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EYE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD
May 2025
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Fighting Back Against the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Children and Families
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The first 100 days of the Trump Administration have been even more challenging than anticipated. The president and his allies have relentlessly attacked children and families by slashing Office of Child Care and Office of Head Start regional offices; temporarily withholding funds for Head Start and child care subsidies; proposing a federal budget that would gut programs that support children and families with low incomes; and stripping away the protections that kept immigrant families safe.
The Child Care and Early Education team is working to uplift what’s at stake if funds are cut, and protect the providers and families who are being put in danger from the administration’s attacks on immigrant rights.
At the federal level, we are continuing to push back against cuts to early care and education programs while demonstrating the need for increased investment in the sector. On the state level, we are supporting the understanding of how federal actions impact state and local work, while supporting positive efforts to continue improving child care and early education. And we are working on both the state and federal level to ensure families and child care providers have the supports they need to be ready in case of enforcement action, while also fighting back against the broader immigration attacks on children and families. Read more about our work below.
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Featured Update
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Convening Child Care Subsidy Administrators and Advocates
The CCEE team organized an Administrators and Advocates Convening in March in partnership with the National Women’s Law Center and the National Indian Child Care Association, which brought together child care leaders from across the country to strategize ways to protect and bolster the child care sector. Administrators and advocates from 19 states joined together to discuss collaboration on state work, the implementation of the 2024 CCDF final rule, ongoing federal changes to the child care sector, and more.
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Recent Publications
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Child Care and Development Fund Participation Fact Sheets
Alyssa Fortner’s new fact sheets analyze the number of children and families who access subsidies through CCDF, how many providers participate in the program, how these numbers compare to previous years, and what underlying factors impact variations in access.
- See the 2022 data
- See the 2021 data
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Federal Cuts to Child Care and Head Start are an Attack on Families with Low Incomes
Shira Small discusses what actions the Trump Administration has taken to harm the child care and early education sector, and how families with low incomes and families of color will bear the brunt of these dangerous attacks.
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A Guide to Creating “Safe Space” Policies for Early Childhood Programs
Priya Pandey updates a CLASP guide on how early childhood educators can create a safe space for the children they serve, despite Trump Administration actions that have dismantled protections formerly in place.
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Cuts to SSBG, TANF Would Eliminate Child Care for 40K Children, Disrupt Care for Millions More
Stephanie Schmit and Rachel Wilensky analyze how many children would lose access to child care if federal budget proposals calling for TANF and SSBG to be defunded are enacted.
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Honoring Black Women’s Labor in the Child Care Sector
Alyssa Fortner and Shira Small reflect on the ways Black women have shaped America’s child care system in uplifting this year’s Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor.”
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Parent and Provider Experience Should Inform Child Care Policy
Shira Small partnered with parent leaders to discuss the vital role parents play in designing community-informed and community-led child care and early education policy that meets families’ needs.
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State Allocations for CCDBG Emergency Funding
Rachel Wilensky and Stephanie Schmit outline how the fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution package impacts funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
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The State of Child Care Through the Eyes of a Parent, a Provider, an Advocate, and an Administrator
Shira Small uplifts a variety of perspectives on the child care sector to document the good work happening and discuss what still needs to be improved.
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Recent Events
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Child Care Leaders Host Press Call to Raise Alarms on Republicans’ Proposed Cuts to Child Care Programs, Endorse Bill to Invest in Child Care Supply
On April 3, Stephanie Schmit presented at a press briefing co-hosted by CLASP, the Child Care for Every Family Network, the National Women’s Law Center, and Family Forward Oregon about investing in child care and defending against proposed cuts to programs that serve children and families.
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National Community Reinvestment Coalition Benefits Cliff Presentation
On February 11, Alyssa Fortner joined members of CLASP’s Public Benefits Justice team for a presentation for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition about the benefits cliff for key programs like SNAP, TANF, and CCDF and how to mitigate them.
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Presentations at the Intersection of Child Care and Immigration
Following a webinar hosted by CLASP and the National Immigration Law Center in February on Protecting Early Childhood Programs from Immigration Enforcement, Rachel Wilensky and Suma Setty have delivered six customized presentations to organizations across the country in support of efforts to create safe spaces in child care and early education settings. The presentations covered changes in the federal policy landscape, information on constitutional rights, steps for designing safe space policies, and additional ways to continue supporting immigrant providers, children, and families.
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Media Mentions
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THE GUARDIAN
How did childcare in the US become so absurdly expensive?
“There’s just a huge mental load and burden that parents have to take on to navigate the system, because it wasn’t designed to meet their needs,” said Stephanie Schmit, director of the childcare team at the Center for Law and Social Policy.
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THE BOSTON GLOBE
$19,961 a year for child care? No wonder parents are struggling.
Stephanie Schmit, director of child care and early education at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington, DC-based antipoverty nonprofit, said while the federal government gives states child-care grants, that money has never come close to meeting the need, and most states struggle to find revenue sources to subsidize child care for low-income families.
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FAST COMPANY
How Head Start layoffs will make childcare less affordable and safe
“From my perspective, what is happening is an attack on childcare and early education under the veil of efficiency,” says Stephanie Schmit, the director of child care and early education at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “We are seeing just mass chaos and confusion and worry and uncertainty as a result.”
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Social Media Highlights
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New Lawsuit Filed to Protect Head Start
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Trump Administration Eliminates Key Child Care Offices
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