Trump’s New Front Line: America’s Children
This war on care has met its match. Families are fighting back. Stand with them.
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In This Issue
Learn how Trump’s agenda puts children in danger.
Share the families fighting back with everything they have.
Join the networks making this war on kids impossible to ignore.
Bo is six. He loves books and disappears into fantasy while the real world keeps testing him. He also lives with a rare disease and depends on Medicaid to stay safe. Without that coverage, his parents face bankruptcy, homelessness, and the possibility of institutionalizing him. His life reveals a truth many Americans are only beginning to confront. When the Trump administration took power in January, leaders did not trim budgets. They targeted children’s bodies, health, and futures with intent.
Falsehoods Take the Place of Public Health
In September, Donald Trump told parents there was “no reason” to give newborns the hepatitis B vaccine. Decades of evidence from the CDC and AAP show the opposite. Infants face the highest risk at birth, can contract hepatitis B during delivery, and may live with lifelong liver damage without the early protections confirmed in clinical research.
Pediatricians warned that Trump’s claim put infants in danger. Vaccine specialists confronted his misinformation in expert analyses. Trump ignored them and pushed deeper into myths that scientists have already debunked in rigorous studies.
A vaccine advisory panel newly packed with RFK Jr loyalists then voted to remove the hepatitis B birth dose from the childhood schedule, a move chronicled in public health reporting. Trump followed by signing an order to restructure the entire schedule to match countries that accept more disease and lower protection thresholds, documented in the federal directive itself.
Outbreaks followed this retreat from science. Texas and New Mexico recorded measles spikes that spread rapidly through unvaccinated clusters, confirmed in state alerts and CDC surveillance. Measles can cause pneumonia, brain swelling, and death. Immunization schedules exist because decades of research show how to prevent exactly these outbreaks.
The children who suffer first are the ones with the least protection. Low income families, immigrant parents, and communities of color now face shrinking coverage and rising misinformation at the same time, a crisis tracked in Medicaid and child health research.
Coverage Shrinks and Emergencies Multiply
A ten year old girl named Aisha lives with severe asthma. Her mother works part time at minimum wage. She earns too much for many assistance programs but far too little to afford private insurance or a three hundred dollar inhaler. Medicaid filled the gap until her state tightened eligibility and buried families in paperwork. One missed deadline cut Aisha off.
Her mother rationed her own medication to keep a roof over their heads. Aisha waited until she could not breathe before using her inhaler. Patterns like this appear across states that reduced Medicaid access. In March she landed in the emergency room during a severe attack. The bill exceeded ten thousand dollars. Continuous coverage would have prevented the crisis.
Aisha does not need rare or experimental treatment. She needs an inhaler. Medicaid exists for that purpose. When leaders strip coverage, children pay the price.
Cuts Built Into the Budget
The 2025 budget removed more than eight billion dollars from Medicaid and CHIP. These programs insure roughly forty million children. Policy analysts and legal experts at Manatt Health and the Urban Institute detail how the cuts pushed states to adopt new documentation barriers and narrow eligibility rules that knocked families off coverage overnight.
Medicaid covers most children in poverty, nearly half of all births in the United States, and millions of children with disabilities and special health needs, as recorded in child welfare and health system data. Several states also removed lawfully present immigrant children from eligibility, deepening racial and economic inequities documented by immigrant health researchers.
These outcomes were not accidental. They were part of a coordinated assault on the safety net that keeps vulnerable children alive.
Families and Advocates Refuse to Look Away
Families are fighting back. In 2017, two mothers, Elena Hung and Michelle Morrison, began bringing their medically complex children into congressional offices. Reporters named them the Little Lobbyists because their children, with ventilators, wheelchairs, and feeding tubes, became the most powerful advocates in Washington. When Republicans pushed for new cuts in 2025, the Little Lobbyists returned with more families and more resolve.
More than three hundred organizations joined them. Pediatric hospitals, disability rights groups, and immigrant justice networks warned Congress that cuts would bankrupt families and force medically fragile children into institutions. Medical associations urged lawmakers to reject the cuts and protect families from catastrophic loss.
Their message is clear. Choose children over cruelty.
Where We Go From Here
Bo still loves books. Aisha still needs her inhaler. Babies born today still need the hepatitis B shot at birth. Children in foster care still need therapy, medication, and stability. These facts do not change because political leaders pretend otherwise.
Trump’s war on care targets the children least able to defend themselves. Our answer must be louder than the harm. Support the Little Lobbyists. Fight vaccine misinformation with evidence based information. Help families navigate renewals and appeals. Back the coalitions holding the line. Vote for leaders who refuse to bargain with children’s lives.
The kids are watching. And they are counting on all of us.
Share These Stories Everywhere
Take Action for the Kids
Protecting children requires more than outrage. It requires movement. Here are the places where your voice, your shares, and your support have immediate impact.
Support the Little Lobbyists.
These families are on the front lines fighting to protect medically complex children from cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, and home based care. Donate or sign up for alerts through Little Lobbyists.
Track what your state is cutting.
Many states added new documentation hurdles or stripped children from coverage. Use the KFF Medicaid tracker to see what is happening where you live and how many children remain at risk.
Get informed about federal changes.
The administration’s health directives and vaccine schedule overhaul are documented in the Federal Register. Understanding the policy helps you fight it.
Back the coalitions holding the line.
Read the analyses from Manatt Health and the Urban Institute on how these cuts destabilize care. Follow frontline organizations. When they call for pressure, apply it.
I understand the need for Medicare and Medicaid, as my mother, as well as myself and two siblings during childhood years. If we did not have these programs available, I do not know if we would have survived.
It is time for our leaders in Washington, especially the Republicans, to star putting people first, and far above tax cuts for the wealthiest. Reading these stories, if our leaders took the time to do so, these situations could have easily happened to them