Tag Archives: health

The GOP’s war on kids

Last fall, under Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico became the first state in the country to offer no-cost universal child care. Beginning November 1, the state eliminated income caps on eligibility for the state’s child care assistance program, opening it to all families regardless of their means. 

Earlier this month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani followed suit with their own extraordinary joint initiative: To deliver free child care to all children under five, beginning with two-year-olds in New York City. 

Both efforts are revolutionary and deserve far more attention than they’ve received so far. 

Free child care would be a godsend to parents who would otherwise spend thousands on tuition, and a blessing for kids who may otherwise not have access to high-quality early childhood education. It’s pro-child, pro-family, and pro-growth. Child care challenges cost the US economy as much as $122 billion a year in lost wages and productivity, according to the First Five Years Fund. 

Republicans and the Trump administration, on the other hand, can only claim to be “pronatalist” and “pro-family.” Their policies have wreaked nothing but destruction on the health and well-being of America’s kids. 

Robbing families of child care. In stark contrast to Hochul, Mamdani, and Grisham, President Donald Trump tried to block child care funding to five Democratic-led states as part of an alleged crackdown on “fraud” last week. (A federal judge called the move illegal.) An earlier announcement had threatened to block federal child care funding to all states absent proof that funds “are being spent legitimately.” Yes, isolated cases of fraud are a problem—and the result of poor governmental oversight—but Trump’s blanket accusation is a pretext for punishing blue states, with families as collateral damage. Whatever regulatory obstacles the administration ultimately imposes will make it harder for all families to access child care. Many providers could go out of business, thereby exacerbating already-dire shortages. 

Jeopardizing children’s health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new vaccine guidelines, announced earlier this month, reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11—a “radical and dangerous decision,” as epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told NPR. 

Among the immunizations removed from the list is Hepatitis B, credited with reducing the incidence of infection in babies and teens by 99 percent. Absent immunization, 9 in 10 infants infected with Hep B will develop a chronic liver infection, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, and as many as 25 percent of these patients will eventually die from liver failure. Also off the recommended list is seasonal flu, which has proved unusually virulent this year. North Dakota, for instance, just reported its first pediatric flu deathsin 10 years, and 17 children have died so far nationwide. Nevertheless, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. recently told CBS News that it might be a “better thing” if fewer kids got flu shots. 

The Trump administration’s anti-vax posture has already helped ignite measles outbreaks in multiple states. South Carolina, for example, is currently dealing with more than 300 cases, primarily among unvaccinated children. Expect these epidemics to become more frequent—and deadly. 

Wrecking public schools. Trump’s administration has waged a systemic assault on public education, beginning with the dismantling of the Department of Education by executive order this spring. This summer, Trump also froze billions in federal education funds granted by Congress until bipartisan pressure forced him to release the money. His 2026 budget request demands steep cuts in education funding and zeroes out grants for rural education as well as programs like McKinney-Vento, which provides support to homeless students. 

The massive budget cuts included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by Congress last summer will also ratchet up financial pressure on public schools. Billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, for instance, could force cash-strapped states to cover shortfalls by slashing school funds. Program changes will also pummel school budgets directly, according to the School Superintendents Association. Medicaid helps fund school nurses, psychologists, and services for students with disabilities, and less funding will mean fewer services for needy kids. 

Trump’s greatest hostility is reserved for the children already most at risk: kids who are transgender, kids with disabilities, kids who are undocumented, or who have undocumented parents. 

Like any schoolyard bully who targets the smallest child on the playground, Trump has unleashed his cruelest instincts on America’s most vulnerable. Among the many heartbreaking incidents this year was the March deportation of an 11-year-old girl with brain cancer, along with her undocumented parents. Advocates have asked for “humanitarian parole” so the girl could continue her treatment, but as of last fall, federal immigration authorities hadn’t even bothered responding. 

If a society is judged by how it treats its weakest members, all Americans should stand ashamed.

This post originally appeared on the Washington Monthly’s Substack

Donald Trump’s Go-It-Alone America

President Donald Trump is a singular—and solitary—figure. 

“I alone can fix it,” he solipstically declared in 2016, before his first presidential run. Now in his second term, he’s been a one-man tsunami, destroying decades-long global alliances, creating chaos in the global economy with his unilateral tariffs, and unleashing bitter partisanship domestically. 

Like a kid locked in a toy store after midnight (or the drunken raccoon who recently trashed a Virginia liquor store), he’s gleefully demolished cherished institutions. He’s defaced the Kennedy Center by adding his name and bulldozed the East Wing for a garish ballroom. He’s trampled on the presidency’s traditional decorum with unhinged late night rants on social media. Especially appalling was Trump’s attack this week on the beloved director Rob Reiner, which led to rare bipartisan condemnation. Ever the narcissist, Trump turned Reiner’s tragic death into just desserts for Reiner’s opposition to the president’s policies.

We can blame our national habit of venerating iconoclasts, a tendency Trump exploited to leverage himself into office. We like to lionize the man who speaks out—the brave rebel who defies the establishment.

We revere the visionary genius of the solo entrepreneur and the pluck of the “self-made” billionaire. We mythologize the pioneer and the cowboy—the rugged, self-reliant men who tamed the West. It’s no coincidence that Tom Cruise’s world-saving hero in Top Gun has the call sign “Maverick.” Many of the presidents Americans most admire are the ones who challenged the conventional wisdom of the day and forged new paths for the country’s future: Lincoln, FDR, JFK. 

But for every iconoclast, there’s a crank. For every visionary, a conspiracist. For every genius, a madman. After FDR, Trump. Idiosyncrasy becomes transgression, and defiance becomes insurrection. 

Above and beyond the immediate and obvious wreckage of the last 11 months, Trump’s gospel of self-reliance has inflicted deeper wounds on America’s communal identity. Too many of us have been told that we don’t belong, are no longer welcome, or aren’t “American” enough. GOP policies, moreover, aim to erode the collective institutions that undergird our social fabric. In the selfish self-centeredness of Trump’s America, you’re on your own. 

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Take, for instance, Republicans’ current opposition to Obamacare and the extension of premium subsidies for those who buy their coverage through this program. The great achievement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to transform the outrageously expensive and opaque individual market for health insurance into a collective enterprise—a marketplace that allows individuals to pool their risk with others and reduce their individual exposure. This is how insurance is supposed to work: The more people there are in the pool, the lower the costs for everyone. 

The GOP’s refusal to extend premium subsidies will send costs soaring for millions of Americans, many of whom will now choose to go uninsured. The impact on the ACA marketplaces is obvious: Fewer people buying insurance means smaller pools and higher costs. This is turn could prompt even more people to drop out, leading to what health care economists call a “death spiral” for the ACA. The result could be a return to the individual market status quo ante, when nearly 50 million Americans—or 1 in 5 of the non-elderly—were uninsured. 

What meager “solutions” Trump and Republicans have offered are also geared toward individual assistance, rather than shoring up the collective infrastructure of insurance. Trump’s idea to give people cash for health care would leave people on their own to pay for their care out of pocket. GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy’s amendment to this proposal, to expand individual health savings accounts, would do the same. Few Americans on their own can afford to protect themselves from the catastrophic expenses of a serious accident or illness. 

Health insurance isn’t the only arena where the GOP is pushing ideas to undermine shared societal responsibility. Republicans love school vouchers, for instance, because they’re a backdoor mechanism for gutting public education. (See a related analysis by PPI’s Rachel Canter below.) And who needs Social Security when you can have your very own “Trump Account”? (Read my early critique here.)

Future presidents can restore the Rose Garden and rebuild relationships with the allies Trump has spat upon. But the larger project of collective national identity and mutual responsibility might take generations to repair. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the founders ditched the Articles of Confederation because they realized that a loose structure of individual states would make the forging of a great nation impossible. They understood that America is powerful when it’s united: In common purpose, with common values, and in collective regard for the common welfare. We can’t let Trump destroy that.

This piece was originally published on the Washington Monthly’s Substack