Some States Are Boosting Reproductive Health Access, Maternal Health, Child Care

The Republican-majority U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to uphold a Trump administration policy banning abortion care and counseling for veterans at Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities. Last year, the Trump administration overturned a Biden-era policy that made abortion procedures and counseling in cases of rape, incest or a medical emergency available at VA facilities.
Source

Original

Minnesota Child Care Providers Try to Stay Afloat as Families Keep Kids Home

Two weeks into January, the director of a St. Paul child care center called a family to ask why their daughter had been absent on-and-off since late last year. “We reached out to just see, ‘Hey, what’s going on? Is your child sick?’” said Angela Clair, whose child care center serves more than 70 children. The girl’s mother answered the phone. “ICE is in our neighborhood every…
Source

Original

Hochul, Mamdani Unveil Free, Universal Child Care Expansion in New York

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a plan to provide free child care for 2-year-olds and expand other child care support for thousands more children across the state on Thursday, in one of the first major steps toward fulfilling Mamdani’s campaign pledge of universal access. The governor said that the state is fully funding the first two years of a…
Source

Original

Trump Threatens Child Care Funding Across the US After Bogus Social Media Claim

The Trump administration has reportedly frozen federal child care subsidies for every state in the U.S. after a right-wing social media influencer made a debunked video purporting to show fraud in Somali-run daycares in Minnesota this week. On Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Jim O’Neill said that the agency had frozen all child care payments to Minnesota following…
Source

Original

Many Warned That a Child Care Cliff Was Coming. It’s Now Here.

For the past year, families in need of child care assistance in Indiana have been sitting on a waitlist that has ballooned from 3,000 to 30,000 kids. It’s still climbing — and no one is coming off of it. Emily Pike, the executive director of New Hope For Families in Bloomington, which cares for children experiencing homelessness, can’t remember a time when no families were coming off the…
Source

Original