Trump's Federal Funding Freeze Disrupts Head Start and Medicaid Services

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivers the daily briefing at the White House in Washington on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

By  BELINDA FOSTER

Updated 8:10 PM EST, January 28, 2025

WASHINGTON (NB360) — When President Donald Trump halted federal grants and loans through a broad directive, early childhood education centers and states found on Tuesday that they could no longer access the funds they depend on to care for some of the nation’s most disadvantaged families and children.

Nationwide, staff attempting to access Medicaid and Head Start funding via payment websites on Tuesday morning were unable to do so, leaving some scrambling to figure out how to cover payroll, pay vendors, and rent. However, the White House stated hours later that funding for these programs should not have been impacted by the freeze. By late Tuesday, some states and Head Start providers reported that their access to the sites had been restored.

The confusion led some Head Start centers to consider closing. Early Flowers Learning, which operates 17 Head Start preschools with 600 students in southwestern Michigan, announced it would not open on Wednesday due to an inability to pay staff — only to find out that website access had been restored.

“I worry about them, you know, certainly trying to hold it together right now, thinking about some of the children that we serve who might not have access to breakfast and lunch if they don’t have a place to go,” said Chanda Hillman, executive director of Early Flowers Learning.

The funding freeze was temporarily halted by a federal judge late Tuesday, but the disruption highlighted the reliance of programs serving the most vulnerable Americans on the federal government. The White House did not provide details on the cause of the outages — or whether they were related to the directive.

Officials in several states reported that their staff struggled to access the website used to request funds for Medicaid, a federal program providing health care coverage for about 80 million of the nation’s poorest citizens, including millions of children.

Addressing issues with the Medicaid site, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that the administration is “ aware of the Medicaid website portal outage.”

“We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent,” Leavitt wrote. “We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”

On the Head Start payment management system website, some providers received messages stating “Proxy Error” or “System Maintenance in progress, Interactive Access has been shut down.”

In Mississippi’s Harrison County, staff at an Early Head Start program informed parents to pick up their children early after realizing they couldn’t access the funds to remain open.

“Our families are being punched in the gut three times from different angles,” program director Katina Spaulding said. “This is so heartless.”

The center later informed families that it would reopen on Wednesday after learning its funding would not be halted.

In Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, stated that the state’s Medicaid portal was shut down, preventing the state health agency from logging on to seek or receive reimbursements for health services provided to the program’s low-income recipients.