Exclusive: Trump Preparing a New Attack on Head Start

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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is contemplating radical and potentially destructive changes to one of America’s most famous anti-poverty programs, according to several people familiar with internal administration deliberations and one with direct knowledge of them.

The program is Head Start, which provides free, specially enhanced childcare to more than 700,000 low-income preschoolers, toddlers, and infants. It operates through the Department of Health and Human Services—where, sources have told me, officials have drafted a regulation that would eliminate most of the rules for how individual Head Start providers operate. Under this draft regulation, HHS would then introduce new rules designed to align Head Start with MAGA priorities and the right’s crusade to shrink government.

One of the most important changes under consideration, the sources said, would be a new prohibition on enrolling children if they don’t have at least one parent who is either a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national, or a “qualifying” immigrant. Notably, that prohibition would apply to all children, regardless of their own immigration status, meaning the rule could—and almost surely would—deny public benefits to some children who are full citizens. Blocking full citizens from getting public benefits in this way would be unprecedented, according to legal experts I consulted.¹

Many of the other changes under consideration would affect the program’s quality and safety standards in equally dramatic ways, the sources told me. One example: The regulation, as drafted, would eliminate the existing minimum requirements on instructor-to-child ratios, leaving the matter to states. That’s a big deal, because a hallmark of Head Start is its nationally uniform rules designed to make sure programs in all states meet the special needs of children growing up in low-income conditions.

The Office of Management and Budget website states that it is currently reviewing a proposed HHS regulation designed “to reduce and streamline Head Start regulatory requirements, to align Head Start standards with state and local systems and reduce burden on Head Start programs.” The Trump administration isn’t commenting on it and my sources cautioned that they do not know whether officials have already made changes to the draft. But nobody would be surprised to see this administration formally propose some version of these regulations.

The Trump administration spent much of last year battering Head Start with funding restrictions and disruptions. It also took a run at restricting enrollment based on immigration status, failing only because federal judges halted the initiative. The administration is currently in the middle of a separate effort to rescind yet another Head Start rule, this one a Biden-era initiative designed to boost instructor pay. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that the administration last year had reportedly planned to call for Head Start’s elimination, as part of its 2026 budget proposal, before backing off in the face of political pressure.

There is, to be clear, nothing inherently unreasonable about a presidential administration scrutinizing Head Start, or making some changes on its own authority. A serious, worthwhile debate about the program’s effectiveness has been going on for decades, with even fierce Head Start advocates in favor of some reforms.

But the changes now under consideration don’t sound like an effort to address Head Start’s weaknesses with some carefully considered modifications. Rather, they sound like an attempt to abandon parts of the program’s basic mandate, which Head Start has pursued for the better part of six decades and which was first put in place by its founders.

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ONE OF THOSE FOUNDERS was Lyndon Johnson. During the 1964 State of the Union address, with the country still in mourning following John Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson dedicated himself to a mission that JFK had first discussed: a “war on poverty” that would seek “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”

Kids were a focus of this effort in part because of a new scientific development: Researchers were firmly establishing how deprivation early in life put impoverished children at a severe, lingering disadvantage in school. By the time these kids got to kindergarten, researchers were demonstrating, they had learning and knowledge deficits on everything from language to problem-solving that in many cases were simply too big to make up.

Sargent Shriver, whom Johnson had empowered to lead the war on poverty, convened a panel of psychologists, pediatricians, and other experts to develop a policy that could equip these children with the skills they would need to keep up with their peers and to succeed later in life. The result was Head Start, which the Johnson administration launched as an eight-week summertime pilot and later—working with Congress—expanded into a full-time, year-round program.

“Head Start embodied the vision of the Great Society,” Princeton historian Julian Zelizer told me, “building on the New Deal [promise of providing] . . . support to Americans so that there was a basic social safety net from the vicissitudes of capitalism—particularly for children and elderly Americans.”

From the get-go, Head Start had a few guiding principles. One of the most important held that instructors should be trained in the science of early-childhood education and lead classrooms in ways that would be consistent with the latest findings on how best to teach children at different ages or in different socioeconomic circumstances.

But the program’s architects knew the formula wouldn’t do any good without intermediaries committed to using it faithfully. And they did not trust state-level officials, especially those in places where Jim Crow laws remained in place. That was a big reason why Shriver and his team opted to bypass state governments altogether. Money would flow from Washington directly to individual programs and organizations, or to local governments and school systems that chose to offer programs. In exchange for the funding, anybody running a Head Start program would agree to abide by rules that the federal government set.

“At the time it was created, the southern states were not providing services to black children,” Olivia Golden, who served as HHS assistant secretary for children and families during the Clinton administration, told me. “Head Start has always been at its core about the idea that we’re at our best as a country when everybody has a chance to thrive.”

The program’s rules have evolved over time, sometimes because administrations have wanted to tweak how the program operates and sometimes because administrations have been implementing laws that overhauled the program substantially. That’s what happened after 2007, when Congress passed legislation designed to tie the program more clearly to school readiness by—for example—upping the requirements for teacher credentials and putting in place new systems to monitor how individual programs were performing.

That legislation was negotiated by a Republican president (George W. Bush) and a Democratic senator (Ted Kennedy), and got through Congress with overwhelming majorities. It was a sign of the program’s enduring popularity and of the commitment, across ideological lines, to the basic goal of helping children who need it the most.

That commitment extended to Head Start’s longstanding policy of not checking immigration status, even though a decade earlier the 1996 welfare reform law had made it difficult for immigrants (even some legal ones) to get public benefits.

The theory for exempting Head Start from those rules was that its purpose was to promote child welfare and community well-being, not to provide financial assistance. There was also concern that aggressive documentation requirements might discourage some immigrant families from enrolling their kids, even if those children were eligible.

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THAT BIPARTISAN POLITICAL SUPPORT notwithstanding, Head Start’s performance over the years has provoked lots of debate.

Critics point to studies that found gains in reading and math scores made by Head Start enrollees frequently faded after a few years. Supporters have responded by highlighting studies showing long-term gains like lower rates of delinquency and teen pregnancy, and a higher propensity to graduate high school.

An exhaustive literature review from this past February concluded that the best available evidence suggests Head Start helps children who face the biggest disadvantages, though it acknowledged lots of variability from program to program—and lots of uncertainty because some of the gains are simply hard to measure.

The debate will continue as researchers continue to study the program, which is as it should be. In the meantime, a presidential administration skeptical about the efficacy of regulation and the wisdom of regulators would be well within its rights to propose and pursue modifications to the program in ways that loosened some of the rules now in place.

But what the Trump administration has in mind would go far beyond that. One source told me that the regulation under consideration would effectively eliminate whole sections of the rules, including some spelling out how to make sure children with disabilities have access to the program.

“These proposed standards would fundamentally transform Head Start beyond recognition, removing the characteristics that make it so much more than an early-education program,” the person familiar with deliberations told me.

But even as the draft regulation would clear out all of those rules tied to instruction, quality, and safety, it would add those new requirements to restrict enrollment based on immigration status. That would put a much bigger burden on families, who would have to come up with documentation, as well as on providers, who would have to check it.

“I think the best evidence is that, actually, this isn’t about trying to have fewer rules,” Golden said. “This is about trying to change the rules, in ways that are generally not consistent with the Head Start Act or Head Start values.”

Mark Greenberg, a former HHS official who is now a scholar in residence at Brookings, put it a bit more bluntly. “This is not an administration that is reflecting a broad and consistent commitment to flexibility in federally assisted programs,” he told me in an interview. “It is one that uses language about flexibility when its goal is to eliminate protections and standards.”

This doesn’t appear to be what Congress wanted when it last reauthorized the program back in 2007, Greenberg went on to note. And it’s probably not what Congress wants now, which is almost certainly why administration officials are thinking about using executive authority to make these changes rather than trying to pass legislation, and presumably why they are doing it quietly rather than shining a spotlight on it.

They might yet decide against it. And if they do go ahead, the courts might stop them, as they have before.² But the fact that a draft proposal has gone this far already says a lot about their determination to undermine Head Start, and their contempt for the spirit behind it.

1. The two closest analogies I heard were (a) restrictions that require a Social Security number (which undocumented immigrants usually don’t have) to claim a child tax credit, regardless of the child’s immigration status and (b) a proposed Trump administration rule that would prohibit mixed-status families from getting housing assistance, even if the household includes U.S. citizen children. But in both cases there’s an argument that the main benefit—tax credits, housing support—would go to the undocumented immigrants. With Head Start, the primary beneficiary is the child.

2. Most likely any changes would prompt a quick challenge from the ACLU, which filed the earlier lawsuits to block Head Start changes.