With 20 years of experience running a preschool behind him, Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) described the Trump administration’s recent push to freeze federal child care funds in five states as hitting close to home.
“As that applies to California, it means we are kind of out of the business of helping parents, kids, and providers until we can figure out a way to reconstruct our programs,” Hart told the Sun. “All of the programs we run have federal funding threaded through them. Every single one. … And we don’t have the money ready to backfill it.”
On Jan. 6, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced its intention to suspend access to certain federal child care and family assistance funds in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. All five are blue states.
HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill stated that the proposed freeze—including $2.3 billion allocated for California services—followed “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.”
“Families who rely on child care and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” O’Neill said in a statement. “This action reflects our commitment to program integrity, fiscal responsibility, and compliance with federal requirements.”
At a recent subcommittee hearing in Sacramento, Hart said that representatives of California’s Department of Social Services laid out the agency’s audit methodology to address HHS concerns.
“They really were able to describe a very robust system that exists now that protects taxpayer dollars and makes sure these needed investments go where they’re needed to go,” Hart said, recalling the Jan. 28 hearing. “What the administration is using as their justification is allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse. … All it would take is a 10-minute conversation [to] explain, ‘Hey, here’s all the things we do.’
“But federal government didn’t want to have that conversation,” Hart continued. “We had this hearing to surface this and put a spotlight on it.”
Hart is the chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight, which held the meeting. The subcommittee plans to hold future deliberations to revisit the child care topic in the coming months.
Two days after HHS announced its plan to freeze funds, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration, alleging that the proposal is unlawful and unconstitutional.
“HHS has not provided any evidence to support [its] claims,” Bonta said in a Jan. 8 statement. “It is especially pathetic that [this] administration’s actions are inflicting harm on the most vulnerable among us.”
As of Feb. 3, the funding freeze was paused thanks to a court order that followed California and other states’ lawsuits.
Another gripe Assemblymember Hart has with the freeze is its timing, as some day care facilities in Santa Barbara County and beyond are still recovering from the negative impacts of the pandemic, he said.
“COVID really devastated the day care business because folks couldn’t go outside and take their kids to preschools,” said Hart, who was elected to the state Assembly in 2022. “Many providers lost their momentum and went out of business, and we have only now recently begun to regain service ability around the state.”
This article appears in February 5 – February 12, 2026.