Trump administration reportedly freezes all childcare payments to all states

The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday, just hours after department officials announced that they had frozen childcare funding to Minnesota.

States’ funds, the unnamed official said, will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”.

The department did not immediately reply to a Guardian request for comment on the report, but HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told ABC News that “it’s the onus of the state to make sure that these funds, these federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, are being used for legitimate purposes”.

Recipients of childcare funding will have to provide HHS with extensive documentation, such as “attendance records, licensing, inspection and monitoring reports, complaints and investigations”, Nixon added.

Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, an HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families, announced on Tuesday evening that they had frozen the funding for Minnesota’s childcare services as part of a response to a viral video, made by a self-described “independent journalist” and rightwing influencer, that purported to discover massive fraud at daycare centers operated by Somali Americans in Minneapolis.

However, other news outlets have not been able to verify the claims made in the video. Allegations of exploitation of Minnesota’s social safety net have also been extensively covered by local and national news media over the past several years, and prosecutors brought charges over one allegedly massive scheme during the Biden administration.

In recent weeks, Trump has intensified his xenophobic attacks on Somali Americans, including his long-running nemesis Ilhan Omar, a representative from Minnesota who is Somali American and came to the US as a refugee. He has said that Omar is “garbage” and said Somalia is “no good for a reason”.

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said in one December cabinet meeting. “Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”

Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota who is running for re-election this year, denounced the Trump administration’s freeze of Minnesota’s funding as part of “Trump’s long game”.

“We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue - but this has been his plan all along,” Walz said in a Tuesday post on X.