President Donald Trump loves to boast about protecting America’s children. But when you strip away his party’s “pro-life” rhetoric and ignore the carefully crafted family photos of Elon Musk or JD Vance, you see an administration that has declared war on wide swaths of American children.
During Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress in February, the president introduced a boy named DJ Daniel, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018. The 13-year-old wore a law enforcement uniform because “he has always dreamed of becoming a police officer,” Trump explained. DJ and his father sat in the gallery overlooking the House chamber filled with some of the most powerful people in the world.
The president invited DJ so he could spotlight his administration’s goal to curb child cancer rates. “Since 1975, rates of child cancer have increased by more than 40%,” Trump said while highlighting DJ’s story. “Reversing this trend is one of the top priorities for our new presidential commission to Make America Healthy Again.”
In reality, however, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump created to slash government spending, wants to cut about $4 billion in funding that goes toward cancer research, including research for childhood cancers. Trump is trying to dismantle efforts to develop cures for the very type of pediatric cancer DJ has experienced. DJ’s doctors, who have kept him alive for the last seven years, are now facing potentially devastating federal funding cuts.
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Since Trump took office, this pattern has repeated again and again. The promise to safeguard kids has become a main pillar of Trump’s second term, with the administration insisting that “President Trump will always protect American children.”
“President Trump was resoundingly elected by millions of parents that trusted him with the safety and prosperity of the their children, something the previous president neglected with open borders, radical DEI policies, and an economy that held back families,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told HuffPost. “In less than 70 days, President Trump has made good on his promises to put America First and protect America’s children.”
Yet, proposed funding cuts would take away free school lunches for millions of kids and could make it harder for foster children to be placed in stable, permanent homes. The 20-plus state abortion bans that have gone into effect since the fall of Roe v. Wade — one of Trump’s favorite policy rollbacks to take credit for — have forced children to give birth to children.
Trump has also signed a slew of executive orders that target kids — perhaps most notably, one that would abolish the Education Department, cutting crucial infrastructure that supports millions of public school students nationwide.
Protecting kids from cultural bogeymen is another key Trump theme, whether it’s measures to shield children from the imagined perils of “transgender ideology” or the alleged “murderers, human traffickers, gang members” crossing over the southern border. His actions in this realm convey no meaningful benefit, since the dangers he describes are greatly exaggerated or outrightly imagined — but his administration has visited tremendous harm on children from marginalized groups.
The president signed an executive order banning transgender athletes in sports, including in elementary schools, ostensibly to keep girls safe. But the ban is likely to put both transgender and cisgender kids under a microscope, and could encourage practices like gynecological exams to determine a child’s sex.
Trump’s pledge to crack down on immigration is also hurting kids: An executive order targeting birthright citizenship threatens certain children born in the U.S., and a rollback of a crucial policy is discouraging kids from attending school.
Families across the United States are starting to feel the pressure of Trump’s brazen attacks on some of the country’s most vulnerable residents: kids.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to do away with birthright citizenship.
Monica and her husband are living in the United States because of its promise of freedom — and because they couldn’t stay in Venezuela. “We were at risk of being killed,” she told HuffPost recently, through a translator.
The couple were critical of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, and in 2019, they were no longer safe. So they fled to the United States, pursuing asylum and making a new life. Six years later, a miracle. Monica was pregnant.
“There’s always happiness each time you wake up in the morning, because you can physically see that the baby is growing,” said Monica, who is being identified by a pseudonym due to her ongoing asylum case. “I don’t think anything can make a mother happier than seeing each morning how your baby grows.”
Then Trump took office. Among his first actions: signing an order to end birthright citizenship, the constitutional right that any baby born in the United States is an American citizen, except in rare cases such as the children of diplomats. “We’re the only country in the world that does this,” Trump declared as he signed the order. In reality, the vast majority of countries in North and South America have birthright citizenship.
“I could not believe it,” Monica said. “I’ve always seen this as a fundamental, constitutional right that protects children. ... We want our child to be born into liberty.”
Monica was a medical doctor in Venezuela and knew how stress could affect her pregnancy. Yet, in the first days of Trump’s term, she landed in the hospital due to a medical emergency that her doctor attributed to stress. She has since recovered.
“The first trimester was really, really hard on me,” Monica said.
It’s hard to comprehend the threat Trump poses to her child. Venezuela does not have a consulate in the United States. And as an asylum-seeker in the United States, Monica cannot leave the country. If Trump’s order is upheld, then, it will not only rewrite centuries of American legal precedent, it might also render Monica’s child — and an untold number of other children who may be born in the U.S. — stateless.
“He would have no nationality,” she said.
Trump has placed hundreds of thousands of children at risk of becoming part of what some call a “permanent underclass.” In 2022, “there were approximately 255,000 births of citizen children to non-citizen mothers without lawful status (undocumented) and approximately 153,000 births to two undocumented parents,” one group of Democratic attorneys general noted.
For an administration that calls itself pro-child and pro-family, “it’s sometimes hard for me to see some of the humanity in these policies,” Monica said. “It’s so terrifying that people would be against families.”
As a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, an advocacy group for nearly 700,000 members seeking asylum in the United States, Monica became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the administration. On Feb. 5, the federal judge in that case paused Trump’s order, as have other judges.
Monica was relieved for the moms with imminent due dates who were protected by the order. But she and so many others are still at risk.
“I know there are millions of moms that are so scared, and that have the same fear that I do,” she said. “It gives me strength to know that we as immigrants have these rights because the U.S. Constitution protects our babies — not us, but them.”
Attacks on the Education Department could leave disabled kids without resources — or recourse.
Each year, the Department of Education spends billions of dollars educating and protecting the 7.5 million children with disabilities who make up 15% of public school students in the U.S.
This money goes toward the myriad of things that can help a child with disabilities succeed at school, including paying special education teachers and providing resources like interpreting services and physical therapy.
But the Education Department has been at the top of Trump’s chopping block since his campaign. He has spoken frequently about dismantling the department entirely, which Education Secretary Linda McMahon has supported. Last month, he signed an executive order expressing his intent to completely do away with the department. Doing so would require an act of Congress — but in the meantime, the department has announced sweeping layoffs that affect nearly half of employees.
Advocates worry that kids with disabilities will bear the brunt of these cuts. Even if the programs that are required by law continue to operate, education experts are concerned there won’t be enough staff to effectively run special education programs.
In 1975, Congress passed the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, which was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. It mandates that children with disabilities should be able to access a free and equal education. Prior to the landmark law, treatment of and services available to disabled children were left up to states — and about 1.8 million disabled children weren’t educated at all.
“You had some states that embraced students with disabilities and some states who said, ‘It’s not our problem,’” said Robyn Linscott, the director of education and family policy at the Arc, a nonprofit that protects the rights of people with disabilities.
Under IDEA, public schools must have individualized education plans, which lay out the specific needs of a student and what they require to succeed. The law also ensures that children with disabilities aren’t segregated from their nondisabled peers, as well as makes sure that they aren’t unfairly disciplined. The Department of Education spent $15 billion on students with disabilities last year.
But many of the gains made for students with disabilities could be lost if the Trump administration has its way.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-backed blueprint for a second Trump term, calls for doling out IDEA funding to states as “no strings attached” block grants, meaning those states would have flexibility in how to spend the money on students with disabilities and would no longer be subject to federal oversight. Without federal government mandates, education access for disabled children could, once again, be dependent on ZIP code.
This could happen even as the Trump administration makes it harder for disabled students and their families to file complaints about rights violations through the Office for Civil Rights. Even with the implementation of IDEA, students with disabilities still face more discrimination at school than able-bodied kids and are suspended at higher rates than their peers.
The Department of Education abruptly paused investigations of about 12,000 complaints that were pending at the OCR when Trump’s second term began, according to ProPublica. More than half of those complaints were from children with disabilities who alleged they received unequal treatment in their classrooms.
The department’s layoffs have hit the OCR hard, and its 12 regional offices have been cut down to five.
The administration has indicated that IDEA oversight could be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services, where it was administered prior to the creation of the Department of Education. McMahon brought up the idea during her confirmation hearing, and after signing the executive order to dismantle the department, Trump told reporters that he planned to “immediately” move “special needs” programs under HHS. (He also said student loans would move to the Small Business Administration.)
“Pell Grants, Title 1, funding resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved,” Trump said.
But advocates are worried that moving special education programs under HHS would mean losing institutional knowledge and crucial expertise.
“It undermines all of the gains made in the last 50 years,” Linscott said.
HHS has not been immune from the significant job cuts across the federal government either, and the agency recently announced it would cut about 20,000 employees. Even before it was clear how deep the HHS cuts would be, Linscott said she was worried that students with disabilities may fall through the cracks at an already understaffed agency.
“They have to administer Medicaid, Medicare, the National Institute of Health, the Centers for Disease Control. … Would special education become an afterthought?” Linscott said.
Even before the major Education Department layoffs, the Trump administration was already making cuts at the agency. DOGE cut millions of dollars’ worth of contracts for research programs. Such research allows educators to understand best practices for positive educational outcomes such as which teaching method can help children learn how to read or problem-solve.
Many of the canceled contracts were close to being completed, meaning the federal government had already spent the money — but will have nothing to show in return.
“This is the equivalent of setting money on fire,” Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a nonpartisan policy organization, told HuffPost. “How can you help students improve without knowing what’s working?”
One of the canceled contracts was for a program that helps children with disabilities make the transition from high school to college, Chalkbeat reported. One parent told Chalkbeat the cancellation was causing “heartbreak” for her family. As a result, schools were also stuck trying to reassign teachers to other jobs in the district whose salaries were covered by the program.
The Department of Education did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment about the changes it’s making.
Republicans envision replacing the Education Department with a school voucher program, which would mean giving public money to families to send their children to private schools of their choosing.
In particular, Project 2025 lays out a plan for an increase in private school vouchers for disabled children, even though private schools aren’t required to have individualized plans or abide by federal rules regarding protecting disabled students from unfair punishment.
Education advocates are worried that sweeping cuts at the Department of Education and Trump’s plan to “send education back to the states” could undo progress made on equal access to education for kids with disabilities.
“It harkens back to 50 years ago when students with disabilities were educated in separate institutions — if at all,” Linscott said.
Trump rolled back a long-standing rule that kept immigration officials out of schools.
After several local apartment complexes were raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in February, Alex Marrero, the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, went to some schools to see how the students were doing.
“Is that one of them?” Marrero says a student asked in Spanish when he entered the classroom dressed in a suit and tie. The child had just seen immigration officials banging on apartment doors demanding people come out of hiding, and he was afraid more had come to the school.
Before Trump returned to power, most people wouldn’t be worried that an ICE official may be conducting operations at a public school. For years, including during Trump’s first term, ICE and Border Patrol agents were barred from entering “sensitive areas” including churches, hospitals and schools. But in its zeal to make good on the campaign promise to deport millions of people, the Trump administration rescinded the rule — and now the approximately 600,000 undocumented children who attend school in the U.S. are technically fair game.
The fear that ICE officials will do sweeping raids at schools has not yet been realized — but the possibility is causing dread and panic among immigrant families, and some kids are missing out on an education because of it. Schools across the country reported a drop in attendance after the guidance about sensitive zones was rolled back.
“A school that was well over 90% on a daily basis is in the 80s now, and that’s not by chance,” Marrero told HuffPost. “My principals are already asking me to be cognizant and lenient on attendance goals for this year.”
“I think the removal of the rule was to initiate fear,” Marrero added, “and I think they’ve been successful.” (DPS has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, demanding the sensitive location rule be reinstated. A federal judge in February blocked ICE from operating in certain places of worship after being sued by a group of largely Quaker religious organizations.)
ICE did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The fear of what Trump is threatening is likely to have adverse effects on children. Increasing anxiety surrounding immigration law can lead to poor educational outcomes in students who come from immigrant families. And a study looking at the impact of a strict anti-immigrant law in Arizona found that some children were so worried about being targeted by ICE that they were afraid to leave their houses at all.
“This is supposed to be a safe haven, but I don’t know if it is anymore.”
- Alex Marrero, superintendent of Denver Public Schools
In February, Border Patrol agents reportedly boarded a bus carrying students on a high school swim team in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They allegedly questioned the driver, who did not speak English, and then attempted to question students. The school district later released a statement saying the students were on an unmarked charter bus and administrators were working with federal officials to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
Just weeks earlier, Mike Banks, the head of U.S. Border Patrol, said during a Fox News interview that it was “absurd” to think agents would board school buses. He was responding to a school district in Texas that had sent home a letter warning parents that Border Patrol officials could board buses taking students to after-school activities.
Undocumented children are guaranteed the right to attend public school thanks to the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe. But Republicans, emboldened by Trump’s pledge to deport 12 million people, seem to be trying to get the current conservative-majority court to reconsider the issue.
Several states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, have introduced bills that would block undocumented kids from attending school. The Heritage Foundation wrote last year that states should pass such laws to trigger a lawsuit that could make its way to the Supreme Court.
What was once a place of safety is turning into yet another source of concern, fear and anxiety for undocumented children.
Marrero said that, on the day of the Denver raids, two students who got to school early said their mother had told them to run there — implying that they would be OK once they were at school. Marrero reluctantly thought to himself, “This is supposed to be a safe haven, but I don’t know if it is anymore.”
Federal funding for public schools has been tied to teaching about ‘gender ideology.’
Less than two weeks into his second term, Trump signed an executive order threatening to halt federal funding for schools that provide instruction on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology” — vague phrases that advocates say could lead to any discussion about race or LGBTQ+ topics being cut from classrooms across the country.
Federal funding can buoy programs that assist all kinds of students, including those who are low-income. Many states rely heavily on federal funds, and losing this financial support could have disastrous consequences for K-12 students.
The order also directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to work with state law enforcement to investigate K-12 teachers and school officials who “violate the law” by “facilitating the social transition of a minor.” This directive came after months of Trump pushing baseless lies about kids undergoing surgery during the school day without parental consent.
In reality, social transition — where a person begins to publicly express their gender identity through a change in name, pronouns, hairstyle or clothing — is often the first step for a trans kid who may consider medical transition later in adolescence. A supportive environment while kids socially transition can be critical to alleviating feelings of dysphoria as well as isolation and depression. Trans youth who were affirmed by peers and adults with the use of their accurate name and pronouns reported a significant drop in symptoms of severe depression, a 2018 study found. But more often than not, trans and nonbinary youth do not have welcoming school or home environments. They experience higher levels of school bullying and violence, and are more likely to have unstable housing due to unsupportive families, when compared with cisgender students.
Now Trump’s order on education could make learning environments more hostile to trans and gender-nonconforming students, as well as educators who openly support them. Parents fear the order — which builds on the yearslong attack by Republican state lawmakers who have advanced bills to muzzle any instruction on LGBTQ+ topics and promoted harmful rhetoric likening teachers with trans-inclusive materials to “groomers”— will have a chilling effect on trans and nonbinary students.
Brigit Stevens said the current administration’s targeting of trans youth, coupled with attacks in her state, have already made Iowa “less livable” for her nonbinary and gender-fluid teen.
Stevens said that when her child, Berry, now 14, came out in sixth grade, her family was “fully on board” and their school quickly updated Berry’s school records to reflect their change in name and pronouns. But over the next three years, Berry’s classmates began to bully them, intentionally misgendering them and using their deadname. When Stevens went to the principal, she was taken aback when she was told that “there’s two sides” and a limit to the ways a teacher could intervene as there were “parents on both sides of this issue.”
“This isn’t actually an issue where there are sides,” Stevens recalled saying. “What this is, is my kiddo’s name and pronouns and we expect them to be respected.”
Parents and teachers alike fear that these instances are going to become more common — and that the Trump administration will stifle any recourse. The massive cuts at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights have left fewer avenues for families of LGBTQ+ youth and youth of color to file Title IX complaints around instances of sex- and race-based discrimination.
Skye Tooley, a public school teacher in Los Angeles, has witnessed firsthand some of the challenges of being a trans person in education. Tooley, who is trans and nonbinary, said that in the past parents have complained and removed students from their classroom because they didn’t like Tooley’s identity. Other times, Tooley said, school administrators have misgendered or deadnamed them even with multiple reminders.
Tooley believes school districts should take a greater stand to show support for trans youth these days. In the meantime, Tooley said they refuse to hide their identity in the classroom.
“Every year I ‘come out’ and tell families and students who I am,” Tooley said. “My presence itself is teaching LGBTQ+ existence.”
Student athletes are candidates for scrutiny and surveillance.
Trans athletes have perhaps been the biggest target of Trump’s anti-trans campaign. During his joint address to Congress, Trump welcomed a former high school volleyball player who claimed she had been severely injured by a trans player, even though it is unclear if the player who spiked a ball toward her was trans.
In early February, Trump signed an executive order threatening to withhold funding from schools that allow trans athletes to play on women’s teams or use women’s locker rooms, stating that these actions amount to Title IX violations.
Soon after, the Department of Education began investigating several school districts that had signaled they would continue allowing trans athletes to participate. And after Maine’s governor told the president that the state would follow its own law prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity — thereby defying Trump’s executive order — six federal agencies targeted the state. Just two trans high school girls are playing on girls sports teams in the state this year.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the existence of trans athletes poses a major threat to girls and women who play sports. But there are only a handful of openly trans athletes in the entire country. The NCAA president estimates there are fewer than 10 trans athletes competing at the collegiate level, and the American Civil Liberties Union estimates there are about five trans girls playing on K-12 girls teams.
LGBTQ+ advocates and some Democrats have cautioned that Trump’s ban on trans athletes could hurt all kids, as it could open the door to greater policing of gender in any kind of sex-segregated activity or space for children. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned that Trump’s order and a similar bill in Congress targeting trans athletes’ participation in sports could lead to “gender and genital examinations into little girls.”
Sara, the mother of a 16-year-old trans soccer player in New Hampshire, is keenly aware that her daughter could become a target. Her daughter is just like every other teenage girl: She has Sabrina Carpenter-style curtain bangs, loves dancing and goofing around with her teammates, and wears sparkly dresses to school dances. She has a supportive team, and when she’s running around on the field, it’s hard to pick her out of the crowd.
Even before Trump was reelected, Sara said, there were moments when her daughter was singled out, often during away games. Sara remembers one game where opponents painted “PGS” on their faces to connote “protect girls sports.” At another, some rowdy parents wore wristbands with XX on them to signal female chromosomes and caused a scene until they were asked to leave.
Instances like these have become far too common, and the vitriol against trans girls has translated into backlash against cis girls and other athletes who are gender-nonconforming. In 2022, a Utah high school athletics organization secretly investigated a female athlete after receiving complaints from parents, and in 2023 a parent harassed a 9-year-old girl at a track meet demanding she prove her gender.
Crucial health care for trans kids could disappear.
Before Trump’s second term began, Jill Bjorklund, the mother of a 9-year-old trans girl, was considering moving her family out of Iowa. The state, once a Midwestern bastion for gay rights, passed a law two years ago banning gender-affirming care for minors and barring trans students from using bathrooms or locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. Earlier this year, Iowa became the first state to remove gender identity from its civil rights code.
Bjorklund’s family has been traveling to Minnesota to establish a relationship at a gender clinic, as their daughter may soon be eligible for treatments like puberty blockers.
Bjorklund said it makes her “physically ill” to consider moving to a different state where gender-affirming care for minors is currently legal — especially since uprooting their lives and moving to an entirely different state may not guarantee their daughter will be able to access care.
In January, Trump signed an executive order that threatened to withhold federal funding from hospitals that provide puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries for people under 19. (Gender-affirming surgeries for minors are exceedingly rare.) Some hospitals in New York, Colorado, Massachusetts and California began to halt care for new and established patients.
Two federal judges temporarily blocked this order from going into effect — and some hospitals have resumed care for new and established pediatric patients. But the future of access to this care remains in limbo. The Supreme Court is expected to deliver a decision this summer on whether a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for youth violates the Constitution, and advocates say the decision will not only impact trans youth but also provide legal clarity on the future of bodily autonomy.
Bjorklund’s family decided to legally change their daughter’s name ahead of the 2024 election, as well as secure her a new passport and Social Security card. Their decision was a good one. On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order declaring there were only “two sexes, male and female,” which swiftly prompted the State Department and the Social Security Administration to bar trans and nonbinary people from updating their federal documents.
“When you put everything together,” Bjorklund said, referencing Trump’s orders threatening trans kids’ ability to access health care, play sports, use restrooms and live openly, “it really is closing in on our children.”