The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday. States’ funds will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”.
The report came a day after Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, an HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), appeared in a Tuesday evening video message. O’Neill declared that the department had “activated our defend-the-spend system for all ACF childcare payments across America” and would now require “justification, receipt or photo evidence before we make a payment”.
Originally, O’Neill and Adams’s message was interpreted as an announcement that HHS would stop childcare funding in Minnesota, not all 50 states. However, the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that the freeze would apply to every state and that all states would need to provide more documentation about their childcare programs before receiving federal money.
The department did not immediately reply to a Guardian request for comment to clarify the nature of the freeze, but HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told ABC News that “it’s the onus of the state to make sure that these funds, these federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, are being used for legitimate purposes”.
Recipients of childcare funding will have to provide HHS with extensive documentation, such as “attendance records, licensing, inspection and monitoring reports, complaints and investigations”, Nixon added.
The changes to US childcare services as part of a response to a viral video, made by a self-described “independent journalist” and rightwing influencer, that purported to discover massive fraud at daycare centers operated by Somali Americans in Minneapolis.
However, other news outlets have not been able to verify the claims made in the video. Allegations of exploitation of Minnesota’s social safety net have also been extensively covered by local and national news media over the past several years, and prosecutors brought charges over one allegedly massive scheme during the Biden administration.
In recent weeks, Trump has intensified his xenophobic attacks on Somali Americans, including his long-running nemesis Ilhan Omar, a representative from Minnesota who is Somali American and came to the US as a refugee. He has said that Omar is “garbage” and said Somalia is “no good for a reason”.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said in one December cabinet meeting. “Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota who is running for re-election this year, denounced the Trump administration’s freeze of Minnesota’s funding as part of “Trump’s long game”.
“We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue - but this has been his plan all along,” Walz said in a Tuesday post on X.
