AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show looking at what ProPublica calls “The Trump Administration’s War on Children.” Their new report looks at how the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is putting children at risk by cutting funds for investigating child abuse, enforcing child support payments, providing child care, and more.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by ProPublica reporter Eli Hager.

So, Eli, lay out your findings.

ELI HAGER: Well, it’s probably been a little bit hard for people to follow all of these cuts across all of these different federal agencies. But one throughline that we’ve tracked at ProPublica is cuts to programs serving children, so across a lot of little-known federal agencies with names like the Children’s Bureau and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. There have been cuts to both funding and services and staffing for Child Protective Services, for enforcing child support orders, for child care and all sorts of programs. And the throughline has been that those programs serve children.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Eli, could say — we’ll get into each of the programs that you list in the piece. But why do you think this hasn’t been given so much publicity, people aren’t aware of how much poor children are being made to suffer by these cuts, or will be?

ELI HAGER: Right, yeah. I mean, that’s definitely true. I think one is just the chaos and the onslaught of cuts at so many different agencies. I think a number of these agencies are relatively anonymous, agencies that people haven’t heard of. And they’re also housed within very large departments, like Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, and these are smaller children’s offices within those large departments. And I also just don’t think people realize how much the federal government does for children’s services and for administering things like CPS and adoption across the country and things like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s start with Head Start. I mean, this is astounding, goes to 1 million low-income parents. What this means, eliminating the Lyndon Johnson program from the War on Poverty?

ELI HAGER: Right. There’s Head Start in every community across the country. This would especially affect rural areas, where often the Head Start program is the only child care facility or location in a whole town. And so, 1 million working parents across the country wouldn’t have anywhere to send their children during the day if Head Start were to be ended, which the president’s budget calls for. Also, these Head Start program directors have been having trouble accessing their congressionally appropriated funds. They’re being directed to a DOGE “Defend the Spend” website, which seems to be new.

AMY GOODMAN: This as Elon Musk calls for people to have more children, and they’re talking about actually spending money, giving $5,000 apiece to women who give birth to children.

ELI HAGER: Right, yes, that is an irony that we noticed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you also talk about in the piece the other areas that have been impacted, including cuts to institutions that investigate child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children, responding to reports of missing children and preventing youth violence. If you could elaborate on some of those? Like, where — under what organization or department do those fall?

ELI HAGER: Right. So, what we noticed was that it wasn’t just cuts to kind of these more liberal-coded programs like support for child care and direct assistance to lower-income families with children, but also these programs that have much more support across the political spectrum, like funds and staffing for investigating child abuse and Child Protective Services. A lot of that is funded by the Social Services Block Grant, and the entire staff that delivers that block grant was laid off by Robert F. Kennedy at HHS. And then you also, at the Department of Justice, have cuts to or delayed or blocked funding for local law enforcement to investigate internet crimes against children, for programs that respond to cases of missing children, for amber alerts, for all of these things that just respond to very serious cases of violence against children.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the cutting off of healthcare for, what, some 800,000 children, and then, of course, with the threats to Medicaid, the number, the millions of children covered by Medicaid.

ELI HAGER: Yeah, I think one thing that people don’t realize is that children are actually the — they receive Medicaid in greater numbers than any other age group. Nearly 40% of the people who rely on Medicaid are children, whether that’s in school-based healthcare or in foster care residential facilities, whether it’s for their disabilities or for cancer treatment. The potential cuts to Medicaid would be devastating to children across the country.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And is there any recourse that these agencies have? I mean, are these cuts inevitable and going into effect?

ELI HAGER: So, it depends on — it depends on which one. The cuts to Head Start, and both to staffing and potentially to its funding, seem imminent, and Head Start programs are already closing in several parts of the country. That’s probably one of the more imminent ones. The cuts at DOJ for local law enforcement seem like they may happen, but there’s a chance that some of that funding gets reinstated. The department said that they’re still considering some of the grants. So, there’s a spectrum. Obviously, we know that with Medicaid, that’s still up in the air, but it looks like the Republicans in Congress are going to be cutting Medicaid [inaudible].

AMY GOODMAN: And you got a response from Robert Kennedy’s office, of course, in charge of health in America, saying they’re going to put money into establishing MAHA — right? — the Administration for a Healthy America.

ELI HAGER: Right, they’re going to consolidate all these children’s programs at the Administration for Children and Families, that had run child care and Head Start and the child support system. That’s another big one that the federal government does, that it makes sure that child support payments get to families. All of those are going to be reduced and consolidated into this other area.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Eli Hager, we’re going to have to leave it to folks reading your piece. Eli Hager is a ProPublica reporter. We’ll link to his new piece, “The Trump Administration’s War on Children.” That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, for another edition of Democracy Now!