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., September 3, 2025—On September 9, the U.S. Census Bureau will release national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2024. We expect the numbers to show more poverty in 2024, particularly among children, and more people without health insurance. When we see the data, however, we must consider that the outlook for 2025 and beyond is ominous, given how precipitously the conditions for people facing economic insecurity have declined this year.
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the administration and Congress have unleashed a cascade of attacks on people with low incomes, including communities of color, immigrants and their families, and others who have been historically marginalized. These attacks have included slashing public benefit programs; issuing executive orders dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; ripping families apart through a horrific mass deportation effort and gutting protections and services to immigrants, including U.S. citizen children; eliminating labor protections for millions of workers; and decimating the nation’s data collection efforts that are critical to accurate and equitable decision-making. Through these and other actions, the Trump Administration’s reckless disregard for people’s health, safety, and well-being will have dire consequences for the future of the country.
These attacks are particularly evident in the reconciliation bill passed by Congress, which is causing unprecedented harm to workers, people of color, immigrants, women, and children. In addition to excluding many families with low incomes from the Child Tax Credit, the bill cuts essential benefit programs, including Medicaid and SNAP. Although these changes will not be fully implemented until 2026 and beyond, they are already having a chilling effect among people who rely on these programs to meet their basic needs. Congress made these cuts to fund historic increases in immigration enforcement that undermine family unity and well-being and to provide tax cuts to the wealthy, which will only exacerbate poverty and wealth inequality.
The September 9 data will likely show another annual increase in people without health insurance coverage. The end of Covid-era protections for Medicaid coverage caused many people to lose coverage in 2024, although the availability of enhanced premium tax credits in the Marketplace likely offset some Medicaid losses. Congress’s action in 2025 to cut Medicaid and enhanced Marketplace tax credits by more than $1 trillion is estimated to cause nearly 15 million people to lose coverage in the coming years.
The full effect of millions of people losing health insurance, food assistance, and other supports—and how that loss will harm not just individuals but their families, communities, and the larger economy—will drive even more people deeper into poverty and instability for years to come.
We will have more to say after the Census Bureau releases the data next week. For now, CLASP reiterates our commitment to fighting for policies that center the dignity and autonomy of all people, especially those whom the Trump Administration and the current majority in Congress are most focused on harming with their punitive and dangerous actions.
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., August 12, 2025–During a White House press conference on Monday morning, President Trump declared a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C., despite evidence to the contrary. The president federalized the D.C. police department and mobilized 800 members of the National Guard to remove encampments of homeless residents to, in the president’s words, “fight crime” in the city.
The rhetoric used by all speakers at the press conference was racist, xenophobic, transphobic, and discriminatory against homeless members of the D.C. community, who are disproportionately Black. Using othering language like “they/them” referring to youth of color, “bedlam,” or “slums” pathologizes structural inequality. Coupling this language with deliberate misinterpretations of crime data and sensationalized stories places people experiencing homelessness at even higher risk of dehumanization and violence. Under a recent executive order, this population is already facing renewed attacks on strained support systems and privacy protections.
Furthermore, this move by the president is blatant abuse of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 and the latest refusal to grant the District statehood. Trump is flooding the streets with FBI agents and the National Guard and federalizing local law enforcement in spite of violent crime rates that are at a 30-year low in D.C., and in spite of the wishes of D.C. residents, the majority of whom are Black and brown.
Demanding that people experiencing homelessness leave the city will not make D.C. safer. In fact, the resources diverted toward mass displacement of homeless people will result in a greater police presence. The root causes of homelessness include unaffordable rents, lack of access to mental health and substance use treatment, and unlivable wages. To truly end homelessness, we should invest public dollars in expanding the supply of affordable housing and ensuring accessible, high-quality mental health and substance use treatment services.
Additionally, researchers have repeatedly disproven a direct link between more law enforcement agents and a higher level of public safety, invalidating measures aimed at “restoring law and order,” which ultimately hurt Black and brown people disproportionately. This increased presence can have deadly consequences, as it did in Milwaukee when a local Black man was killed by out-of-town law enforcement brought in to securitize the downtown area for the Republican National Convention.
In addition to the inappropriate takeover of the D.C. police department, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to strike fear into the local population mirrors how the administration used the deployment of 4,000 guard troops and 700 active Marines in Los Angeles to facilitate the arrest and deportation of immigrants and quell people’s constitutionally protected right to non-violently protest their neighbors’ kidnapping.
Like L.A., D.C. is being used as a testing site to normalize the use of military personnel against people in our community without the existence of an actual crisis. Rather than advance public safety, the administration’s actions further a political agenda rooted in demonizing race and poverty.
At a time when people with the lowest incomes are already struggling with inflation, a softening job market, and the slashing of programs that support basic needs, the last thing our nation should do is to use force against people who don’t have the resources to fight back.
By Ashley Burnside
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides critical monthly support—up to $967 in 2025—for over 7 million low-income people with disabilities and older adults. Without these payments, many would struggle to afford rent, food, and basic necessities.
By Ashley Burnside
Social Security, SSI, and SSDI are lifelines for millions of Americans, including people with disabilities and older adults. Cuts or delays to these programs would worsen poverty and instability. Protecting these benefits—and the agency that delivers them—is critical to ensuring economic security and equity for all.
By Marquelle Ogletree
I grew up in a modest, working-class household in north Florida that was rooted in Black American and Caribbean heritage. I’m deeply grateful for the sacrifices of my parents and grandparents; each generation strove to provide a better life for their children than they had, including for me and my two younger sisters. In my family’s history I can see a clear arc of social mobility across borders and generations, but progress has stalled in my own lifetime.
That mobility didn’t keep pace for my immediate family was due not to a lack of effort but, rather, rising costs, stagnant wages, and other systemic reasons. This circumstance isn’t unique to my family. Compared to other demographic groups, social mobility among Black families is not sustainable between generations, even among middle-class households and those who are college educated.
According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the median wealth of Black households is just $44,900, compared with $192,900 nationally. This significant discrepancy seems almost uncomprehensible, yet given the long history of excluding Black Americans from federal wealth-building programs, it is unsurprising. From the Homestead Act of 1862 to the GI Bill and early Social Security, government initiatives built white middle-class wealth while locking out Black families through discriminatory policies and enforcement.
My maternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados in the 1970s, seeking the opportunity they couldn’t find at home despite strong education and high literacy rates. My paternal grandparents grew up on the east and west coasts of the United States, shaped by different kinds of poverty but bound by the same determination. The circumstances of their poverty looked different: rural poverty in Southern California; inner-city poverty in Baltimore; underdevelopment in Christ Church, Barbados; and lack of economic opportunity in St. James Parish, Barbados. Both sides of my family valued education and worked hard, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee lasting mobility in a system designed to favor others.
All of my grandparents were first-generation college students, and two earned graduate degrees as well. My mother, a teacher, has a bachelor’s degree; my father attended some college and built a career in a state business services job with his accounting background. My younger sister and I are both recent college graduates.
But degrees alone do not close racial wealth gaps. According to a 2018 analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2008 cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study, white graduates with at least one college-educated parent tend to earn more than their Black counterparts. A greater share of Black graduates fall into the lowest income category compared to whites which limits homeownership: more white college graduates own homes compared to Black graduates due to greater access to generational wealth. A higher proportion of Black families rent—which was true for my family for a long time until recent years—compared to white graduates.
Though both of my parents provided basic needs for me and my sisters, financial trade-offs still shaped our lives. My mother paused her career for nearly a decade when my sisters and I were young, since the cost of child care would have outweighed her earnings. This didn’t only affect her career advancement; it meant living on one income and relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Equitable wages, access to benefits, and paid support for domestic labor could help families build wealth and stability: for example, if my father had earned more, that could have offset my mother’s unpaid labor and given us greater financial security.
White middle-class wealth was formed through public benefits that excluded Black people. The first public benefit, 1862’s Homestead Act, gave white families 160 acres of land (often stolen from Native Americans) after ten years of settlement and a small fee. During the New Deal, white people benefited from the expansion of the so-called welfare state with the introduction of the first food stamp program and the creation of Social Security, which intentionally excluded Black Americans from building wealth. Even when Black people created their own wealth, as in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street,” it was violently destroyed because of racial animosity with no guarantee of restoration. This history has created a gap between white and Black economic fortunes that persists to this day.
Capitalism continues to reinforce these inequities. It commodifies basic needs like food and housing, putting working-class and Black families at a disadvantage. Until the current system is reimagined, survival, well-being, and mobility depend on access to capital. If we care about the well-being of Black youth, adults, and elders—or any part of our communities—then equipping people with the resources to thrive is imperative. So much wealth has been hoarded by the top one percent for generations. But through philanthropy, progressive taxation, unrestricted cash transfers, and other initiatives, it is not only possible but necessary to redistribute assets in ways that empower the most impacted.
Many advocates have worked to reform public benefit programs to better serve communities of color, individuals with low incomes, and people with disabilities. Yet in the current political climate, many advocates have been preoccupied protecting existing public benefits programs rather than transforming them. Public benefits were designed to help people meet basic needs including housing, food, and health, but survival alone is not enough.
If we truly want to invest in Black well-being, policy must go beyond helping people just get by and instead focus on building wealth, ensuring that Black families thrive and can pass down resources across generations. Doing this means pairing strong public benefits programs with true wealth-building tools—investments, homeownership, business capital, and direct cash empowerment—so that social mobility becomes a lasting reality. These investments can look like:
As I think about living out the hard work and sacrifices my parents and grandparents made to improve my family’s quality of life, I know my individual decisions alone will not be enough to sustain and build generational wealth. This is as true for me as it is for any other Black person. Equitable investment and rectifying past predatory harms are needed to ensure Black people collectively can thrive not just today, but for generations.
By Suzanne Wikle
Access to health insurance and health care has never been a right in this country. There has always been a division between those that are considered “worthy” and those that are not, mostly along wealth and racial lines. The recent political conversations about Medicaid unfortunately reinforce this division.
When policy makers debate eligibility criteria for Medicaid and other programs, they are really making a value statement about who deserves health care, food, or any other assistance. The new Medicaid rules, which will go into effect for the Medicaid expansion population in most states in 2027, make strong statements about who is worthy of Medicaid and who is not.
The recent bill pushed by President Trump and passed by Republicans in Congress on razor-thin margins cuts over $800 billion from Medicaid—“saving” money by causing people to lose their health insurance. One of the primary ways the bill does this is by changing eligibility for Medicaid and attaching a “work requirement” for the 20 million people who are eligible for the Medicaid expansion program in their state. More than 10 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid insurance as a result of this Republican-led legislation.
About half of people in the country have health insurance through their job, so it may seem like a natural step to attach Medicaid insurance to employment. Nothing could be further from the truth. This fundamental change in Medicaid eligibility undermines the intent of Medicaid and a large portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), puts lives at risk, and ultimately declares with more clarity than ever who is deemed worthy of health insurance and who is not. A core vision of the ACA was to provide a pathway to affordable health insurance outside of employment. This meant creating affordable options for people who owned small businesses, retired early, don’t have employer-provided insurance, or aren’t employed.
In practice, the new Medicaid law draws arbitrary lines that determine eligibility. For example:
If you’re a parent with a low income and a child under age 13, you are worthy of Medicaid for your health insurance. If you’re a parent with a low income and your child is 14 or older, you’re not worthy unless you’re working at least 80 hours a month.
If you’re a waitress earning a low income and working at least 80 hours a month, you’re worthy. But if you get sick and need a few days off, you’ve worked less than 80 hours that month and are no longer worthy.
If you work for a landscaping company and work at least 80 hours per month during the busy seasons, you’re worthy of Medicaid. But if there’s a particularly rainy month or cold snap and your hours are cut below the threshold set by Congress, you are no longer worthy.
If you’re working in the gig economy to pay your bills and you are able to prove at least 80 hours of work per month, you are worthy and eligible. But if business slows down, your care is getting repaired for a few days, or you simply can’t produce the right documentation, you may not be worthy.
If you’re able to navigate the complex paperwork requirements to prove your work hours, then you’re eligible. But if you can’t navigate the system or you don’t have adequate internet access to upload your documents, you’re not worthy enough.
It’s not a coincidence that large racial inequities exist in health insurance rates. Systemic racism and states choosing not to expand Medicaid are two major reasons behind the disparities. In 2023, for adults ages 19-64 (the Medicaid expansion age range), white and Asian Americans had uninsurance rates of 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively. All other racial and ethnic groups had uninsurance rates at least double those: 23 percent for Hispanics, 12 percent for Black people, 21 percent for American Indian and Alaskan Natives, and 15 percent for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders.
Medicaid disenrollments due to work reporting requirements, like other administrative burdens, will exacerbate these inequities. People of color are disproportionately insured by Medicaid and will disproportionately be harmed by additional red tape.
The ACA took many steps toward righting these wrongs and ensuring access to health insurance for everyone. It created a marketplace where people can get subsidies to purchase insurance that is required to cover essential health benefits. The ACA also expanded Medicaid to those with the lowest incomes—under 138 percent of the poverty line, or $36,777 per year for a family of three.
Collectively, the three pillars of the ACA—employer-based insurance, marketplace insurance, and Medicaid—should have provided affordable health care to nearly everyone. When the Supreme Court ruled Medicaid expansion as a decision left to states, that core pillar of the ACA was cracked because it wouldn’t be part of the health insurance landscape in many states. Ten states are still refusing billions in federal dollars to expand their Medicaid program.
What Congressional Republicans and President Trump have done in 2025 is another significant blow to Medicaid. Tying eligibility for Medicaid expansion population to proving work hours will have one outcome: people will lose their health insurance. People won’t lose their insurance because they aren’t working; most people are working, or caring for someone else, or will meet another exemption. The evidence from other programs is crystal clear: this is a red tape and bureaucratic hurdle created to deter people from applying or making it too difficult to complete the application process. This is not about promoting work and will not increase employment.
A Medicaid work reporting requirement also means that Medicaid will no longer be the safety net that someone can turn to when they lose their job. For those of us that receive health insurance through our employer, a job loss also means a loss of health insurance. For many in this position, keeping their insurance through COBRA is unaffordable. If they live in a Medicaid expansion state and their income drops below 138 percent of poverty, they have access to Medicaid.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when millions of people lost their jobs, Medicaid was there for them. People who lost their jobs or were furloughed were 70 percent less likely to become uninsured if they lived in a Medicaid expansion state. Under the new eligibility rules mandating a work reporting requirement, people won’t have Medicaid to turn to when they are suddenly unemployed.
These decisions have real-life consequences. People will lose their health insurance, which will cause them to forgo medical care and accrue medical debt; and some people will die. Millions of others will live far below the level of dignity they could have if they were guaranteed access to health care.
Health insurance and health care access are policy decisions. CLASP strongly disagrees with the policy decisions of those who supported H.R. 1 and will continue to advocate for health care to be a basic human right for all.
By Ashley Burnside
July is an important month for the disability community, especially this year. Commonly referred to as Disability Pride Month, July commemorates the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, a hard-fought legislative achievement that provides the disability community with comprehensive civil rights protections. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the ADA’s passage. 2025 also represents the 60th anniversary of the Medicaid program, which provides life-saving health care for millions of people. People with disabilities have fought for decades to achieve basic civil rights protections, including access to public spaces, public education, adequate health care, and more.
Amid these celebrations, this month also marks the passage of a law that will cause great harm for people with disabilities: President Trump’s budget reconciliation law. This new law will result in disabled people losing health care and nutrition assistance.
During Disability Pride Month, lawmakers should be investing in and celebrating the disability community, not stripping away public benefits that help people afford food, remain healthy, and live in their homes and communities. The reconciliation law will restrict access to health care and food for the disability community, despite false claims from lawmakers to the contrary.
Medicaid provides life-saving services and care for people with disabilities throughout the nation. Fifteen million people with disabilities use Medicaid, representing 1 in 3 disabled people. Unfortunately, the reconciliation law will make devastating cuts to Medicaid, ultimately leaving just over 10 million people uninsured, including people with disabilities.
One of the changes the law will make is adding work reporting requirements to Medicaid for the expansion population of at least 80 hours per month, which will create red tape for millions of people trying to enroll in Medicaid and for Medicaid recipients. Research has repeatedly found that while work reporting requirements do nothing to improve employment, they do create bureaucratic complexity for recipients and state agencies.
Lawmakers have claimed that people with disabilities will be exempt from the work reporting requirements. But unfortunately, disabled people will inevitably be included in these mandates, and will lose their health insurance unless they can meet the paperwork requirements. Some disabled people qualify for Medicaid due to their disability status, typically having severe health conditions that meet a strict definition of being disabled. People in this category should be exempt from work reporting requirements, but in reality, that will depend on how well states implement the policy.
There are also many people with disabilities who qualify for Medicaid through other pathways because their disability is not deemed ‘severe enough’ to qualify them through the disability eligibility criteria. Most people in this category will qualify for Medicaid through Medicaid expansion. In the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid, people may qualify if they have dependent children at home and extremely low incomes, but are likely to not be insured.
People with disabilities who qualify for Medicaid through their state’s Medicaid expansion but are unable to work 80 hours per month due to their disability will need to prove their disability makes them exempt from the work reporting requirement, a process that requires time, money, appointments, and paperwork. They will likely have to reprove their disability every six months.
Disabled people who can work and qualify for Medicaid through their state’s Medicaid expansion could face further problems if they have a chronic disability that makes it harder for them to work continuously, or during medical episodes. For example, a cashier may be able to work 80 hours one month but then be unable to work that many hours the following month if they have a chronic pain flare-up that prevents standing for longer shifts. This person might lose their Medicaid eligibility because they were unable to meet the 80-hour requirement every single month. And because recipients can’t average the number of hours worked across multiple months, someone who could only work 70 hours one month can’t ensure they remain eligible by working 90 hours the next. The ways that disabilities impact people are often not “one size fits all,” and that will make meeting such an inflexible work reporting requirement impossible for some people.
The indirect results of the Medicaid cuts will also harm members of the disability community who rely on medical care from hospitals and clinics. If hospitals lose federal funding and are forced to close, this will disproportionately affect those who may be unable to drive further distances to get the care they need, especially if they live somewhere without public transportation.
Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) are a crucial Medicaid service for disabled people but are not required by federal statute. One area that states may explore is cutting these services, including reducing payments to care providers or not enrolling people who are stuck on waiting lists.
Disabled immigrants will also be cut off from health care due to the reconciliation law. Previously, lawfully present immigrants who were ineligible for Medicaid due to their immigration status could enroll in marketplace coverage if they earned under 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. The new law terminates this coverage, as well as other opportunities for Medicaid, Medicare, and Children’s Health Insurance Program access for certain populations of immigrants.
Collectively, all the Medicaid cuts—including key financing changes—will leave states with fewer federal Medicaid dollars and force states to cut their Medicaid programs.
The reconciliation law will also make devastating cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), ending nutrition assistance for an estimated 5 million people. Disabled people are likelier to face food insecurity than people without disabilities, and about 4 million SNAP non-elderly recipients identified as being disabled in 2023. People with disabilities will be cut off SNAP due to the stricter work reporting requirements unless they prove they can meet an exemption, which can be burdensome and time-consuming.
The new law will also require states to spend more of their own revenue to fund the SNAP program, meaning states will either need to make cuts to the program, remove recipients, eliminate SNAP altogether, or make other cuts in their state budget to critical programs, such as child care or education. Some disabilities require specialty diets that are more expensive, meaning disabled people could be especially harmed if states implement such cost-saving measures.
During Disability Pride Month and every month of the year, we must celebrate our progress toward access, equity, and justice for the disability community while also acknowledging areas where improvements are needed. People with disabilities deserve health care, food, and housing and the chance to thrive in their communities with their loved ones, just like everyone else. The recent reconciliation law will be a major setback for the disability community. Lawmakers at the state and federal level should invest in people with disabilities through fully funding HBCS, removing work reporting requirements in the Medicaid and SNAP programs, and ensuring that all people have access to adequate health care and nutrition, regardless of their income or ability status.
By Ashley Burnside
On July 4, President Trump signed his reconciliation law that will make changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The reconciliation law provides tax breaks for the wealthiest people by slashing Medicaid and food assistance funding, and will make changes to how states earn revenue.
The CTC is a tax credit available to eligible families with children. In 2017, lawmakers temporarily doubled the maximum credit; restricted children without Social Security numbers from being eligible; and made the credit available to families with higher incomes, among other changes. In 2021, lawmakers temporarily expanded the CTC, which helped to decrease child poverty by nearly half. These changes expired after one year. Now, President Trump’s new reconciliation bill will change how big the CTC will be and will cut some families off from accessing it.
Here are ten things you should know about the CTC:
Families who file their taxes, have an eligible child, and have incomes within the allowable limits are generally eligible to claim the CTC each year. The program is far-reaching, doesn’t require additional paperwork beyond filing taxes, and lifts millions of people out of poverty each year.
Under prior law, the maximum CTC was $2,000 per child. Beginning in 2026, the maximum credit amount will be adjusted annually for inflation.
The CTC allows parents to afford investments for their family, like summer camp, new toys, or a musical instrument. CLASP survey research concluded that in 2021 parents spent their expanded CTC monthly payments on both essentials (groceries, bills, and rent/mortgage payments) and enrichment activities for their children
Married couples making up to $400,000 per year are eligible for the maximum CTC. But because of the way the credit is structured, families with lower earnings are not eligible for the full credit. The credit phases in at 15 cents per dollar earned above $2,500 per year, and is only partially refundable. A married couple with two children needs to make at least $41,500 per year to get the full CTC, for example. An estimated 19 million children are in families who will continue to not get the full credit because their parents don’t earn enough.
An estimated 39 percent of Black children and 36 percent of Latino children didn’t get the full credit in 2023 because their parents did not earn enough. This is due to the structural and historical racism within our laws and labor market that have left communities of color with deep inequities, resulting in workers of color receiving lower wages and fewer opportunities for economic prosperity.
The 2021 law temporarily extended the age of eligibility for the credit to include seventeen-year-olds, but this provision expired after one year.
The reconciliation bill has permanently excluded children from the CTC who don’t have an SSN. This will make an estimated 1 million children ineligible for the credit, a misguided exclusion that will hurt children’s outcomes and force children and families further into poverty.
Under prior law, parents could claim the CTC for their child if they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), but the reconciliation law changed this policy. Now, at least one parent must have an SSN to claim the credit. (A married couple where one spouse has an SSN and one spouse has an ITIN would be eligible.) This will exclude an estimated 2.6 million U.S. citizen children from getting the CTC because their parents don’t have SSNs.
Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the CTC was distributed monthly to families from July through December 2021. Since that law has expired, families can now only get the credit annually when they file their tax return.
Permanently making the credit fully available to families with lower incomes; permanently increasing the size of the credit to at least the levels provided in 2021 (up to $3,600 for children ages zero through five); permanently making the credit available monthly; and permanently extending credit eligibility to seventeen-year-olds would deliver an income boost from the CTC to more than 60 million children and help families afford essentials.
The changes to the CTC passed under President Trump’s reconciliation law will cut off some immigrant families from accessing the CTC and will continue to leave families with the lowest incomes out of the full credit, disproportionately excluding Black and Latino families. The CTC doesn’t reach the families who would benefit the most from receiving it. Lawmakers should fix this backwards structure by making the credit fully available to families with low earnings and by ending the ITIN restrictions.
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 10, 2025 – This week, several federal agencies—including the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Education (ED), and Department of Labor (DOL)—issued notices regarding reinterpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that restricts eligibility for some federal programs to “qualified immigrants.” These notices are in response to the Trump Administration’s executive order in February that seeks to deny federal benefits to undocumented immigrants, despite the fact that they are already ineligible for most federal benefits. These latest actions only serve to restrict access to such programs for immigrant families, including U.S. citizen children.
The Trump Administration is undermining more than 30 years of rules between federal and state governments about how grant dollars can be used. These changes will present states, counties, and cities with challenges about how they administer these programs.
Several essential programs are implicated in the HHS rule, including the community health center program, critical mental health and substance use funding for states, community services funds to bolster communities with low incomes, and funding to support foster youth. Head Start is a key program also subject to reinterpretation, potentially compromising eligibility for children in immigrant families, with grave consequences for their early learning and development. For 60 years, Head Start has ensured that children from birth to age 5 and their families have access to educational, health, and family support. Along with the programs noted above, Head Start is specifically designed to support families with low incomes, including immigrant families, by addressing both immediate and comprehensive needs. Additionally, Migrant and Seasonal Head Start helps farmworker families achieve stability and break the cycle of poverty.
Other impacts could include specific ED adult education and postsecondary career and technical education programs, along with certain DOL workforce training programs. While other programs for which immigrants are eligible, including SNAP and WIC, are not currently affected, the uncertainty and confusion around these new notices and guidances could have a wider chilling effect on numerous benefit programs.
This is just the latest assault on immigrants and immigrant families from the Trump Administration, which has used numerous executive orders and the reconciliation bill to cause great harm to immigrant children and families. Although several of these notices only reaffirm existing policy, in some cases–where eligibility is further restricted–agency guidance and possibly public comments will need to be considered before any eligibility is changed.
We urge our partners and allies to submit public comments where possible and join us in opposing efforts to strip away essential supports from immigrant families and undermine our collective well-being. We also urge community members to seek out information from trusted sources on how their eligibility for programs may be affected, including from our partners at the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition.
By John Kelly
(EXCERPT)
The initiation of the pilot was surely born of advocacy for a more progressive approach to evaluating TANF that does not look at workforce as the only possible successful outcome of the support. Here is the Center for Law and Social Policy’s view of Work Participation Rate, or WPR:
CLASP has deep concerns about the WPR, including that it is a) grounded in racist stereotypes about the need to force public
benefit recipients to work; b) does not measure the effectiveness of work activities; c) does not give states credit for engaging
recipients in activities such as full-time education and training beyond a year, or for addressing issues such as mental health
needs or substance abuse treatment; and d) forces caseworkers to focus on compliance and spend undue amounts of time tracking.