This was so wrong. Contempt for democracy. Contempt for children's rights. Ccntempt for the Rule of Law. From New York Times:
The Trump administration illegally withheld funding from a roughly $12 billion federal child care program known as Head Start, according to congressional investigators, who said that President Trump and his top aides had wrongly interrupted the flow of money enacted by Congress.
The disruption appeared to be resolved by June, according to the Government Accountability Office, a legislative oversight agency. But its conclusions, published Wednesday, still referenced reports showing that the government’s actions may have caused immense financial hardship to some child-care services, which struggled to receive federal aid for about three months.
It was the third time this year that the congressional watchdog, known as the G.A.O., faulted the administration for defying Congress and trying to reconfigure the nation’s budget unilaterally. And the findings underscored the stakes of a simmering battle between Capitol Hill and the White House over the power of the purse.
The Head Start program funds child care and other services for families in poverty, serving roughly 800,000 children up to age 5, according to recent federal estimates. Even though the safety-net initiative has long enjoyed bipartisan support, Mr. Trump considered proposing its full elimination as part of his fiscal blueprint for 2026, calling its curriculum “radical.”
The president ultimately backed off the idea once he issued his full budget this spring. But some Head Start centers still began to report significant difficulties in getting federal funds that Congress had already approved. Democrats soon alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, had stopped providing grants on a timely basis. By April, party lawmakers had determined that the program had supplied about $1 billion less than it had compared with the same time a year earlier.
Facing significant disruptions, local Head Start associations joined parents and other groups in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in April. The groups charged that the funding delays were “unlawful acts in service of an unlawful goal” to undermine Head Start “in blatant contravention of congressional directives.”
On Wednesday, the accountability office came to a similar conclusion. It found that the Trump administration had “significantly reduced the rate of disbursement of funds for Head Start grant programs” between Jan. 20, the day Mr. Trump took office, until mid-April, compared with the same period a year earlier.
The watchdog acknowledged that the administration by June had supplied funding at a rate comparable to past years. But the G.A.O. still concluded that the previous interruptions violated a 1970s law that limits the president’s ability to withhold enacted funds, a move known as impoundment.
The law aims to protect lawmakers’ budgetary powers from presidential encroachment, since the Constitution chiefly affords spending responsibilities to Congress. The congressional watchdog found earlier this year that the Trump administration had similarly violated the anti-impoundment rules when it held up infrastructure funding and money for museums and libraries.
A spokeswoman for the White House budget office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its leader, Russell T. Vought, has denied past allegations that the administration illegally impounded funds, while arguing that the law itself is unconstitutional. Mr. Vought has also signaled he could try to push the limits of those rules to cancel billions of dollars in spending closer to the end of the fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30.
As they look to sidestep Congress to conform the budget to the president’s views, Mr. Trump’s top aides have also attacked the watchdog. The White House has derided the investigators’ work as partisan, questioned their legal findings and worked alongside House Republicans in a bid to block nearly four dozen open inquiries into its spending cuts, according to documents previously viewed by The New York Times.
The accountability office is a roughly century-old, nonpartisan advisory arm of the Capitol, and it long has produced reports — welcomed by both parties — identifying waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. It is also tasked under law to investigate allegations of impoundment, with the power to sue the administration to force the release of frozen funds.
Officials at the G.A.O. recently informed members of Congress that they planned to retain outside legal counsel in case they needed to bring a case. The leader of the office — Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general — said in an interview that a lawsuit is a last resort and that no decisions about legal action have been made.
“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start — but that’s not his choice to make,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington who leads her party on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee. She added in a statement that the president needed to “ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely, consistent way moving forward.”
Representative Rosa DeLauro, the leading Democratic appropriator from Connecticut, went as far as to call for Mr. Vought’s removal on Wednesday. Other Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have similarly called for his firing.
In a statement, Ms. DeLauro said the White House budget director is “behind the illegal stealing of congressionally directed funds and must be removed from his position.”
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