Top Trump administration officials have escalated their standoff with Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families, warning the state agency could potentially lose millions of dollars if it does not turn over reams of clients’ personal data related to attendance in child care programs.
The demands were issued in two Jan. 15 letters to the department’s Commissioner Tikki Brown, obtained by Youth Services Insider Friday. They follow less-threatening requests sent in December by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Administration for Children and Families.
The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For months, President Trump, Trump-aligned commentators and top administration officials have claimed that scammers, especially non-citizen kids or child care providers, are fraudulently benefiting from federal child care subsidies.
Dozens of people in Minnesota are already being criminally prosecuted for the widespread misuse of social services funds in recent years, but the cases have prompted Trump officials to take far more expansive action against the Democratic-led state. The state is being told to turn over identifying data on all its participants in federally funded child care programs, including enrollment, attendance and inspection records — a request it has so far failed to comply with.
Penalties will be levied if a new 60-day deadline is not met, writes Alex Adams, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). In a second letter, Laurie Todd-Smith, deputy assistant secretary Todd-Smith’s letter notified Brown that federal officials would make an “oversight visit focused on Program Integrity and Accountability and Provider Inspections” to the state agency’s offices Thursday and Friday this week. The two Jan. 15 letters were first reported by The New York Post.
As of press time, it wasn’t clear exactly how much money the Trump administration may be able to claw back from Minnesota under federal regulations governing the Child Care and Development Fund — the child care funds now in dispute. The Post reported that it may be “hundreds of millions of federal dollars,” and cited the nearly $185 million in taxpayer dollars for child care that went to Minnesota last fiscal year.
Federal regulations indicate that states would have to return any funds that were misused, and could face additional penalties. States can also be disqualified “from the receipt of further funding.”
In recent months, the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented and controversial crackdown on a variety of fronts in Minnesota, a state governed by one of President Donald Trump’s top critics, former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. The crackdown has included a visible and at times deadly surge of immigration enforcement, and an attempted freeze on food aid funding for low-income families.
Earlier this month, Adams spearheaded a separate multibillion-dollar funding freeze on child care and social services funding, based on thus-far unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud and misuse of funds. The effort targeted Minnesota along with four other Democratically led states, including New York. Both that directive and the food aid freeze have been temporarily blocked by judges, following lawsuits.
And Democrats continue to push back.
In a Thursday letter addressed to Adams and to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), ranking Senate Democrats from New York demand that Kennedy and Adams “immediately reverse its disastrous, illegal decision to freeze more than $10 billion in federal child care and social services funding.”
Echoing vigorous pushback from Minnesota’s Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand write that “any delay in funding will be catastrophic for families, children, workers, and communities across New York.”
“This funding freeze is putting hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers’ livelihoods at risk without providing any legitimate justification for doing so,” the pair wrote.
The senators ask Adams to detail the evidence of “extensive and systemic fraud” in New York that he alleges. They also note that Adams’ agency has been hobbled in its ability to investigate fraud and provide basic oversight, due to the Trump administration’s firing of “a substantial number of career staff at ACF and the HHS Inspector General.”
“Simply withholding funds will not fix fraud,” they state. “Instead, it will destabilize an already fragile child care and social safety net system.”