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patty murray
Trump Wants to End Head Start While Boosting Military Spending to Record $1 Trillion
"Young learners and families around the country rely on Head Start and eliminating funding for this essential program would be devastating to local communities," warned one critic.
Apr 14, 2025
Critics on Monday decried the Trump administration's consideration of a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for the early childhood education program Head Start—which serves over 800,000 low-income U.S. families—while increasing military spending to an unprecedented $1 trillion.
USA Todayreported Friday that an unnamed Trump administration official—who is not authorized to publicly discuss the plan—said the White House's fiscal year 2026 spending proposal contains no funding for Head Start and explicitly lists the program among those slated for elimination.
Head Start is a core component of the so-called War on Poverty launched during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson 61 years ago. More than 40 million children have been served by the program, which provides free meals, healthcare, and developmental assessments and helps youth develop critical skills for success in the classroom and beyond.
The elimination of Head Start is included in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led plan for a far-right overhaul of the federal government whose objectives closely track Trump's policies, despite the president's efforts during his 2024 campaign to distance himself from the deeply unpopular proposal.
Here it is: Republicans told us in Project 2025 that they’d eliminate Head Start. Now, they’re doing it. Their concern for high costs, for kids, for parents — all lies. www.usatoday.com/story/news/e...
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— Katherine Clark ( @whipkclark.bsky.social) April 12, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, warned that defunding the program would be "catastrophic."
President Donald Trump's evisceration of federal agencies—spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—has already kneecapped Head Start via a Supreme Court-affirmed freeze on grants, the primary source of the program's funding. The Administration for Children and Families, which runs Head Start, is also reeling from the Trump administration's closure of half of its regional offices, including in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Meanwhile, Trump supports a proposed $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon, up from $892 billion for the current fiscal year. The billionaire president and Republicans in Congress are also seeking $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. This, as GOP lawmakers propose slashing $2 trillion in spending for Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other safety net programs.
"While families feel the crunch with a worsening childcare crisis and much higher daily costs thanks to Trump's tariffs, President Trump wants to eliminate Head Start and kick hundreds of thousands of kids out of the classroom, fire teachers, and make childcare and early learning more expensive and less safe," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Monday.
Murray continued:
This administration believes we cannot afford to help families get preschool or help kids get basic health services, but we can afford trillions of dollars more in tax breaks for billionaires. It's offensive and just plain wrong, and let me be clear: Democrats won't let a proposal like this go anywhere in Congress.
But that doesn't mean Head Start and so many other programs aren't under grave threat—because Trump has proven he'll ignore our laws and do whatever he can to break these programs on his own. Trump has already tried illegally blocking funding for Head Start earlier this year, and programs across the country continued having problems accessing their funding long after his administration promised everything was fine. He has already fired the very people who keep Head Start running with no plan in place to ensure hundreds of thousands of families will keep getting the care they count on, so it's on every one of us to keep speaking out and opposing this administration's anti-family, pro-billionaire agenda.
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of the Seattle-based advocacy group MomsRising, called the proposed elimination of Head Start "an abhorrent attack on children and families, ripping opportunities from our country's youngest, damaging businesses, and hurting our economy."
"Congress must hold the line and protect Head Start," she added.
The First Five Years Fund—which "works to protect, prioritize, and build support for early learning and childcare programs at the federal level"—said Monday on social media that "young learners and families around the country rely on Head Start and eliminating funding for this essential program would be devastating to local communities."
Hailey Gibbs, associate director of the Center for American Progress Early Childhood division, on Monday called Head Start "an incredible program" that "fosters kids' early development, supports family well-being, and boosts local economies."
"The Trump administration and its apologists in Congress want to gut it," Gibbs added. "We must safeguard Head Start and the thousands of families it serves."
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Trump Blasted for Attack on Reproductive Care Across Numerous States
This is "a deeply unpopular and politically motivated attack on Planned Parenthood and reproductive freedom that will disproportionately harm families who are already struggling to make ends meet," said one advocate.
Apr 01, 2025
Critics are decrying the Trump administration's freeze of tens of millions of dollars for the reproductive care provider Planned Parenthood—money that's meant to provide low-income Americans contraception access, cancer screenings, and other crucial services.
Nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates received notice on Monday that the administration is withholding Title X funding effective Tuesday, according to a Monday statement from Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Since 1970, Title X has provided federal funding to a network of grantees who provide sexual and reproductive healthcare with a focus on serving low-income patients.
In total, the Trump administration is withholding payments to 16 Title X providers, perPolitico, citing a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). According to the journalist Jessica Valenti, 21 states will be impacted, and eight states—California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Utah—will cease receiving Title X dollars.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are "pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping healthcare access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause," said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in a statement on Monday.
"We know what happens when healthcare providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation's [sexually transmitted infections] crisis worsens," she added.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, called the move "a deeply unpopular and politically motivated attack on Planned Parenthood and reproductive freedom that will disproportionately harm families who are already struggling to make ends meet."
According to a letter sent to Planned Parenthood chapters, which Politicoreviewed, the funding is being "temporarily withheld," citing potential violations of federal civil rights law and Trump's executive orders, including prohibitions on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. For example, public statements that emphasize "commitment to Black communities" are cited as evidence of Planned Parenthood's noncompliance, per Politico.
The administration's move to freeze the funding was first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week. The paper reported that HHS was considering a freeze of $27.5 million in grants to groups that would include Planned Parenthood affiliates while the administration investigates whether the money was used on DEI efforts.
In response to that reporting, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement last week that "it's clear Trump and Elon couldn't care less how many people suffer, whose cancer goes undetected, or if women can no longer afford birth control as a result of their deranged mission to attack anything they deem DEI—no matter the consequences to real people's lives, and no matter the fact that this administration can't even define DEI."
Valenti reported Monday that the Title X funding freeze tallies close to $35 million, and highlighted that it will impact not only Planned Parenthood affiliates. One of the impacted organizations is Converge, Inc.—Mississippi's only Title X grantee. According to a letter from HHS obtained by Valenti, Converge, Inc. came under scrutiny in part due to a document titled "Our Commitment to Addressing Systemic Racism."
"Without federal funding—funding that runs out today—they will shutter," wrote Valenti of Converge, Inc. "The 90 Mississippi clinics under their purview will be in jeopardy of closing, and the tens of thousands of women who rely on them for care will have nowhere to go. All because they opposed racism."
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How the GOP Spending Bill Would 'Hand a Blank Check to Elon Musk'
One top Democrat called the seven-month continuing resolution a "power grab" that "further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people."
Mar 10, 2025
House Republicans this week are aiming to pass a seven-month government funding bill that Democrats said would effectively preempt any congressional effort to rein in billionaire Elon Musk as he works in concert with President Donald Trump to eviscerate federal agencies and fire government employees en masse.
The continuing resolution (CR), which would avert a looming shutdown and keep the government funded through September, calls for increasing military spending while cutting or declining to fund key programs involving rental assistance, public health, and other critical areas.
Politicoreported that the bill would boost military spending by roughly $6 billion and slash non-military funding by $13 billion.
"The bill, for instance, does not renew $40 million in fiscal 2024 funding for more than 70 programs that help children and families," the outlet noted. "Most had been requested by Democratic senators, but not all: Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith previously secured $250,000 for a group that works to prevent child abuse in her home state of Mississippi and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski requested more than $5 million to help fund homeless shelters and prevent child abuse in Alaska."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that the legislation "is a power grab for the White House and further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people."
DeLauro continued:
By essentially closing the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect our national security, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have handed their power to an unelected billionaire. Elon Musk and President Trump are stealing from the middle class, seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses, and farms to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. They have made it harder for Americans to get their Social Security benefits; shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved American families $21 billion; fired 6,000 veterans and reportedly plan to make it harder for veterans to access benefits by firing an additional 80,000 VA employees; laid off hundreds of workers who build and maintain critical nuclear weapons; and shut down medical research labs. House Republicans' response: hand a blank check to Elon Musk.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, echoed DeLauro's criticism of the Republican bill, calling it a "slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending—and more power to pick winners and losers, which threatens families in blue and red states alike."
"Instead of turning the keys over to the Trump administration with this bill," said Murray, "Congress should immediately pass a short-term CR to prevent a shutdown and finish work on bipartisan funding bills that invest in families, keep America safe, and ensure our constituents have a say in how federal funding is spent."
In a fact sheet released over the weekend, Murray's office noted that full-year government funding bills typically provide "scores of specific funding directives for key programs and priorities" that constrain the executive branch.
But under the GOP continuing resolution, the fact sheet observes, "hundreds of those congressional directives fall away," giving the Trump administration broad discretion to "reshape spending priorities, eliminate longstanding programs, pick winners and losers, and more."
"Under this CR, the Trump administration could—for example—decide not to spend funding previously allocated for combatting fentanyl, the SUPPORT Act, and other substance abuse and mental health programs, or specific NIH priorities like Alzheimer's disease and vaccine research—and instead steer funding to other priorities of its choosing," the document states. "It could also pick and choose which Military Construction, Army Corps, or transit improvement and expansion projects to fund without direction from Congress."
A similar fact sheet released by DeLauro warns that the CR "provides a blank check to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the amount of $4 billion, enabling Elon Musk to direct contracts to Starlink and SpaceX (companies owned by Musk) at a time when unvetted and unchecked SpaceX employees have burrowed in the FAA (the same Federal agency that regulates SpaceX), with no requirement for public transparency, fair competition, or congressional approval."
"This continuing resolution is a blank check for Elon Musk and creates more flexibility for him to steal from the middle class, seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses, and farmers to pay for tax breaks for billionaires," said DeLauro.
The Republican bill is expected to get a House vote as soon as Tuesday evening. In a post to his social media platform on Saturday, Trump praised the CR as "very good" and demanded lockstep unity from his party, which has willfully ceded the power of the purse in the opening weeks of the president's second White House term.
Trump's call for "no dissent" from Republicans stems from the party's narrow majorities in the House and Senate. In the latter chamber, the bill will need at least seven Democratic votes to pass.
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