By Clara Nowak
On Dec. 30, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) froze the distribution of child care funding to Minnesota. A week later, HHS announced that several child care and family assistance funding programs would also be frozen for California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York. The total funds frozen now amount to over $10 billion.
The “evidence” of fraud that sparked the initial freeze in Minnesota was a YouTube video targeting Somali child care providers, in line with recent attacks on the community, posted on December 26 and spread by Trump regime officials. None of the allegations in the video have been substantiated.
The Somali community in Minnesota, the largest in the U.S., was already being targeted by ICE forces in Operation Metro Surge. The allegations of fraud were used to justify the rapid deployment of additional ICE officers to the area. On the morning of Jan. 7, a week after the escalation of ICE activity, officers in Minneapolis murdered a legal observer.
The regime has not presented any specific allegations of fraud in California, Colorado, Illinois, or New York; in the announcement of the expanded freeze, HHS cites only “credible concerns about fraud or misuse.” Officials have said that the funds will be cut off for as long as the states “refuse to cooperate with developing plans that would end the fraud” and until HHS determines that “states are in compliance with federal requirements.” This is part of a larger pattern of financial threats and political retaliation against the populations of Democrat-led states.
Countless people rely on these programs to meet their basic needs. TANF, the program that accounts for the largest share of the frozen funds, provides cash assistance to hundreds of thousands of families between the five states currently being targeted. The CCDF, the child care assistance fund at the center of the fraud allegations in Minnesota, is used by over one-hundred thousand families in California alone. Even a brief disruption to these programs has long-lasting effects on families and on their communities.
