American women and children are in crisis. Republicans are about to make it worse

The Guardian

16-04-2025

Women and children are under threat in America.
Jocelyn Smith of Roswell, New Mexico, knows this too well. 'I'm disabled, taking care of my disabled daughter. I work, and I volunteer to help feed and house my community,' she told me. 'Yet I need assistance affording meals for my family. Something is broken.'
Smith knows, but did you know, that in the United States, nearly 43% of women – and almost half of all children – are poor or low-income? And that last year, families with children experienced the largest single-year increase in homelessness, with nearly 40% more people in families with children experiencing homelessness?
And what if I told you that Donald Trump's agenda – expressed through his more than 100 harmful executive actions, Elon Musk's Doge cuts, and his budget making its way through his Republican-majority Congress – will make things even worse for women and children?
I bet you'll be pretty angry. Smith is.
'Is Congress working on any of this?' she asks about the struggles of working families. 'Unfortunately, no.' As she wrote in a recent op-ed, 'they're doing the opposite right now. In fact, the GOP budget proposal could slash $880 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from food assistance. They're also cutting government agencies that assist with affordable housing, transportation, safety, veterans, and children with disabilities.'
The final amounts of those cuts will vary, but the numbers stand to be huge and devastating. Why? Because the GOP is looking for at least $4.5tn in more tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. 'They are reaching into my very shallow pockets, into my daughter's life-saving medical care to pay for it,' Smith says.
A new paper I co-authored for Repairers of the Breach and the Institute for Policy Studies tries to reckon with what these costs would mean for working Americans. For women and children, we found that some of the harshest blows will come in healthcare access and in help putting food on the table.
Nearly one in five women and almost half of all children rely on Medicaid or its Children's Health Insurance Program for healthcare. The House Republican budget resolution calls for potential cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid – as much as $880bn by 2034, as Smith points out.
And a shocking 9 million people, disproportionately women and children, could lose all food assistance under the proposed supplemental nutrition assistance (Snap) cuts. Children could also miss out on food at school, since the Republican House budget proposal also calls for a $12bn cut to public schools' free and reduced meals programs. This would eliminate 24,000 schools – serving 12 million students – from the program.
Beyond food and healthcare, these cuts and proposals would also harm women and children in countless other ways.
Nationally, women are already paid 18% less than men, which contributes to their higher likelihood of poverty. But now, nearly 3 million pregnant workers are at risk of losing their jobs amid doubts that Trump will properly enforce the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which provides worker protections for pregnant women. That's especially egregious when you consider that 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where their reproductive rights have been either eliminated or significantly eroded since justices appointed by Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade.
Trump's budget cuts could also lead to 40,000 children losing their childcare – and affect 2.4 million children's access to childcare and early childhood education. That could have negative effects that follow those kids around the rest of their lives, in addition to imposing greater hardships on their parents.
Other cuts target funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research on health disparities, including Black maternal and fetal health, as well as $11.4bn in state and community health department grants. And of course all this comes alongside Trump's anti-DEI executive actions, which target anti-discrimination protections for transgender children and transgender women.
One of the few winners in this budget is the mass deportation system, which is poised to see significant increases. Yet the immigration raids and deportations this will fund will separate families – including up to 4.4 million US citizen children with an undocumented parent and another 850,000 undocumented minors.
None of this is popular. By large majorities, Americans across the political spectrum oppose cuts to Medicaid, Snap and other safety net programs, as well as deportations that separate families and target Dreamers who came here as young children. It's no wonder that countless women and children were among the millions who turned out for 5 April's 'Hands Off' rallies.
I agree with Jocelyn Smith, who asks: 'I don't think this is fair. Do you?'
Karen Dolan is a federal safety net expert and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.