HHS FOIA Request on Child Care Defend the Spend

NEW YORK — Today, civil rights groups filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking transparency from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its sub-agencies regarding the Trump administration’s unprecedented restrictions on federal child care and family assistance funding. The new restrictions have already caused and threaten to cause additional payment delays to child care providers, placing enormous strain on families and caregivers who depend on these programs to remain in the workforce and keep their children in safe, reliable care. The FOIA request seeks records concerning the adoption, implementation, and enforcement of the nationwide “Defend the Spend” policy and the sweeping five-state funding freeze targeting Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) dollars. In late December and early January, HHS froze access to more than $10 billion in these funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, while imposing new documentation and approval requirements on states nationwide. These actions jeopardize essential child care, family assistance, and social services that enable families with low incomes to work, attend school, and meet basic needs. “The administration’s new ‘Defend the Spend’ policy is a racially and politically motivated attempt to cut off access to child care programs that keep families afloat. These attacks especially harm women – and particularly women of color – who disproportionately shoulder caregiving responsibilities and are more likely to miss work because of lack of child care,” said Linda Morris, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “If the administration is imposing unlawful or discriminatory barriers to accessing funds, the American public has a right to know.” “Early educators and families are facing unprecedented fear and uncertainty ever since the Trump administration unleashed its torrent of attacks on the child care system,” said Whitney Pesek, senior director of federal child care policy at the National Women’s Law Center. “These attacks are not accidental: they are a targeted attempt to undermine the programs that women, and particularly women with low incomes and women of color, depend on. We are committed to holding the administration accountable for its unlawful enhanced Defend the Spend policy, which puts child care funding in a pointless administrative chokehold and delays critical funding from reaching child care programs. We urge the Department of Health and Human Services to comply with our request for information immediately.” “The Trump administration’s efforts to freeze child care funding has placed significant financial strain on low-income families already struggling to make ends meet right now,” said Saima Akhtar, senior attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. “This administration is once again using unfounded allegations of so-called ‘fraud’ to dismantle the social safety net and terrorize immigrant communities.” “Low-income families, immigrant families, and some of the children and families most in need, are the ones suffering because of the Trump administration’s attempts to cut child care funding in multiple states, including Colorado, based on the administration’s baseless claims of ‘fraud,’” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director. “The Trump administration should not be playing politics with the lives of children and families in need. Children should not be penalized over politics.” “The Trump White House regularly targets Illinois families and residents with punitive federal funding cuts, seeking to coerce leaders in our state to bend to the President’s personal and political caprices,” said Melissa Staas, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Illinois. “The freeze on funding for child care and family assistance in our state is the latest example. The public deserves to know if freezing child care funds to families and parents in Illinois was motivated by base politics – with no concern for the injurious impact it would have on these families.” The request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Illinois, the ACLU of Colorado, the National Women’s Law Center, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice also seeks communications between federal officials and YouTube creator Nick Shirley, whose viral video leveled unsubstantiated fraud allegations against Somali-owned child care providers in Minnesota and was publicly amplified and credited by senior administration officials as the basis for the administration’s restrictions. The FOIA further requests communications referencing both “fraud” and “Somali,” as well as records related to statements and actions by Donald Trump and other officials that appear to scapegoat Somali and immigrant communities in justifying the funding restrictions. The groups are seeking expedited processing of the request, citing widespread public interest and the immediate harms caused by delays and uncertainty in funding. A copy of the FOIA request is available here.