Trump Moves to Gut Education and Meals for Low-Income Kids

The Trump administration is plotting a sweeping overhaul of Head Start that could threaten childcare for more than half a million children across the country.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday a proposed rule that would “increase access” to Head Start by “capping the cost of administrative overhead and reducing compliance-driven activities.”

The proposed rule would grant states the authority to set certain standards, including rules on class size and student-adult ratios, education requirements, background checks, and transportation practices. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed that Head Start lost more than 100,000 slots during the Biden administration due to “burdensome paperwork.”

Vox’s Rachel Cohen Booth argued on X that the proposed changes would mean “larger class sizes, fewer staff and credential requirements, reduced health and family services, and potentially shorter hours.”

Without federal regulations to set the bar, the quality of care will likely depend on a person’s zip code. The proposed rule would also give parents more control over “structure and curriculum,” marking Head Start programs as yet another arena for President Trump’s inane culture wars.

The proposed rule would reduce the amount of money Head Start centers could spend on administrative overhead from 15 percent to five percent, thus saving the government an estimated $2.2 billion, according to Alex Adams, the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

But Yvette Sanchez-Fuentes, senior vice president of Start Early in Illinois, told NPR that administrative costs are used to help fill the gaps for children who need special support. “If you, for example, have children with disabilities you [can use] some of those funds to pay for additional special services or staff with specialties who could come in and support kids,” she said.

In a press release, HHS claimed that the money saved would be reinvested back into the program “to preserve or expand” spots for more than 200,000 children—making it unclear whether the change would actually create new spots, or just prevent them from disappearing.

Democrats have already condemned the rule as an “attack on children” and promised to fight for Head Start, which currently provides early childhood education, as well as nutrition and health and family support services to more than 700,000 children.

Donald Trump can’t seem to get even the most basic facts straight.

The 80-year-old president raised some eyebrows during a speaking engagement at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas Wednesday when he verbally misspelled a four-letter word.

“Nobody knows that ‘dumb’ doesn’t have a ‘b’,” Trump said sincerely, before proverbially patting himself on the back for cooking up the derogatory term “dumocrats” for his liberal opponents.

“I can’t imagine I didn’t think about that 10 years ago when I started this whole situation,” he added.

Trump was there to speak about his “no tax on tips” policy, but over the course of an hour-plus speech, he instead managed to stun attendees again when he told the Nevadan crowd that “Michael Whatley should be your governor.”

Whatley, however, is running for Senate in North Carolina.

Trump is the second-oldest man to ever serve as America’s commander-in-chief, and his increasingly erratic behavior has sparked global concern in recent months about his stability and judgement.

The octogenarian has spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center on multiple occasions over the last year, fallen asleep during more than a dozen critical meetings, appeared lost and disoriented around foreign heads of state, frequently slurred his speech, and has emerged with discolored and bruised skin on several occasions.

He has also derailed press conferences to throw cheap and petty insults at members of the media, aggressed against the pope, abducted foreign leaders, sparked wars without congressional approval, and has become so obsessed with his Washington vanity projects that he has a difficult time focusing on anything else. That last detail has been flagged by leading clinical psychologists as a tell-tale symptom of dementia.

Ohio Representative Max Miller has denied holding a little blue bunny hostage—but a series of messages shows the alleged abuser has a pattern of stealing his two-year-old daughter’s toy.

Miller has been accused of physically abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno, daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno, for years. Amid the many abuse allegations against Miller, the lawmaker has taken the time to refute one distressing detail about his relationship with his daughter.

Speaking to the press Monday, Senator Moreno claimed that over the weekend, Miller had refused to return his daughter’s blue bunny. “This girl is crying at night because she can’t sleep without her little blue bunny. His answer is ‘I’m just not gonna give it to you,’” Moreno said.

“This is the level of total and complete depravity,” he added.

Miller denied withholding his daughter’s beloved bunny, claiming that he’d scheduled it to be picked up from his mailbox through the family’s parental coordinator, Dr. Deborah Koricke.

However, a series of screenshotted messages obtained by Mother Jones’s Abby Vesoulis suggest that Miller has a history of keeping the blue bunny hostage.

In one email dated March 19, 2025, Emily Moreno begged Miller to return the toy. “Can [redacted] please have her bunny back? She’s had it since birth, sleeps with it every night, carries it with her around the house, and sees it as a source of comfort,” Moreno wrote.

She also urged Miller not to “punish” their daughter because he was upset with his ex-wife.

In a text message exchange from May, Senator Moreno asked if the bunny had been left behind, and Miller replied that the family could go through the parent coordinator to retrieve it. “I have no notes or record of what you are referring to,” Miller added.

“It’s the blue bunny she sleeps with, but got it,” Moreno said.

In an email from August 3 (right after the weekend Senator Moreno mentioned), Moreno’s attorney reached out to Miller’s lawyers in an attempt to have the bunny returned. “Why must this be a controversy? This is totally ridiculous. Please have Max return the bunny forthwith,” the attorney wrote.

In another text message from an unknown date, the family’s parent coordinator claimed that Miller “adamantly refuses” to leave the toy in the mailbox for Senator Moreno to retrieve.

The blue bunny-napping is bad, but the rest is worse.

Moreno has accused Miller of assaulting her, throwing a pot of boiling water on her, holding a gun to her head, and breaking their daughter’s collarbone. This week, Miller defended accidentally sharing a nude image of his daughter as part of his efforts to exonerate himself.

The $400 million luxury jumbo jet that the Qatari royal family gifted President Trump may not go to his presidential library after all.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that the Trump administration and others involved in his library planning don’t currently have plans to move the Qatari jet into Trump’s upcoming presidential library, contradicting what the president said last year.

“It would go directly to the library after I leave office,” Trump said in May 2025. “I wouldn’t be using it. No.”

This plane has been the subject of controversy from the moment it was gifted. Trump insisted that at the time it was a gift for the Department of Defense, not him personally. Then the jet required millions of dollars of upgrades to make it safe enough to serve as the new Air Force One—so much so that Trump ended up ditching the plane in the United Kingdom last month, claiming that he wanted U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe to get a good look at it. In reality, the new jet was left behind over security concerns regarding its lesser defensive, command, and control capabilities.

With all of this in mind, if this massively expensive “gift” that taxpayers helped upgrade won’t be going to Trump’s library, where will it be going? The best guess is that he’s planning on keeping a plane gifted to him by a foreign government for personal use.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8–5 along party lines Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment during his congressional appearance last week.

“There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify,” warned Committee Chair Senator Rand Paul at the time. Paul has long sought to punish Fauci for his role in overseeing America’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fauci testified before Congress countless times over the course of his 38-year career atop the health agency. He advised seven U.S. presidents over that time, and oversaw research on a range of issues including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, influenza, Zika, and finally, the coronavirus.

Paul charged Fauci with lying to Congress during a July 2023 hearing on Covid. Paul’s claim was never proven, and the issue was eventually wiped away via a pardon to Fauci issued by former President Joe Biden.

Last month, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer warned Fauci that the pardon would not cover his latest congressional hearing. He then posted hundreds of pages from Fauci’s pandemic-era diary to his website, summarizing the unredacted collection with a conspiratorial slant and a pink pen, which Fauci said was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating” him.

Exactly what comes next for Fauci is not clear, even to the Republicans trying to charge him.

“There is not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t law so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” Paul told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a referral, it’s a recommendation.”

Thursday’s decision will likely be passed along to Vice President JD Vance, who as the de facto president of the Senate will need to sign off on the atypical request. It’ll then be passed to the Justice Department, which will determine on its own accord whether to bring formal charges against Fauci. But legal experts have already warned that the charges are unlikely to succeed in court.

If the DOJ moves in that direction, it will likely boil down to a long, tumultuous legal battle.

This story has been updated.