What did Donald Trump do today?

He stopped making legally required federal aid payments for needy children to states run by Democrats.

Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal cash assistance program that gives block grants to states to provide for basic welfare for poor families. The Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) underwrites child care programs so that parents in low-income families can work. Social Services Block Grants (SSBG) fund foster care programs, adoption services, and other child welfare services. All three are funded by Congressional appropriation through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Today, and without offering any legal justification, Trump froze all of those funds to five states: Minnesota, California, New York, Illinois, and Colorado, or about 22% of the country by population. This means that about half a million people from TANF alone will be without the food assistance American taxpayers have already funded, and federally subsidized daycares are likely to shut down abruptly.

Trump's administration claims it was because of suspected fraud, although there is no direct evidence of unusual fraud in any of those states, and an active investigation in only one of them. What they do have in common is that they are states with Democratic governors and heavily Democratic-leaning electorates.

To be clear, there is almost certainly fraud in each of these programs in every state. As a rule, it is not difficult to defraud any government. The trick, as Trump knows from extensive and bitter personal experience, is getting away with it. 

Trump has recently made Minnesotan children in particular a political target recently precisely because its government, led by 2024 vice-presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz, had found fraud and taken action about it. Some of the fraud that Walz's government found was committed by Somali immigrants. Trump has targeted the Somali-American community, many of whom live in Minnesota, with racist attacks on their patriotism. 

Today's freeze seems to have been done in great haste in an attempt to keep Trump's version of that story in the news: identical letters requesting audit documents from Minnesota specifically went out to all five states 

It's been just over seven weeks since Trump last unlawfully stopped payments to help American children in low-income families who rely on federal subsidies for food and care. That came during the record-long shutdown at the end of last year over Trump's refusal to fund health care for 24 million Americans whose insurance comes through the Affordable Care Act.

Why does this matter?

• Punishing poor children to hurt your political enemies is evil. 

• No matter how many times he pretends otherwise, Donald Trump is not above the law. 

• Fraudsters who live in glass White Houses shouldn't throw stones.