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The Club PUBlication 04/28/2025

4/28/2025

HEAD START UNDER THE BUDGET GUN

Trump administration’s planned spending cuts threaten to end 60-year-old program that provides care for 800,000 kids

Story by JENNY GOLD and KATE SEQUEIRA • Photos by ALLEN J. SCHABEN • The Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Head Start centers have been unnerved by an escalating series of threats, including, most recently, total annihilation.

An end to the historic federal early childhood program would leave about 800,000 low-income children across the U.S. without access to child care, medical screenings, and nutritious food.

First came the executive order to temporarily freeze all federal financial aid in January, when Head Start staff suddenly couldn't access the funds they had been promised. Although the memo was rescinded days later, dozens of centers reported that they couldn't access their funds for weeks; unable to meet payroll, some were forced to shutter for a few days.

On Feb. 14, scores of federal staffers were laid off at Health and Human Services' Office of Head Start in Washington, D.C. And on April 1, the administration announced that five of the 12 regional offices managing relationships with Head Start grantees would be closed immediately and all employees laid off.

Now the very existence of the program is imperiled: A leaked draft of the administration's budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services would defund Head Start and phase the program out by 2026, a move that would slash a critical safety net for families who otherwise could not afford child care and the other comprehensive services they receive.

In addition, the draft budget calls for terminating an array of HHS initiatives dedicated to helping families with newborns and young children. Programs slated for elimination include Healthy Start, which is dedicated to healthy pregnancies and births, newborn screenings for heritable disorders and hearing, infant and early childhood mental health, childhood lead poisoning, family planning and drowning prevention.

While the document does not represent a final decision, it will serve as a guidepost for Trump's 2026 budget, which must then be approved by Congress. The White House referred the Times to OMB for comment, where the communications director, Rachel Cauley, did not deny the contents of the memo. "No final funding decisions have been made," Cauley said.

The plan, if approved, would represent a fundamental retraction of the federal government's longtime role in helping families with young children have a healthy start in the critical early years of life, said Elisabeth Wright Burak, who studies child health policy at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy's Center for Children and Families.

"That's really unprecedented damage to the social safety net for families," said Burak. Alongside the proposed mass cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, she said, "I would worry it would do irreparable damage."

The proposed actions are also antithetical to Trump's campaign promise to be pro-family, and Vice President JD Vance's pledge to shore up the nation's fragile and high-cost child-care industry, especially the proposal to eliminate Head Start, early childhood experts said.

"It's just terrifying on every level," said Stacey Scarborough, who runs the Early Head Start program at Venice Family Clinic, which serves 376 pregnant women, infants and toddlers, and was the past president of the Head Start California Association. "It's terrifying for the community, it's terrifying for the staff, it's terrifying for the families, and it's just terrifying for the future."

An existential threat
Head Start was founded in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty," and has served more than 40 million children over the past six decades. The program — which is celebrating its 60th birthday this year — was set to receive more than $12 billion in funding for the current year.

The program has came under attack several times over the decades, most recently during the presidential election last year, when Project 2025 called for the program to be terminated on the grounds that it is "fraught with scandal and abuse" and has "little or no longterm academic value for children."

Russell Vought, one of Project 2025's principal architects, now serves as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which authored the budget draft.

"This elimination is consistent with the Administration's goals of returning education to the States and increasing parental choice," OMB wrote in the draft budget . "The Federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education."

The Head Start program, however, does not mandate a particular curriculum to centers, and it is one of several child-care programs offered to low income families.

Decades of research point to the positive impacts of Head Start on children, including improved cognitive and social-emotional development, though a federal study found that some of these effects fade out over time.

Bipartisan support wavers
Head Start has had longtime support from Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Last year, 33 House Republicans signed a letter urging the Appropriations committee "to fund Head Start at the highest level the Subcommittee deems possible." And many Republican members announce Head Start grants to their district as a point of pride.
"The effort right now is to give those bipartisan members — including many Republican members — the tools they need to push back," said Sarah Rittling, executive director of the nonpartisan First Five Years Fund, which lobbies Congress on early childhood education.

The stark political divide and vast appetite for cost reduction this year in Washington, however, mean it's unclear how many Republicans will be willing to pledge their support for Head Start.

Trump has targeted Head Start's funding before, albeit unsuccessfully. In his 2018 presidential budget, he proposed to cut funding to the Head Start program by $85 million and by $29 billion in 2019; neither proposal passed.

This time, the threats are far more serious.
The Head Start program has long been a target among conservative thinkers at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.

"The country is just too big and too diverse for bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., to really know what education should look like in random towns or cities around America," said Colleen Hroncich, an education policy analyst at Cato, who points to federal research that found the positive effects of the Head Start program fade out by third grade. Head Start should be phased out slowly, she said, to allow states and churches to fill the affordable child-care gap left behind.

Administrators of programs that are supposed to begin their next fiscal year May 1 say they have not received the next round of funding.
So far this year, there has been a nearly $1 billion shortfall in Head Start funding compared to the same period in 2024, according to an Associated Press report.

"What I worry about with this administration is it's like a game of whack-amole," said Katie Hamm, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development during the Biden Administration. "There's a funding issue on Monday, and then some programs close, and then the funding starts to flow, and then there's another issue ... at some point, this death by 1,000 cuts will be effective."

"[Head Start cuts are] really unprecedented damage to the social safety net for families."

Elisabeth Wright Burak, who studies child health policy at the Georgetown University

The Club PUBlication 04/21/2025

4/21/2025

Weather Service losses are growing
Looming gaps raise fears as the severe storm season ramps up.
By SCOTT DANCE The Washington Post

At least 300 National Weather Service employees were expected to take the latest federal buyout offer by a Thursday deadline, departures the agency's top official told employees could leave many forecast offices around the country with half the meteorologists they need to properly monitor extreme weather threats.

The losses will be widespread across the agency, which faced a growing number of impending retirements even before this year's departures began. Eight of the Weather Service's 122 local forecast offices soon will have seven or fewer meteorologists to do the work of 12 to 15 people, NWS Director Ken Graham told his colleagues in a briefing this week, according to two people familiar with his comments.

Some meteorologists and public officials warned that these reductions, which leave the agency nearly 20% smaller than it was when President Donald Trump took office, could have deadly consequences when storms next strike. As forecast offices grapple with the changes, a memo obtained by the Washington Post also details ways they should cut back on certain services, including weather balloon launches.

The looming gaps have elevated fears particularly for forecasters in central states, including in the heart of the country, where tornadoes and menacing storms are frequent. As severe storm season ramps up, it's the offices in places such as Kansas City, Omaha, Louisville, Des Moines and Grand Rapids that were facing the most significant staffing shortages after buyouts earlier this year, according to people familiar with the agency.

"You can only stretch things so much," said Alan Gerard, who recently retired from the National Severe Storms Laboratory and was previously the meteorologist-in-charge at the Weather Service in Jackson, Miss. "Eventually, things start to break."

While there are many sources of weather forecasts, from smartphone apps to broadcast radio and TV, the Weather Service's data and predictions undergird them all. The agency is also responsible for warning the public when a tornado, hurricane or other extreme weather threat is imminent.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the websites of several of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's six regional climate centers went dark because of a funding lapse .

"This isn't about finding government waste; this isn't about finding fraud. This is about making sure the United States of America is protected," said Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., who worked as a television meteorologist before joining Congress. "I am incredibly worried about the safety of my own constituents."

The Club PUBlication 04/14/2025

4/14/2025

Make America Great Again, meet ‘beggar thy neighbor’
"beggar thy neighbor"
describes a selfish and ultimately often counterproductive approach to international economic relations, where one nation tries to prosper by impoverishing others. This approach was particularly prevalent during the Great Depression in the 1930s and is largely discouraged by modern international institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO).
JENNIFER BROOKS Columnist

IN PROTEST OF THE PRESIDENT, A MASSIVE WAVE OF HUMANITY DECENDED ON THE MN CAPITOL ON SATURDAY.

"Don't be stupid,"
said President Donald Trump, as Americans here and across the country rose in massive protests over the weekend against the chaos he'd unleashed.
"Don't be weak."

His skittish advisers assured Americans that the pain they're experiencing, as the economy is thrown into chaos and our national image is thrown in the woodchipper, is simply an "adjustment."

Much as your morning commute might be adjusted if the bus driver yanked the wheel for no reason and rammed full-speed into a wall.

"The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO," the president posted in caps-locked glee on his personal social media platform. "Don't be Weak!
Don't be Stupid! Don't be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!).

Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!"
The main result of the president tanking the economy for no particular reason played out in St. Paul and countless other American cities on Saturday. A massive wave of humanity descended on the Minnesota Capitol: retirees, young parents, teachers, scientists.
Thousands of people, possibly tens of thousands, filling the grounds around the Minnesota Legislature. A massive "I'm With Stupid" signal, pointing straight back at the White House.

The protest signs read.

Hands off science,
Hands off our Medicaid.
Hands off education.
Hands off veterans.
Hands off our civil rights.

Hands off everything, basically, that Elon Musk and his imaginary government agency have had a hand in these past few months.
Most Americans, it seems, would like to pay less for groceries, not more. We liked watching our retirement savings increase, not crater. We liked helping other nations through natural disasters and feeding starving babies on the other side of the planet because it was the decent thing to do. We liked it when Canada was elbows down, not up.

So far, we PANICANS have watched the richest man on the planet throw our neighbors out of work, hollow out our government, defund cancer research and dismantle safeguards that kept water drinkable, air breathable and food edible.
We've watched the names and faces of our heroes vanish from government websites, libraries and museum exhibits.
Harriet Tubman. Medgar Evers. Casualties in the war on diversity, history, civil rights and truth.

Our retirement savings have dwindled along with our hopes that we'll ever be able to collect the Social Security and Medicare we've paid into all our lives. We've watched our closest allies issue warnings against travel to America, because there's a nonzero chance any one of us could get shipped off to some nightmarish Salvadoran supermax without due process.

Now a nation that was absolutely furious about the price of eggs is facing tariff-driven price hikes on ... almost everything we love, basically.
Coffee. Clothing. Shoes. Both chocolate and vanilla.

Tariffs as crippling as they are baffling. It's like someone only read the first half of the paragraph about the Smoot- Hawley tariffs in high school history and just thought tariffs sounded cool.

They skipped the part about how punitive tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression and sparked a cycle of retaliatory tariffs.

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone had a motto: "We all do better when we all do better."

This is the opposite of that.
"Beggar thy neighbor," economists call it. You only win if everyone else loses. Including your own citizens, apparently.

The bodies of four American service members who died during a training exercise in Lithuania returned home last week. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and thousands of mourners lined the roads in Vilnius.
The president of the United States was not there to witness the dignified transfer when the flight landed at Dover Air Force Base. Instead, Trump headed to Florida for the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament.

The only surprising thing about the massive protests that swept the country over the weekend is that they didn't happen sooner.
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The Club PUBlication 04/07/2025

4/7/2025

S&P 500, Nasdaq facing worst quarter since 2022
Investors wary amid barrage of new tariffs.
By AARON GREGG and JEFF STEIN The Washington Post

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes are on track to clock their worst quarter since spring 2022 as the Trump administration's evolving trade policies rattle Wall Street.

Investors have struggled to find a foothold amid a barrage of new tariffs, which have been subject to repeated announcements and reversals since Inauguration Day. In addition, worrisome new economic data pointing to a consumer spending slowdown has reignited recession fears.

The stock market downturn has entirely erased the short-lived rally that followed Trump's November election win, when investors pinned their hopes on pro-business policies such as tax cuts and deregulation. As of midday Monday, the S&P 500 was down by more than 5% since the start of the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq index is off more than 11% for the year. The Dow Jones industrial average, which includes a narrower set of stocks, is off 2% since the start of the year.
The sell-off comes amid news that Trump is now pushing for more sweeping tariffs on Wednesday, which he has billed "Liberation Day" for the U.S. economy.

Top Trump aides had previously said they would impose new tariffs on "the Dirty 15," or the 15% of nations determined by the administration to have the worst trade practices. That proposal would target a huge swath of U.S. trade but could pave the way for individual deals with countries and allow specific tariffs to be gradually reduced.

In recent days, however, Trump has pressed advisers to return to his 2024 presidential campaign plan to impose a single, universal rate on all U.S. trading partners as high as 20%.

Without providing specifics, White House aide Peter Navarro said Sunday that Trump's tariffs would raise $600 billion per year, or $6 trillion over 10 years, which appeared to reflect the universal tariff plan.

And on Sunday night, Trump gave his first public indication that imposing a single tariff on imports from every country remains on the table.

As the tariff threat heats up, analysts say the stock market will hit significant volatility, with much depending on what happens Wednesday.

"The April 2 deadline could be a major directional catalyst for most global markets, in either direction," wrote Larry Tentarelli, chief technical strategist for the Blue Chip Daily Trend Report, in a note to investors.

White House officials are studying a 1977 law that gives the president emergency powers as a way to enact 20% tariffs on all imports, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.

The White House has previously announced tariffs on the auto sector and on Sunday reiterated interest in tariffs on lumber and pharmaceuticals.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said he believes that the auto tariffs, in particular, will "send the auto industry into upside-down mode" as the automakers struggle to reconcile their global supply chains with steep new import duties,
upping the average car price by $5,000 to $10,000.