OMB Director Russell Vought is weaponizing federal funding for child care, food, and Medicaid in blue cities and states, seriously endangering people’s lives and livelihoods.
This newsletter was originally published on our Substack. Read and subscribe here.
Note: This newsletter is slightly modified excerpts of a report published on Revolving Door Project’s website. For a deeper dive into Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign and the resulting material harms to people, please see the report here.
Our last two Watchdog Weekly newsletters focused on how Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is waging a war against “wokeism” and “fraud” as a sham justification for freezing, cutting, and withholding federal funding for public health, disaster aid, and other essential programs in Democratic-led cities and states. In the final installment of this three-part series, we examine how Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign against Trump’s perceived political enemies has targeted federal funding for child care, food, and Medicaid, putting people in potential mortal danger.
Child Care
Vought’s 2023 budget proposal issued by Center for Renewing America, a right-wing think tank founded by Vought in 2021, emphasized making changes to the Administration for Children and Families by “reducing and eliminating ineffective and questionable programs along with curbing agency subdivisions that reward the political left at the expense of the national interest.” It also called on states to “focus their efforts on moving recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) off of welfare and into work,” signaling support for reducing the TANF block grant and contingency fund, and recommended a discontinuation of the Social Services Block Grant.
All of the above is now being pursued through Vought’s war on “fraud.”
Much like how Minnesota served as the test ground for the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, the Democratic-led state has become the guinea pig for Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign.
In December 2025, the Trump administration froze $185 million in child day care center funds for Minnesota. The decision was made amid fraud allegations stemming from a right-wing influencer’s video accusing day care centers of accepting government assistance without providing child care services, a claim that has been debunked.
The following month, the Trump administration froze around $10 billion for five Democratic-led states, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, due to “fraud” concerns. Like in Minnesota, however, there is no evidence that fraud is taking place in the other four states.
The freeze applies to three programs overseen by the administration’s Administration for Children and Families: Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and Social Services Block Grant.
All three programs assist hundreds of thousands of low-income households with children, not just for child welfare but also for foster care services.
The likely consequences of Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign are harrowing. “Many of the families at my center are one paycheck away from becoming homeless. If child care assistance is turned off, children can’t come to care, that means their parents can’t go to work,” Maria Snider, director of a Minnesota child care center, told the Imprint news publication. “I’m genuinely scared for what can happen next if funding is stopped. I can’t help but think this is part of a larger designed plan and strategy to cut public funding.”
The Campaign for Children, an advocacy organization for children, said in a statement: “A blanket freeze on needed assistance for children and their families will at best cause confusion and uncertainty, and at worst, will result in the closure of child care providers, the loss of jobs for both child care professionals and parents, and a reduction in quality care for kids.”
In April 2026, a federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing the more than $10 billion in child care and family assistance funding in a lawsuit brought by unions and small businesses.
“The families I serve in Palmdale, California often commute 90+ minutes to and from work daily. For these janitors, grocery store workers, and delivery drivers, access to child care is the difference between putting food on the table and going hungry. Child care also means peace of mind; the parents I support know their children are safe and learning while they work. When Trump attacked child care, he underestimated what providers mean to the families we serve, and our resolve in fighting back,” Wendy Bobadilla, a child care provider in Palmdale, California who is a member of Child Care Providers United and the SEIU Local 99 union, said in response to the court’s order.
A separate ongoing lawsuit brought by the five affected states also won a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump administration from implementing the Administration for Children and Families’ funding policy and to remove award restrictions.
Medicaid
Medicaid, which provides full or partial health coverage to people with low incomes and resources, has also been swept up in Vought’s war on “fraud.” Again, Vought’s 2023 budget proposal previewed this when he wrote about his concerns that “[r]ecent estimates suggest that as much as one-quarter of all Medicaid spending falls into the category of improper payments, in large part because states do not properly ensure all individuals enrolled in Medicaid are eligible for benefits.” He also complained that a 50% floor that requires the federal government to pay for at least half of a state’s Medicaid costs “encourages wealthy, liberal states…to keep expanding their Medicaid programs.”
Just as fraud has been weaponized by the Trump administration against Minnesota with respect to child care services, so too has it been weaponized against Medicaid in Minnesota.
In January 2026, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) took a compliance action against Minnesota to withhold up to $2 billion annually in federal Medicaid matching funds.
And in February 2026, $259.5 million in Medicaid funding was withheld from Minnesota, with JD Vance tapped as the face of Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign this time. The administration also threatened that $1 billion could be withheld over the next year.
It is especially telling that while the White House decries alleged fraud in Minnesota, it has seemingly memory-holed the alleged fraud engineered by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), a Trump sycophant. Scott was the head of hospital chain Columbia/HCA in the late 1990s when it was accused of systematically defrauding Medicaid, Medicare, and other federally funded health care programs. The chain paid an historic $1.7 billion settlement. If the Trump administration was truly concerned about fraud, it would be going after companies like Scott’s, not pardoning corporate executives convicted of medical fraud.
Hypocrisy aside, Vought’s political persecution comes at the expense of the 1.2 million low-income individuals enrolled in Medicaid in Minnesota.
“Medicaid is a powerful force for good in communities across our country. It covers health screenings, cancer treatment, prenatal care, mental health services, nursing home care, home and community-based services, and a variety of other benefits that allow millions of people to access the care they need to live with dignity,” said Sarah Somers, Legal Director at National Health Law Program, a group of lawyers and policy experts dedicated to advancing health rights in the U.S. “Exaggerated fraud claims are being used as a fig leaf to disguise cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and to intimidate states. When the federal government withholds funding or freezes parts of the program, it creates instability that hurts people first. Families miss appointments. Providers question whether they can continue services. Communities lose trusted sources of care.”
“Medicaid ensures Minnesotans who have physical or developmental disabilities get care and supports they need so they can live independently, with dignity, and contribute to their communities,” a nonpartisan coalition group that advocates for Medicaid beneficiaries in Minnesota wrote in a statement. “Stripping funding from these types of basic health needs is simply cruel.”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness Minnesota added to the chorus of concerns, saying that the federal government’s actions would “disproportionately harm people living with mental illnesses who depend on Medicaid for access to treatment, medications, housing supports and essential community-based services. Medicaid is the largest payer of mental health services in Minnesota. It is not a political bargaining chip; it is a lifeline.”
In April 2026, a federal court refused to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from halting Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota, a huge slap in the face to those most in need.
Food
Vought’s 2023 budget proposal called for reforming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including eliminating the minimum benefit, “to move people out of dependency and back toward the dignity of work.” (The minimum monthly benefit for eligible one- and two-person households in fiscal year 2026 was $24.)
His vision is being executed through his war on “fraud.” In May 2025, the Trump administration announced that states must share extensive SNAP recipient data (historically, states were only ever required to share randomized samples of data) with the federal government as part of a purported anti-fraud push. When 22 states plus D.C., all with Democratic governors or attorneys general, refused to comply, the administration said it would withhold money to help maintain SNAP from those jurisdictions. Affected states included Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.
There are 42 million Americans who receive SNAP benefits, most of whom are children, elderly, or people with disabilities in low-income households.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at Food Research and Action Center, a group dedicated to fighting poverty-related hunger, told the Washington Post that the Trump administration keeps parroting “there’s fraud, waste and abuse, when we do know that that is incorrect.”
Even a temporary pause in SNAP benefits means “people can die,” Lindsay Allen, a health economist at Northwestern University, explained to Stat News. “Food insecurity in and of itself is a health risk,” she added. “As soon as SNAP benefits stop, you see immediate declines in dietary quality and in ongoing nutritional stability.”
In February 2026, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s plans to withhold SNAP funding from states who declined to provide the requested data.
But that’s not the end of it. Vought’s war on “wokeism” has also been invoked to hold SNAP funding hostage. The Trump administration issued a vague set of conditions for 2026 to coerce states that are not already ideologically aligned with Trump to certify compliance with “all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws, regulations and policies” and prohibits using funds to “promote gender ideology” or from being “directed towards educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.” Failure to comply with these arbitrary guidelines means states risk losing billions of dollars in agricultural and food assistance funding, including for SNAP.
A coalition of 20 Democratic-led states, plus D.C., have once again sued the Trump administration over these actions, leaving millions of Americans’ fates at the mercy of courts (and Vought).
More to Come
Vought’s war on “wokeism” and “fraud,” a thinly veiled way to attack Trump’s political enemies, is set to continue.
Under his leadership, the OMB has submitted a budget request for fiscal year 2027 with a focus on eliminating “woke” spending. There are no signs that Vought’s war on “fraud” is slowing down either. In fact, it’s ramping up. In March 2026, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz sent letters to the Democratic governors of California, Maine, and New York about alleged Medicaid fraud in their states. Just a week after freezing Medicaid funding in Minnesota, the White House launched an anti-fraud investigation in New York, threatening to defer Medicaid payments. And in May, Vance announced that the administration was freezing $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding to California, citing fraud concerns.
As with Minnesota, the results will likely be catastrophic. Doug Moore, executive director of United Domestic Workers of America, a union that represents home and child care workers, said in a powerful statement:
“It’s clear that the Trump administration is using a politically motivated attack to try and create a fraud scandal where none exists. In the process, the most vulnerable Californians—seniors, people with disabilities, and their caregivers—are being used as political pawns. These are not numbers on a page—these are real people with serious health needs being cast aside for a cheap political stunt. The real scandal is the carelessness with which politicians disregard our community members in order to line the pockets of their billionaire friends. Last year, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress gave away $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, by cutting vital social service programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Our communities rely on these services for survival. Restore the Medicaid funding now and stop playing games with life-saving care.”
Millions of Americans, from students, workers, and educators to children, parents, and elderly, remain caught in the crosshairs as Vought seeks vengeance against those not on board with his ghoulish agenda.
Follow the Revolving Door Project’s work on whatever platform works for you! You can find us on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement
Map: Trump Has Often Delayed or Denied Disaster Aid
Top Jon Husted Senate Aide Kept Working for Ohio Lobbying Firm
Principles for Resilient Homes Grant Programs
The Real Abundance Agenda: Weakening Patent and Copyright Monopolies
Letters from an American: June 12, 2026
What Ever Happened to DOGE? The “OMBification” of the Trump-Musk Payments Crisis
Illinois has struggled to secure federal disaster relief under Trump as FEMA denials draw questions
Image: Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator and one of the masks for Vought’s fiscal retaliation campaign, speaking at a Minneapolis Fraud News Conference. Credit: “Dr Oz speaks at Minneapolis Fraud News Conference” by Chad Davis, May 21, 2026, CC BY 4.0
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