The Brief

The Trump administration on Thursday proposed significant changes to Head Start, the nation's early education program for children from low-income families. The move would diminish the program's federal standards and give states and parents more control.

"We have 1,600 Head Start providers across the country," Alex Adams, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' assistant secretary for family support, said in a call with reporters. "And one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington cannot fully account for the realities facing these 1,600 grantees."

Head Start not only provides preschool and childcare, but also meals and support services for qualifying families. It now serves more than 700,000 kids each year from birth to age 5.

Since its launch in 1965, the $12 billion HHS program has, for the most part, enjoyed bipartisan support. Lawmakers often cite it as a success — including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the call with reporters announcing these changes. But in recent years, some conservatives have criticized Head Start, saying it wastes money and fails to have a lasting impact on students.

Aiming to cut costs

The new proposal would limit the amount of money Head Start centers can spend on administrative overhead, from a 15% cap to 5%. This change should save the government $2.2 billion, Adams said, which it plans to reinvest in the program. The goal is to create 200,000 more spots for children, he said.

To get those costs down, the administration said it proposes cutting regulations and "compliance-driven activities," according to a press release. Similarly, they are shifting decisions about several standards — such as student-teacher ratios, education requirements, background checks and transportation practices — back to states.

Childcare providers are not sold on the proposal.

"If we look at the previous actions of the administration, what they have done is not in favor of expanding the program," said Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, senior vice president with Start Early, an Illinois-based Head Start partner.

"Is it enough to just bring kids in the door if we're not actually giving kids and families what they need?"

Sanchez Fuentes said administrative costs are not only things like payroll and day-to-day operations, but also help fill gaps in care. "If you, for example, have children with disabilities you [can use] some of those funds to pay for additional special services or staff with specialties who could come in and support kids."

The administration's proposal also says parents are children's primary teachers and seeks to bring in more parent opinions on "structure and curriculum" into the classrooms and emphasizes nutrition and exercise.

Loosening the standards

Head Start's current standards are laid out in a detailed 133-page guide. The manual is used not only by the program's centers, but also by many unaffiliated private childcare centers across the country.

These standards include safety guidelines, spell out who is eligible for Head Start and provide detailed rules — such as the requirement that kids in the program brush their teeth once daily with fluoride toothpaste.

Erica Phillips, the executive director for the National Association for Family Child Care, said about 10% of her members are Early Head Start childcare partners, while the rest are home-based providers around the country.

"The Head Start performance standards were a consistent … evidence-based set of standards," she said. "It can be helpful to have a nationally recognized benchmark."

Phillips said her organization will be on the lookout for variations across states. She said she worries "quality is now dependent on your ZIP code or on your geography."

The Trump administration sees it differently.

"Flexibility is permission. It's not a mandate," Adams said. "The opportunity for these programs to make a different decision does not necessarily mean they must make a different decision."

The changes did not come as a complete surprise: The conservative Heritage Foundation has long criticized the program, saying it "doesn't work." In Project 2025, the foundation's policy blueprint that the Trump administration has taken many cues from, the message is clear — eliminate Head Start.

Advocates see what they characterize as the erosion of quality and decrease in standards as the first step in dismantling the program.

A long runway

Thursday's announcement came in the form of a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM. It kicks off a lengthy, formalized process of public comment and talks with stakeholders. It could be six months to a year before any new standards take effect.

"I just really want folks to know Head Start is open," said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the National Head Start Association (NHSA), a nonprofit that advocates for the program. "The quality of Head Start children and families truly comes from the people that are running Head Start programs. Those folks are going to be the same. They're going to be able to do that."

The administration says the NPRM will be published in the Federal Register on Friday and be open to public comment for 60 days.

Edited by: Natalie Escobar
Copyright 2026 NPR

A recent report from Feeding America shows food insecurity increased year over year between 2022 and 2024. Advocates say today’s reality could be much worse.

The report published last week showed that about 1 in 6 kids in Orange County experienced food insecurity in 2024 — that’s up 27% from the year before.

For some advocates, the report published last week was not surprising.

“With the SNAP benefits being reduced and the persistent inflation, particularly food inflation and energy inflation, and the lack of wages keeping up, something's got to give,” LaVal Brewer, president and CEO at South County Outreach, said.

Experts say the snapshot of food insecurity in Orange County could tell us more about today’s needs.

Who else did the report capture? 

Overall, 1 in 8 O.C. residents were food insecure in 2024 — up 6% from the year before.

The problem also disproportionately affected communities of color. According to the report, 29% of Black residents and 18% of Latinos in Orange County experienced food insecurity.

Nearly half of people experiencing food insecurity have incomes too high to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

What does it mean to be food insecure? 

Food insecurity is not knowing where your next meal will come from. A lot of factors can lead to this, like low or inconsistent income, access to nutritious foods and the cost of living.

Claudia Bonilla Keller, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, told LAist some people might not doubt that they’ll have access to food, but they might not know what they’re having for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

What does this report tell us about today? 

The findings from this report were recorded in 2024, before the federal government made changes to food programs, like SNAP. Experts say food insecurity today is likely much worse and worsening.

“Since the sunsetting of the COVID-era benefits, the onset of inflation and the high price of fuel, and now changes to the safety net, what we've seen is a constant downward,” Keller said.

The report is compiled annually using data from national survey responses, local unemployment rates, and median incomes across all U.S. counties.

What to know about hunger 

Keller said food insecurity ebbs and flows throughout the year, but spikes in the summer.

“But for families with children, we know that it spikes in the summer, also at the end of the year, for the long holiday breaks when students lose access to federally reimbursed meals,” Keller said. “Those meals can be two, even three, that families depend on to feed their kids.”

Bill Bracken is the founder and executive director of Bracken’s Kitchen — a nonprofit that specializes in food rescue, culinary training and feeding the community.

In the summer, he said, children suffer the most, and the same can be said for some college students.

“We just happened to walk past a student who saw our logo on our uniforms and stopped and thanked us so much because he recognized the logo from the meals he gets from the (UCI) Food Hub,” Bracken said. “He's so grateful and just happy that we're able to provide something that he can pop in the microwave and eat right away.”

Nevertheless, like hunger, food waste is also at an all-time high.

“That's the sad part,” Bracken told LAist. “With all the need, we're still wasting more food than ever before. We're going to rescue more food this year than we ever have, and we'll produce more meals than we ever have.”

When information is collected again, Brewer said, the numbers will be significantly worse, especially for those who no longer qualify for food benefits.

“Those people who were not spending money on food because they were receiving a benefit from the federal government, from our tax dollars, no longer have that support,” Brewer said. “It's not like those people just suddenly earned more money to be able to cover their food costs.”

Rent, mortgage, car notes, and child care are non-negotiables, Brewer added, “so you're going to be food insecure because that's something you can actually manage and control.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Two years ago, California hit a milestone decades in the making: Nearly every person in the state qualified for health insurance, regardless of immigration status and income, pushing the state’s insured rate to a record 95%. Now that progress is unravelling.

Facing budget shortfalls and new federal restrictions, state leaders have begun rolling back the coverage system they built. Analysis at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research projects California's uninsured rate could nearly double, to almost 15%, by 2030.

“I knew it was going to be bad, but seeing that doubling was shocking to me,” said Miranda Dietz, director of the labor center’s healthcare program.

An estimated 2.2 million people could lose insurance over the next four years from combined state and federal cuts, the researchers found. The losses will fall hardest on undocumented immigrants and low-income Californians, with the uninsured rate more than doubling among Black and Asian Californians. The southern part of the state will bear the brunt, driven by its larger share of low-income and immigrant residents.

Many Californians remember how difficult it was to get healthcare before the state expanded and improved insurance options.

In 2008, Kandi Hill had just given birth to her third child. When she started throwing up and experiencing irregular menstrual cycles with heavy bleeding, she struggled to find a doctor who would run any tests other than an STD panel. In a matter of months, she died from stage four cervical cancer. She was 31.

Cervical cancer has a 91% five-year survival rate if caught and treated early, according to the National Cancer Institute, but back then the Medi-Cal system was bare bones, and doctors didn’t seem to take poor Black patients seriously, said her husband, Ramonte Means.

Means was left to raise two small children and an infant alone. He has been the sole provider for his family ever since, often working part-time and frequently without insurance, stitching together multiple jobs — janitorial work, customer service, job coaching — to make ends meet. Usually, Means said, his employers won’t give him full-time hours so that they don’t have to provide benefits. With multiple part-time jobs, he tries to keep his income low enough to qualify for Medi-Cal and ensure his kids stay covered too. He'd rather get insurance through an employer, but he can't afford a plan out-of-pocket.

“None of us want anything for free. I work two jobs. My kids go to school,” Means said. “We’re just asking for some dignity.”

Today’s Medi-Cal isn’t perfect, Means says, but it’s much better than when his wife died — patients have more benefits and can see specialists.

“I truly believe if all this happened now, she’d have been fine,” Means said. “The system failed my kids more than anything — failed the whole family.”

Millions gain coverage

When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, California quickly expanded its Medicaid program. Previously, the program was reserved for women and children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Low-income adults were excluded unless they had dependent children. The law allowed California to open enrollment to childless adults and raised the income limit to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $22,000 for an individual today.

More than 5 million Californians gained coverage, including Means, who had occasionally earned too much money before the change.

“So 138% poverty is not a lot of money in terms of increasing income, but when you talk about how many people actually become eligible, it has a significant impact,” said Nadereh Pourat, associate director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

An additional 1.7 million middle-income Californians bought insurance through the commercial Affordable Care Act marketplace known as Covered California.

“That’s a huge policy change,” said Rachel Linn Gish, spokesperson for Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group. “Millions and millions and millions of Californians covered in 10 years. No other state can say that.”

Still, one major group remained uninsured: undocumented immigrants. They account for about 2.3 million residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Newsom: The healthcare governor

Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on a promise to bring single-payer healthcare to the state. He pivoted to expanding access within the existing system — transforming Medi-Cal with new benefits and a focus on high-quality primary care.

The Democratic governor’s administration also launched the state’s second-largest coverage expansion, phasing in Medi-Cal eligibility for low-income undocumented adults until all adults and children qualified in 2024.

“We’re making sure that universal access to healthcare coverage becomes a reality here in California,” Newsom said in 2022 when the state allowed undocumented seniors to enroll in Medi-Cal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom listens as former state Sen. Richard Pan speaks about the need to make insulin available to everyone for $30 during the Tour of the State of California at Kaiser Permanente’s Central Refill Pharmacy in Downey on March 18, 2023.

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Keith Birmingham

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At its peak, the state-funded expansion covered 1.4 million adults and 217,000 children and cost more than $10 billion a year.

Republican lawmakers have sharply criticized that price tag, and increasingly, so have moderate Democrats.

“We need to have cost containment,” said Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, when the state passed last year’s budget.

Total Medi-Cal spending has more than doubled since Newsom took office in 2019, growing from about $96 billion to $217 billion this year. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office attributes most of that growth to higher spending per recipient — added benefits, higher drug prices and some demographic changes — rather than enrollment alone. People are seeing doctors more, and each visit is more expensive.

Medi-Cal cuts loom

Orlando and Lourdes are immigrants from El Salvador. CalMatters is using only their middle names because they fear being identified by immigration officials. Orlando has lived in Los Angeles for more than 20 years and works in construction with a work permit. Lourdes manages a store and is undocumented.

Recent federal immigration raids have already upended their lives. They’ve had to counsel their 6-year-old daughter that there are “good police” and “bad police.” Now Lourdes, who needs radiation therapy for cancer, worries about losing her Medi-Cal insurance.

To slow Medi-Cal’s growth, the state froze enrollment for undocumented adults starting in January; roughly 86,000 fewer undocumented immigrants are covered.

Starting next summer, immigrants without legal status will lose dental benefits and face new monthly premiums. These and cuts to coverage for some legal immigrants are expected to push about 800,000 people off insurance, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

“We pay taxes every year. We deserve to have health insurance,” Orlando said.

Services have also been curtailed more broadly. Last year, the state dropped coverage of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic for people who are simply overweight, keeping them only for more serious diagnoses like diabetes. This year, lawmakers scaled back wraparound services, including case management and medical meal-delivery services for low-income patients. They also reinstated a wealth test that caps how much savings an enrollee can have, regardless of their income, which advocates say punishes people for building a financial cushion.

The cuts have stirred outcry from lawmakers on the left, some of whom want the state to raise revenue through corporate taxes or other means rather than shrink Medi-Cal.

Left to right, Vanesa Duran, lead care manager at St. John’s Community Health, talks with Patient Maria Gomez, at a group home in Compton on Feb. 6, 2026.

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Grace Calderon, HIV testing counselor and community health worker for St. John’s Community Health, takes a blood sample from a patient at a St. John’s Community Health mobile clinic in Los Angeles on Feb. 6, 2026.

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CalMatters

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Bukola Olusanya, regional medical director for St. John’s Community Health, inside a mobile clinic van parked in Los Angeles on Feb. 6, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach and chair of the Latino Caucus, said she pressed Newsom and his team twice to save benefits for undocumented people.

“I said this is legacy work for you, and I don’t want you to ever forget that,” Gonzalez said. “For this to happen was just really surprising.”

Linn Gish credited Newsom with supporting healthcare access "from day one" but called the recent rollbacks disappointing: “We hoped he would be a champion until the end.”

Newsom’s office declined an interview request. In a statement, the Department of Health Care Services emphasized that the Legislature voted to approve the budget that included the cuts and said Newsom remains committed to “responsibly” supporting universal coverage.

“Gov. Newsom has consistently highlighted California’s coverage gains as central to his broader commitment to universal healthcare coverage and a more inclusive safety net,” the statement said.

Federal challenges

Many Democrats, Newsom chief among them, blame President Donald Trump, whose One Big Beautiful Bill tax reform law rewrote Medi-Cal rules and cut federal funding to California. The law also let enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire, contributing to a 140,000-person drop in Covered California enrollment. State officials estimate the Medi-Cal program could lose more than $30 billion annually once federal changes fully take effect in 2027.

The biggest change: Many adults must now prove they’re working or volunteering at least 80 hours each month. Research has shown most low-income adults already meet requirements but lose coverage anyway because of bureaucratic errors.

“All it takes is one piece of lost mail and all of a sudden you lose coverage … and things can snowball,” said Dylan Roby, a health policy researcher and professor at UC Irvine.

Combined with shorter eligibility periods, the state estimates this will cause 1.3 million people to lose insurance in the next four years.

Those losses won’t be spread evenly. Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California could see the steepest declines, according to the Labor Center, which also projects that Latino Californians will lose coverage faster than other groups.

Linnea Koopmans, CEO of Local Health Plans of California, which represents Medi-Cal insurers, said the combined cuts will create a two-tiered system of haves and have-nots.

“There’s a lot at stake and a lot to be lost,” Koopmans said.

But some Republican lawmakers counter that blaming Washington, D.C. is disingenuous. California has run deficits for four straight years, predating most federal restrictions, which haven’t even taken effect yet.

Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican from Roseville and vice chair of the budget committee, put the current impact of federal healthcare restrictions at $3 billion out of a $351 billion state budget.

“It’s difficult (to argue) that the woes are being caused by the federal government,” Niello said, calling the state’s spending problem structural. Revenues have grown, but spending has grown faster.

The current budget leaves the toughest healthcare decisions to the next governor.

“Gov. Newsom says he solved the deficit for the next governor. He hasn’t,” Niello said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.