CLASP
The Center for Law and Social Policy
Excerpts:
“It’s the most anti-child agenda I have ever seen in my entire career,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy.
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Cervantes said she can’t pinpoint which of Trump’s immigration tactics have hurt kids most.
“You can’t rank them,” she said. “Experts in child development say that in order for children to thrive and become healthy adults, they need access to their parents, access to healthcare, nutritious food, housing, childcare and a quality education. And these are all things that are very specifically being targeted.”
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“Basically every aspect of a child’s well-being is being undermined by this web of different policies,” Cervantes said.
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Repeated attacks on childcare workers — some targeting much-needed preschool teachers and aides, particularly through Head Start — also have left children increasingly unprotected, Cervantes said.
>>Read the complete article in The 74 here
CLASP Policy Analyst Christian Collins appeared on the the Roland Martin Unfiltered Daily Digital Show to discuss the Protect College Sports Act. In his segment, Christian talked about the bill, addressed the problematic aspects of it, and responded to questions from the show’s panelists.
View this segment here:
By Lorena Roque
This report from CLASP, with contributions from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), provides an in-depth look at the role of gig work in the lives of immigrant workers. The data show that gig work can offer short-term financial relief to immigrant workers and their families. However, the longstanding lack of regulations and worker protection in this sector makes gig work particularly precarious for immigrants, who are disproportionately affected by discriminatory and xenophobic rhetoric and policies.
The report draws on three different forms of immigrant gig worker data: programmatic data from the IRC, a service provider for immigrants and refugees; survey data; and qualitative interviews. The qualitative interviews were conducted in late 2024 and early 2025, before the second Trump Administration ramped up its anti-immigrant policies to the current level.
In addition to providing insight into the lived experience of immigrant gig workers and their families, this report offers recommendations for policymakers to ensure that all immigrant gig workers are able to do their jobs safely and with dignity.
Washington, D.C., September 15, 2026—Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2025 may be the last year of positive impact, as the prior administration’s policy choices taper off. Despite this, enormous income inequality persists.
In 2025, median household income increased 2.6 percent, to $87,460. Median earnings for women also increased by 3.2 percent; they now make 84 percent of what their male counterparts are paid. And 92.1 percent of the U.S. population had health insurance for at least some part of last year.
While these numbers may not seem concerning, a closer look reveals troubling trends and worrying indicators for future years. The median income didn’t rise enough to cover today’s inflation; indeed, when accounting for the effect of inflation in 2026, median income only rose less than one percentage point.
When income doesn’t keep up with inflation, the individuals and families most affected are those earning the least amount of money. This demographic is also disproportionately affected by the many provisions in H.R.1, which passed in July 2025, and that will further jeopardize economic security. We will not see the true impact of these provisions until next year’s numbers are released and as elements of these policies take full effect, but an estimated 4.5 million people lost SNAP coverage between July 2025 and May 2026, including approximately 1.5 million children.
Today’s data also showed that nearly eight million people were pushed into poverty due to health expenses. With millions more expected to lose Medicaid coverage because of H.R.1, the number of people who enter poverty due to higher out-of-pocket health care costs will also increase in the coming years.
“Many of the policies enacted in July 2025 through H.R.1 are on a long fuse, with just some of the massive cuts taking effect last year and many more on tap in the coming years. This means that the numbers we see today will only get worse in the future, including for children, women, immigrants, and people of color. We’re especially concerned about immigrants whose ability to work and access care without fear of immigration enforcement has already severely impacted their daily lives and economic security,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy.
The persistent gender wage gap is also a nagging indicator. While that gap narrowed in 2025, likely due to the beneficial polices of the previous administration, women’s wages only moved closer to men’s by three cents. Such a slight increase will not move the needle on income inequality.
Overall, today’s data can be seen as setting the baseline for the harmful policies hardwired to play out in the coming years. And even at this baseline, we can see that people are not moving out of poverty—they are holding steady. While we are relieved that the news is not worse, we recognize that the affordability crisis and impending cuts to programs families rely on will increase income inequality, widen the wealth and gender wage gaps, and push more Americans into economic precarity and poverty.
“As the affordability crisis deepens, so does the country’s wealth gap. H.R.1’s tax cuts for the wealthy were largely funded by draconian cuts to programs that support people with lower incomes. As a result, we expect to see income inequality rise even more in the coming years, as income soars for the wealthy while working families will see lower incomes and continued challenges with affording the groceries, rent, and other things they need for to survive—and thrive,” said Chun-Hoon.
CLASP submitted comments opposing a new federal policy that would allow citizenship and immigration data from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to be shared with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The comments warn that expanded data sharing could deter eligible immigrant families from accessing cash assistance and other public benefits, increasing financial hardship for children and families with low incomes.
By Alyssa Fortner and Shira Small
This brief provides an overview of the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), the primary federal funding source for child care assistance for families with low incomes. It examines the program’s history, funding structure, eligibility requirements, and participation trends, while highlighting persistent gaps in access for eligible families and declines in provider participation. The brief also explains how federal and state policies shape families’ ability to access affordable child care.
by KOMO News Staff
Excerpt:
“We commend Representative Jayapal for introducing Orlin’s Law to ensure that families are not needlessly separated due to immigration enforcement and that parents are able to make decisions about what happens to their children,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families of the Center for Law and Social Policy and director of the Children Thrive Action Network.
“The bottom line is that Orlin should never have been separated from his loving mother, and no child should live in fear of losing a parent. Children have suffered some of the direst consequences of the Trump Administration’s reckless mass deportation campaign, including CLASP’s research that documents how our youngest kids are having their childhoods taken away, with the terror spreading across entire communities. We call on Congress to pass Orlin’s Law to mitigate the harm of immigration raids on children and to hold the Administration accountable by demanding that the Department of Homeland Security release comprehensive data on the number of children impacted by immigration enforcement and to follow its own policy to ensure detained parents can make decisions about their children’s care,” Cervantes continued.
Read the full KOMO News article here.
Note: This article was republished by more than 50 other media outlets nationwide.
This statement can be attributed to Wendy Chun-Hoon, president and executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., July 2, 2026–July 4th will mark one year since Congress passed and Donald Trump signed into law the Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025. Also known as H.R.1, the bill included the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the programs’ histories and prioritized funding to separate immigrant families and give tax breaks to the wealthy. As families continue to deal with the rising costs of living, they are now also left without health care and food assistance.
H.R.1 slashed nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act Marketplace tax credits. More than 1 million people have dropped Marketplace coverage and more than 10 million are projected to lose Medicaid coverage over the next decade. The bill’s impact on food assistance is already being felt, as SNAP participation has declined in every state since H.R.1 became law. Based on the latest available data, SNAP participation has fallen by more than 4 million people, or roughly 10 percent; and in the 12 states with available child-level data, more than 700,000 children have lost SNAP food assistance–all because the majority in Congress and the administration prioritized billionaires over families. We expect these harms to grow as states fully implement new eligibility restrictions and other measures in response to future state cost-sharing requirements.
These numbers do not reflect a decline in hunger or reduction in poverty. They represent millions of families who continue to struggle with medical bills, rising food costs, and economic hardship but are now being pushed out of the very programs designed to help them. And people who are technically eligible to keep Medicaid or food assistance will face significant new paperwork barriers, including more frequent Medicaid renewals that will make it harder to access the benefits they qualify for.
H.R.1 provided $170.7 billion in additional funding for immigration enforcement to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and carved out lawfully present immigrants from basic needs programs. This historic ballooning of immigration enforcement funding has turbocharged family separations and child and family detention, threatening child safety and well-being. An estimated 205,000 children,145,000 of whom are U.S. citizens, have experienced having a parent in detention. To make matters worse, these U.S. citizen children are also likely among those who are now losing access to the Child Tax Credit, at a time when they and their families are in most need of support. These changes will increase child poverty; and, building on the exclusions from the 2017 tax reforms that excluded eligibility for children without a Social Security number, affect nearly 4 million children. Moreover, the high level of disenrollment in SNAP and Medicaid is in part due to H.R.1’s exclusion of lawfully present immigrants, such as asylum seekers and refugees, as well as the chilling effect on people whose children are likely eligible but are disenrolling because they are concerned about their participation being used against them in immigration proceedings.
The DHS funding granted through H.R.1 is enabling immigration actions that are actively endangering our nation’s children. At least 79 children have been tear gassed or pepper sprayed and over 6,200 children have seen the inside of an immigration detention camp, where they experienced disruptions to their education, poor nutrition, and delayed medical care. The fear and uncertainty is affecting not only the children directly impacted by these policies, but also their classmates, teachers, and neighbors. The harms of H.R.1 will reverberate for generations.
Policymakers should invest in policies that support family unity and actually center community well-being, such as community-led food systems that keep families fed, regardless of political shifts. Congress must rescind the harm caused by H.R.1 and restore access to health coverage, food assistance, and economic supports. Repairing this harm will require that Congress moves away from policies rooted in suspicion, punishment, and unsupported fraud narratives and instead advance policies grounded in evidence, dignity, and the realities families face.
Excerpt:
Experts stress that America has the resources to make life more affordable. And frequently, communities are fighting for those solutions themselves, from movements for student-debt cancellation or student loan forgiveness to tenants organizing to fight for affordable housing or needed repairs. Developing policy that pulls people out of survival mode has to be part of addressing affordability, according to Isha Weerasinghe, director of public benefits justice at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “We want to move forward, move above existing to thriving,” explains Weerasinghe. That means not just being in a place of paying to exist, or the stress of making ends meet, but being able to think about spending money on things you enjoy, too. “That seems very simplistic, but it’s so important,” said Weerasinghe. “Why can’t we all deserve that?”
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Right now, the country is experiencing high inflation, labor cuts, trade restrictions, and the devastation of H.R. 1. Weerasinghe and the CLASP team want to think about a public benefits system that is more inclusive. For example, while the team works on SNAP reform, they are also thinking about food sovereignty, or solutions that have worked for communities for centuries despite disinvestment. Weerasinghe stresses that expanded inclusivity also ensures that immigrants are able to access all benefits. Then, what supports that in terms of revenue is building strategies around tax benefits to improve the system, like the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit.
If more people are able to access resources, it means more buy-in to the system, which means more people can get the services they need. For example, Weerasinghe explained, if more people have access to Medicaid, and there were less restrictions on how providers were able to reimburse for their services, it means more money in the health care system. Or, take SNAP: When there are less people who are receiving SNAP, while food prices are going up, fewer people participating means less purchasing power. That, in turn, impacts small businesses as well as larger ones—and since it impacts their profits, it leads to job cuts, which will affect the economy overall. More inclusivity benefits the economy across the board.
For people like Theresa and her family, she knows firsthand how these policies could actually make life easier and more affordable. “Taxpayer money should be spent investing in the present and future of our country,” she said, “not gutting social programs to provide tax cuts for corporations and billionaires.”
“The purpose of social programs—a lot of them were built in the ’60s, in the time of the civil rights movement as well—they’re built as a bridge to ensure that people have access to services and to make sure that all people have an ability to survive, but also to thrive,” Weerasinghe adds. “I think we have somehow come back to square one with this, and we have forgotten the purpose of why those programs were built in the first place.”
Read the full article in Dame Magazine here.