Thousand of children in Minnesota and across the U.S. could be at risk of losing access to child care.
The Trump Administration is proposing to completely eliminate Head Start, which provides early childhood care and education to 800,000 children nationwide. Head Start and Early Head Start are early childhood programs for pregnant women and eligible children from birth to age 5.
"We have 12,000, or a little over 12,000 kids, we serve annually in Minnesota in Head Start and early Head Start," says Minnesota Head Start Executive Director Kraig Gratke. "That is done in right around 270 centers across the state. There are places in Minnesota that, if the Head Start center goes away, there won't be centers."
He says more than 75% of Minnesota Head Start parents are in the workforce and rely on child care for their employment.
The program provides childcare, healthcare screenings, fresh food and meals and counseling for families through their child's first few years of life.
Minnesota 3rd District Congresswoman Kelly Morrison (D) says the fallout of losing the money could be dramatic.
"This action by the administration will pull parents out of the workforce," she says. "It will set back hundreds of thousands of children. It will be devastating to our state budget and be a major blow to the economy."
Morrison says her Republican colleagues have supported Head Start over the years, and she hopes that they will join in opposing the cuts in Congress.
In April, the Trump administration asked Congress to eliminate funding for Head Start.
The proposal was tucked in a 64-page internal draft budget document obtained by The Associated Press that seeks deep cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start. It is still in a highly preliminary phase as the White House prepares to send Congress its budget request for the 2026 fiscal year.
It is not clear if the proposed cuts will be accepted by lawmakers. While Congress often ignores a president’s budget request, the proposed elimination of Head Start highlights the administration’s priorities as President Donald Trump seeks to overhaul education in the United States.
“The budget does not fund Head Start,” according to the draft. It says eliminating the program is consistent with the Trump administration’s “goals of returning control of education to the states and increasing parental control.”
“The federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education,” the document says.
Spokespeople for Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has vowed to dismantle the Department of Education, has banned diversity initiatives at schools and has frozen funding at several elite universities in an attempt to force change at colleges that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.
The Head Start program had already been hit this year by layoffs and funding lags, along with a glitch this winter that briefly locked preschool providers out of their federal accounts. The private and public schools that run Head Start classrooms are deeply reliant on federal money, and this year’s funding problems have caused some preschools to close temporarily.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.