The Trump administration is making a mockery of the very actual challenge of kid abuse because it peddles faux tales to advance its political targets — all whereas undermining respectable efforts to guard youngsters from hurt.
Throughout the president’s videotaped Cupboard assembly Wednesday — which appeared little greater than a chance to show officials fawning over him — Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made some mind-boggling allegations in regards to the division he now heads. Kennedy advised that underneath President Joe Biden it had been a “principal vector on this nation for baby trafficking” and a “collaborator in baby trafficking for intercourse and for slavery.” (The declare appears to originate from a Republican misreading, promoted by Trump, of a DHS report about youngsters’s nonappearance at immigration courtroom.) There may be actually no reality to those QAnon-esque ramblings — and Kennedy didn’t provide any.
However his lie is all of the extra vexing as a result of the Trump administration’s unilateral slashing of federally funded packages is definitely undercutting advocates for kids who’re liable to abuse or already affected by it.
For instance, the administration simply final week issued deep cuts to a program that helps information abused youngsters into secure and steady environments. This system, referred to as Courtroom Appointed Particular Advocates Guardians Advert Litem (abbreviated as CASA/GAL or CASA), said it had been notified by the Trump administration that its congressionally approved grants had been axed as a result of they “not effectuate this system targets or company priorities.”
As author V Spehar recently wrote, these cuts undermine efforts to fight precisely the trafficking Trump and his administration declare they wish to struggle:
CASA’s providers fluctuate from state to state, however they typically assist any baby in an abusive or neglectful place. In accordance with CASA’s 2023 annual report, practically 201,000 youngsters had been helped in 2023 alone. Included on this quantity are victims of the opioid disaster, youngsters with incarcerated mother and father, and victims of kid intercourse trafficking. We’re speaking about probably a whole bunch of hundreds of youngsters being helped by VOLUNTEERS.
Spehar defined the cuts depart many CASA chapters within the lurch, suspending tens of hundreds of {dollars} — and in a single case, a whole bunch of hundreds — in funds vital to delivering on its mission to guard at-risk youngsters.
“Not all of CASA’s native, independently run chapters depend on federal funding,” Spehar stated, “however sufficient of them do this the cuts are an existential nightmare of kinds for kids and advocates in every single place. It feels deeply hypocritical for the person who as soon as claimed to ‘struggle for the unvoiced’ within the conflict on human trafficking to chop funding to this diploma.”
Certainly, with regards to combating baby abuse, Trump and his motion appear extra targeted on efficiency and posturing than substance. And extra desirous about using children as pawns in political games than in really defending them. As a result of if the president, his HHS secretary or the administration extra broadly had been genuinely invested in preventing baby abuse and baby intercourse trafficking, it wouldn’t be slashing funds that stop exactly this abuse.
This text was initially revealed on MSNBC.com
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