The files at the center of the case were uploaded and downloaded using May’s home wifi network and his cellphone, prosecutors said. Some were hidden by the use of a private network, but others were directly linked to his internet addresses.At his arraignment, May’s lawyer suggested someone could have used the wifi password that was shown on a board behind a photo May’s wife may have posted online. Attorney Dayne Phillips also suggested investigators did not link each Kik message directly to May.Prosecutors asked that May, 38, not be given bail because he lives at home with his wife and young children, and some of the files he is accused of sharing feature children of about the same age as his.Prosecutors said they also investigated whether May had used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times after finding videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three girls or women. An agent from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) testified the three appeared to be underage and were paid. Agents have not been able to locate the three.Prosecutors said May created a Facebook account with his fake name, and his internet history showed him switching between his real account and the fake one – and even searching his primary opponent from the fake login.Phillips, May’s lawyer, told the courtroom that no sexual images of toddlers or young children were found directly on his laptop or cellphone.After spending the night in jail, May appeared in court on Thursday in shorts and a T-shirt with his wrists and ankles in cuffs. After being ordered to stay in jail, he appeared to blow a kiss to his wife, who was at the hearing.After May’s election in 2020, he helped create the Freedom caucus, a group of the house’s most conservative members who say mainstream Republicans in the chamber are not the true conservative heart of their party. He also helped the campaigns of Republicans running against the party’s house incumbents.“We as legislators have an obligation to insure that our children have no harm done to them,” May said in January 2024 on the house floor during a debate on transgender care for minors.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis son charmed the house in April 2021 when May brought him to visit for his third birthday, and the boy practiced his parade wave around the chamber.The Freedom caucus released a statement on Wednesday night saying they had kicked May out of their group after his arrest.Many of his one-time friends distanced themselves from May as rumors of the investigation spread through the South Carolina statehouse. During the current session, he could largely be seen at his corner desk in the back of the 124-seat chamber, mixing with very few colleagues.The house speaker suspended May from his seat after the indictment.May’s lawyer suggested he could have been framed and asked the DHS agent if she knew that May had a lot of political enemies.“There are a fair amount of people who don’t like me either, Mr Phillips,” agent Britton Lorenzen replied. More

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      Trump announces $1,000 government-funded accounts for American babies

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      Donald Trump unveiled a federal program Monday providing $1,000 government-funded investment accounts for American babies, getting big time backing from top business leaders who plan to contribute billions more to an initiative tied to “the big beautiful bill”.At a White House roundtable with over a dozen CEOs, including from Uber, Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies, Trump relayed the details of “Trump accounts” – tax-deferred investment accounts tracking stock market performance for children born between 2025 and 2029.“For every US citizen born after December 31, 2024, before January 1, 2029, the federal government will make a one-time contribution of $1,000 into a tax-deferred account that will track the overall stock market,” Trump said.The accounts will be controlled by guardians and allow additional private contributions up to $5,000 annually. Trump called it “a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation”.CEOs from major companies including Michael Dell, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, and Vladimir Tenev of Robinhood committed billions for employees’ children’s accounts. Trump praised the executives as “really the greatest business minds we have today” who are “committed to contributing millions of dollars to the Trump account”.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, also at the roundtable, championed the program, saying: “It’s a bold, transformative policy that gives every eligible American child a financial head start from day one. Republicans are proud to be the party we always have been. It supports life and families, prosperity and opportunity.”The program passed the House as part of a massive budget bill but faces stiffer Senate Republican resistance over the broader package. The accounts cannot be implemented as a standalone program and depend entirely on passage of what Trump calls the “one big, beautiful bill” that is “among the most important pieces of legislation in our country’s history”, claiming it’s “fully funded through targeted reforms” including welfare changes and a proposed remittance tax.However, the congressional budget office last week found the bill would also add $2.4tn to the national debt over the next decade while cutting Medicaid and food assistance programs. The CBO analysis showed the bill, which passed the House by a single vote and no Democratic support, would leave 10.9 million more Americans without healthcare by 2034.The treasury-funded accounts, previously called “Maga ccounts” resemble existing 529 college plans but with lower contribution limits – leading some financial advisers to say the Trump accounts may not offer the best investment incentives.The move is also not without precedent the United Kingdom operated a similar Child Trust Fund with government seed funding from 2002-2011 before discontinuing the program, while Singapore runs the Baby Bonus Scheme that includes government-matched savings accounts for children.Trump was optimistic about returns, saying beneficiaries would “really be getting a big jump on life, especially if we get a little bit lucky with some of the numbers and the economies into the future”.Johnson warned that failure to pass the legislation would result in “the largest tax increase in American history” and pushed for swift congressional action on what he called “pro-growth legislation” that would “help every single American”. More

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      Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill is built on falsehoods about low-income families | Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson

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      As they race to deliver Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, Republicans in Congress are using familiar tropes to justify massive cuts to the safety net that will leave millions of low-income children and families without healthcare or sufficient food. The programs, they argue, are rife with waste, fraud and abuse, and the people who use them just aren’t working hard enough. So work requirements are necessary to force the obviously lazy “able-bodied” people to get to work.Here’s the reality check: a majority of those receiving this aid who can work are already working. More than 70% of working-age people who receive nutrition benefits or Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income children and adults that covers one in five Americans, are already working, according to the Government Accountability Office. Those who aren’t working, research shows, are mostly ill, disabled, caring for a family member, or in school.Take the story of Ruaa Sabek. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, she and her husband worked at a fast-food restaurant in Philadelphia. Both their hours were cut, but they didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits because they remained employed. With two young children at home, their carefully managed budget began to crumble under rising prices and reduced incomes.What saved them wasn’t extraordinary luck or family wealth. It was the streamlined and expanded government support programs that turned what economists predicted would be a financial apocalypse into a springboard toward financial stability for some families.One analysis of Medicaid work requirements by KKF, a health policy research organization, found that most working people with low enough incomes to qualify for Medicaid typically work for small companies or in sectors, like agriculture, that don’t offer employer-sponsored health insurance, or the rates are unaffordable. In other words, their jobs don’t pay them enough to afford basics, don’t offer benefits, and they have no other choice but Medicaid.There’s no doubt that safety net programs like Medicaid could be improved. They’re rife not so much with waste, fraud and abuse, as conservative lawmakers say – though there is some – but confusing red tape; disincentives to upward mobility, because benefits cut off sharply as soon as incomes start to rise; and cumbersome, punitive rules designed to dissuade people from applying for benefits in the first place.Fueling the Republican drive to slash public benefits is a long-held belief among many conservatives that the reason most people live in poverty is because they don’t work, or don’t work hard enough, and are instead lazing about, dependent on government largesse, and robbing Americans of their hard-earned tax dollars.That view features prominently in Project 2025, the playbook for the Trump administration authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The foreword reads: “Low-income communities are drowning in addiction and government dependence.”And it was clearly on display in recent House congressional hearings on how to slash $1.5 trillion from the federal budget in order to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. “That little gravy train is getting ready to run out,” one Republican lawmaker said of federal safety net programs like Medicaid and food and nutrition aid for people living in poverty. “The spigot is getting ready to be turned off.” The billionaire Elon Musk, charged with cutting federal spending, has even posted a meme calling people who rely on federal spending the “Parasite Class”.Here’s another reality check: Three in 10 Americans, more than 99 million people, rely on some form of federal aid to live. That includes nearly half of all children in the United States. Another 52 million households, 41% of all US households, make too much to qualify for public safety net benefits but still not enough to survive. Nearly 40% of Americans would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense.There is a problem with making policy decisions based on the unfounded belief that poverty is about people with bad moral character making bad choices, or on debunked racial tropes of undeserving “welfare queens.” (In fact, white people make up the largest group receiving public food and healthcare aid.) Shaping policy around false stereotypes, rather than the complex reality, prevents policymakers from working together on real solutions.In fact, if you talk to people living in poverty, what they say they want tracks nearly exactly with what Project 2025 aims to foster: “empowering individuals to achieve economic independence.”“If I earn good money, I’m not going to be looking for benefits. I’ll take care of my bills,” said Blessing Aghayedo, a licensed practical nurse in Minnesota. Instead, she earns barely more than the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009.Breathing roomIn the Sabeks’ case during the pandemic, expanded Medicaid and enhanced nutrition benefits helped weather health emergencies and soaring grocery prices. Rental assistance prevented them from losing their housing when they fell behind on payments. Stimulus checks and the expanded monthly child tax credit provided crucial cash that covered essential expenses like milk, diapers, children’s clothing, utility bills, and car repairs when they needed a new transmission.Perhaps most significantly, public subsidies for childcare and the Head Start program reduced their childcare expenses from an overwhelming $1,300 per month to $120, enabling Ruaa Sabek to continue working part time and enroll in a banking training program. “I feel like, ‘Oh my God, peace of mind,’” she said of the breathing room the public benefits gave her and her family. As a result, she landed a full-time position in 2023 as a personal banker that pays $45,000 annually with benefits – a dramatic improvement from her previous part-time $12-an-hour cashier job with irregular hours and no benefits.The family is now thriving without public assistance, aligning with decades of research. “You can’t actually figure out how to get to flourishing until you’re in a stable and secure situation,” said Megan Curran, director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Society Policy at Columbia.Research shows that when families have a stable foundation, they are healthier and live longer. Adults are more likely to keep working, and children are more likely to stay in school, graduate, get better jobs, and pay taxes as adults. Even babies’ brain development is improved.And the stability pays for itself: the Child Tax Credit, for instance, returns $10 for every $1 spent every year. The United States remains the only wealthy country with no national paid maternity leave, yet the return on investment for paid family leave is 20:1. For childcare, it’s 8:1.Meanwhile, rather than saving taxpayers a ton of money, as Musk promised, slashing safety-net support ignores the real problem that keeps families from economic independence: 44% of the workforce in the United States, the wealthiest country on earth as measured by GDP, is low-wage, a share far higher than in many economic peer countries.Squeezing families already struggling financially could increase the share of those already waking up hungry, homeless, or worried they soon might be. The United States already has one of the highest rates of child poverty among wealthy countries. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimates that high poverty rate costs as much as $1tn a year in lost adult productivity, increased crime and poor health.Childcare is keyIf lawmakers are serious about adding work requirements for safety net programs, then ensuring families have access to affordable childcare is critical. Compared with other advanced economies, the United States invests the least in childcare. That means childcare costs are second only to mortgage or rent for most families who have to pay out of pocket. And federal childcare subsidies for low-income parents come nowhere close to covering those eligible.The lack of affordable childcare sent Kiarica Schields, a college-educated hospice nurse and single parent in Georgia, spiraling into a cycle of joblessness, eviction, instability, and poverty. “Childcare. That’s my issue,” she said.Trump has said he wants families to have more children. Yet surveys show that young people aren’t having children, or having as many as they’d like, because they can’t afford childcare.Kel, a divorced parent of four, wants lawmakers to think of public benefits for families like hers as a short-term investment with long-term benefits. Kel, who asked not to use her last name, fled an abusive marriage, struggles to pay bills, though she works as much as she can, and relies on Medicaid for life-saving physical and mental health treatments for her and her children. “Lifting me and people like me up will have a cascading effect on so many lives in a positive way,” she said. “We will give back to our communities tenfold, a hundredfold. It’s worth that investment in us. We’re a really good investment.”

      Brigid Schulte is the director of New America’s work-family justice program, Better Life Lab, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and the author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time. Haley Swenson is a research and writing fellow for the Better Life Lab More