The Daily Signal - 'Permanent, Irreversible Harm': How Trump is Protecting Parents From Losing Kids to Transgenderism

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

There are not enough homes for every foster child, yet under the Biden administration, children were put in the system because of their parents’ beliefs about gender, according to Assistant Secretary of Health Alex Adams. Adams, who oversees the Administration of Children and Families, is working to stop Child Protective Services from taking kids away from their families because the parents won’t affirm the child’s transgender identity. “When a child is removed from a family, you are inflicting permanent, irreversible harm on both the child as well as the parents,” Adams told The Daily Signal. “That's not a decision that should be made lightly, and it should be reserved to the most significant cases of abuse or neglect as judged by a court.”  👉For more videos like this, subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube channel and enable notifications to be alerted the second a new video drops: https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm with HHS Assistant Secretary for the Administration of Children and Families, Alex Adams. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Glad to be here. First, let's talk about your program, a home for every child. What is this? And what are you hoping to accomplish? Yeah, well, I would start in November when President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump issued an executive order called Fostering the Future.

What that did, it set up a whole of government approach to improving child welfare outcomes across multiple agencies, treasuries involved, office personnel management is involved, housing and urban development is involved and then HHS has a role to play as well. At the administration for children and families, the largest thing we're doing responsive to the executive order is a home for every child campaign. What we mean by that is we have two few foster homes. Nationwide, if I have 100 foster kids coming in the system, we only have 57 homes to care for them.

And when we have that gap, kids end up in non-traditional settings. They end up in government offices, hotels, Airbnbs, things that are not conducive to long-term child outcomes. So we're trying to increase the ratio of homes to kids. And there's two ways to do that. You can either prevent kids coming into foster care in the first place. That's the most important thing you can do. As President Trump said, the best foster care system is one that is not needed.

So we're trying to prevent entry, wrap around families, keep families together, and prevent the trauma of child removal. That's not possible in all cases. In some cases, there's always going to be significant abuse. So when children come in to the foster care system in those cases, We're trying to ensure they're safe, loving family homes for them and recruiting more and retaining more homes is going to be really important. What states have joined so far? And are there states on the horizon that you see joining as well?

Certainly. Yeah. So we've only been up this for about 100 days, but we already have 15 jurisdictions that have joined 14 states and the District of Columbia. So both red and blue states, you know, states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, then blue states, Kansas, Maryland. District of Columbia, et cetera. So we've seen bipartisan momentum around this, which really speaks to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump building an initiative that transcends party lines. Are there more states in the near future who think are going to be signing on?

There are. We have an embarrassment of riches. We've had so much interest from states that we've been backlogged in getting all of it processed and negotiating the parameters. Because when a state joins home for every child, it's not just a marketing slogan. What it means is the state is updating their program improvement plan on file with the federal government. We're giving them record red tape relief. We're saying, you don't have to file 300-page reports with us because we want to free up your caseworkers to spend time with families and children and prevent foster care entries and handle licensing requests and all of that stuff. In exchange, though, the state has to commit to reporting data to us monthly. We've never had that before.

Most child welfare data gets reported to us a year after the fact, and by the time it's on our website, it's two years out of date. I don't know any leading business in this country that makes data-driven decisions based on data that's two years out of date. So the bet we're making with states is we'll get off your back, we'll cut red tape, we'll give your caseworkers more time. But in exchange, I want more timely data so we can see who's doing well and who's not doing well. So starting this summer, we'll have at least 15 states who are reporting the ratio of homes to kids, along with some chaser measures to demonstrate they're doing it the right way. I said, I want a website somewhere like a power rankings website for college football. These 15 states, who's doing best? Is it Louisiana?

As at Oklahoma, who's doing worse? And I think, you know, kind of the name and shame role will go a lot further than a lot of the, you know, red tape and hoop jumping of previous administrations. Other states are absolutely going to join. We're currently in discussions with more than 10. But our goal, frankly, at the beginning of this administration, was 10 states joining this pilot and we've already exceeded that. So again, I think that's a testament to the momentum that the Trump administration has created. Can you get all 50 states on board, do you think, by the end of the administration?

You know, ultimately these are state decisions. States are going to have to decide what is in their best interest. Do they want to continue filling out reports and draining their caseworker time and energy and not reporting data timely to the federal government? There might be a state here or there that decides that's in their best interest. I haven't found them yet. I would say in all of the states that we've talked to, we've found quite a bit of energy and excitement behind this.

And I think we're going to cross the tipping point of more than half of all states very soon here in the next couple of weeks to months. And I think that will set up a tipping point where we will get most, if not all states. That's great. You know, you had a video a few months ago talking about some of these situations in which there are kids going into foster care where they could remain with their families, where the family, maybe because of their religious affiliation, doesn't affirm the child saying that their transgender CPS takes that child, puts them in the foster care system.

You said that there's things that you're doing at HHS to make sure that this isn't happening. Families aren't getting separated because of gender identity. Could you talk a little bit about what you're doing to stop those cases from happening? We saw that showcased at the State of the Union with Sage Blair, who was taken away from her family. like how big is a problem is this and what can be done about it? Yeah, well, one case is too many. We are trying to prevent foster care entry, period. When a child is removed from a family, you are inflicting permanent irreversible harm on both the child as well as the parents.

That's not a decision that should be made lightly. It should be reserved to the most significant cases of abuse or neglect as judged by a court. It should not be a precipitating factor for foster care and for tree because, because it should be a significant cases of abuse or neglect as judged by a court. because a state child welfare agency has different values than a parent. A state child welfare agency should respect the sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of family. No child should enter foster care because of differences in values like that. So we sent a letter to all states telling them that under federal funding for CAPTA, which is one of the grant programs that we push out to,

state child welfare systems that it is not neglect or abuse and that state should affirmatively clarify that as part of their laws. We're attacking this from multiple different angles. We're preventing children coming into the foster care system because of differences of opinion of sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of families. But we're also attacking this from a foster parent angle as well. Too many states have put in place requirements that foster families need to commit to affirming certain pronouns of children in their custody, that foster parents might have to commit to certain medical procedures, and that's deterring families of faith from stepping forward from fostering as well. So we're attacking it both from

entry and then from a placement decision. We've seen as some movement we'd sent letters to 13 states on their licensing policies. Two states already committed to change those policies, and we're going to continue to try to work with the 11 remaining to do so because, as I said, we have two few foster families nationwide. I only have 57 foster families for every hundred kids coming in. The message that we send to families of faith will either make or break state child welfare systems. Which states agreed to change their policies and then what's the situation with the remaining

ones who haven't committed? Yeah. So Vermont had sent us a letter that they were looking at their policies and committed to changing them. And then Massachusetts had enacted an emergency rule. I will say, you know, we thank Massachusetts, but said we would trust but verify, and I think we'll follow their actions diligently to see if their actions match their statements and that emergency rule.

For the remaining 11, you know, I would say we're continuing to have dialogue and continuing to have a discussion internally with other units within HHS about what the most appropriate next steps would be. Can you withhold funding from those states or what's kind of your message to those states? Potentially. So, I mean, if you look at the fostering the future executive order that President Trump and First Lady Melani Trump signed, Section 4 was about engaging with faith-based communities and taking all appropriate actions necessary to ensure that states are not violating sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions. So we're going to look at all those actions, funding, regulation changes, all of those things are things that are part of the discussion. You said that you only want foster to be taking away these kids from families where there's genuine situations of abuse that aren't going to change. In the past, parent not affirming the child's gender identity has been treated as abuse. How is the term of administration viewing this differently?

Yeah. So, again, it's a subset of states that are doing that. And like I said, we sent a letter to all 50 states saying that under federal law, it should not meet a definition of either neglect or abuse to violate a parent sincerely held religious. just believe some moral convictions around issues of biological reality and no child should enter into foster care because of a difference of opinion between the parents and a child welfare agency on biological reality. And you talked about you're looking to open up more homes. There's this amount.

There's more children than there are homes right now. Do you think that opening up foster care to these religious parents who might have been disqualified by their stance on gender identity previously will really help solve this problem and create a lot more homes for these kids. Yeah, I mean, statistically, families of faith are more likely to raise their hand and run towards the foster care system to begin with. If you just look at the numbers, if every house of worship in the country had just one family who committed to fostering, our ratio of homes to kids would be four to one.

And if we did that, we would have homes waiting on kids, not kids waiting on homes. So we have to be very deliberate, authentically engaging with the faith-based community. The messages that we send to them will either welcome them or deter them. We want to roll out the red carpet. Prior to this role, I was in Idaho. I ran Idaho's HHS agency, and one of the things we did there is we stood up a faith-based office, and we brought in a dedicated personnel whose sole job was to work with the faith community, go to churches, talk from the pulpit about the need in the state and what

some of the benefits and the challenges were. And I saw firsthand how it delivered results. When I was in Idaho, we had 74 homes for every 100 kids. When I started, when I left, we had 104 homes for every 100 kids. In between, we got congregate care down. We got kids out of group homes. We stopped putting kids in hotels and Airbnbs. I saw the outcomes improve rapidly. And it was a combination of things by engaging the faith-based community was one of the most important levers we had to pull. Some of the instances we've seen of these kids being taken away from their parents because they're identifying as transgender, they're usually happening in blue states like California.

Are you optimistic that even these blue states that are so supportive of these types of policies can get on board with what you're doing? Certainly that's the hope. I mean, again, we've seen bipartisan momentum today. We have both red states and blue states who have already joined the Home for Every Child campaign. And in the coming weeks, as I kind of previewed, we're going to be rolling out additional states. They'll be both red and blue.

And I think what we're going to do with us is each state's going to have to report the ratio of homes to kids. And it's going to be reported in an apples-to-apples formats. We'll see how Louisiana is doing compared to Missouri. We're going to see how Missouri is doing compared to Delaware, how is Delaware compared to other states that are participating. And I think we'll know pretty quickly, I think you'll see pretty quickly when the website gets set up this summer, that some states have a higher ratio than others. So then the natural question is going to be why. Why are some states higher than others?

How are states engaging their faith-based community? What policies have states put in place? How are those either facilitating or detracting from foster care licensing or foster care entry? And I think what we're hoping that we'll do is that we'll drive more evidence-based decisions around what are the appropriate policies and what's working and what's not working. Another thing that you've been really involved with is cutting regulation. Looks like you've cut around 36,000 pages of regulatory guidance.

What's the reason for this? Yeah, well, you know, Arkansas backs my days at the state level. Regulations rise like rockets, but fall like feathers. We stand them up too quickly and we're too slow to get them off of the books. So I've been a big proponent of what I call zero-based regulation. It's kind of a twist on zero base budget where it's, let's presume none of our regulations are necessary. And if we're going to start from scratch, what would we actually want to regulate on? So we did that with our sub-regulatory guidance.

When I started, I asked around how many pages of sub-regulatory guidance do we have? The answer is nobody knew. So guidance documents, unlike regulations, operate in this kind of like gray area where they're not inventoryed. They're not all published. Some of them in the most literal sense live in just the drawers of some of the senior staff here. So we did a comprehensive inventory. And then we went through each document one by one

and said, is this still necessary? Does this still align with this administration's policy priorities? And we got rid of three quarters of them in one swoop. In a single action, we got rid of 36,000 pages. And you haven't seen any outcomes change. You haven't heard any screaming from the heavens. It demonstrates that most of the most of those things are completely unnecessary. They end up being guidance documents for grants

that haven't existed since the Carter administration. It ends up being trite recognitions of World Water Day and other things that previous administrations might have prioritized. But let me tell you what that means to a grant recipient. A lot of what my agency does is push out grants to states, and then the states are the direct administrators. Coming from a state, you get these grants, and then you get all of these strings attached to them. So then if you want to use the grant in a certain way, maybe can I use this grant to help stay at home parents, or can I use this grant in this manner?

You look at the statute, you look at the regulations, and then you have to worry, is there a guidance document out there somewhere that exists only in the drawer of some bureaucrat who's been whining and wait since 1994 to say, how did you not know this technical bulletin existed? So by getting rid of the gunk, cleaning out the gutters, what we're doing is we're sending a message to states that we are going to laser

focus on our statutes and our regs. And for the few guidance documents that remain, those are the ones that we prioritize. Those are the ones that we care about and we put them all in a central website for our grantees. You touched all this a little bit, but some people might hear about this massive deregulation in ACF and think, does this mean that kids will be in less safe environments, lower quality standards for foster homes? How would you respond to that type of concern? Yeah, so I've always been a believer in deregulating the right way. So when we got all of those subregulatory guidance documents off the books, we did it by hand with the program officers and the careers, and we had them put in writing what their rationale was to either keep it or not keep it. And then we had circulated that within the administration so that others could take a look at that list and make sure there was nothing that they believed was necessary.

And then we publicly posted everything that we rescinded. We put out an archived website that clearly identified what was rescinded so that any member of the public could relitigate that. And all I've heard is crickets. I think processes matter. I think how you go about these matter. What I would say generally is we at ACF are the financier and the overseer. Almost everything we do goes through state governments. And I think it's states that are much more appropriate to set a lot of these parameters for these grants.

So, you know, we talked about a home for every child. And with that, you know, we are saying these 300-page reports that were coming to us that literally nobody here read, nobody read. And maybe at best we ran them through JATGBT to look for oddities. But those reports that we were getting was creating busy work, but it wasn't creating outcomes. So the bet we're making is that by deregulating, taking away some of that tiki-tackey red tape, we're actually going to free up more time at the state level. And then states set the laws for their foster care system. They set the laws for what licensing standards are.

If we believe a state is going in the wrong direction, if we believe a state is adding red tape that's going to prevent a family of faith from stepping forward, will intervene in those instances. But in general, it's a trust but verify with the states. Is this something that you think could outlast its Trump administration where these regulations have been cut? Do you think the next administration would reinstate them or do you think this is something that will last for many years? Yeah.

Well, certainly I think recent Supreme Court actions have dampened enthusiasm around bureaucrats who wanted to add net new regulations. I think with some of the recent Supreme Court actions, it's going to be much harder to justify regulatory actions unless they are clearly and expressly stated in statute. So by clearing out a lot of this gunk, I do think future administrations are going to have to pick and choose where they engage in terms of what they add back. But the other thing I would say is, like I ran four agencies at the state level. The only path to permanency isn't a statute change, it's not a regulatory change, is creating

something that is so well supported by the public that is difficult to rein in. The fact that only 100 days in, we've had 15 states join this home for every child campaign, and I've got states banging on our door downstairs, bagging to join. I think we're going to reach that tipping point very soon where more than half of all states are on, and then I do think most, if not all, states will join. So the concept of red tape relief from the feds and more of an outcome-based model of reporting data to ACF more frequently for the trust but verify, I think that's going to be hard to rein in. And maybe the next administration comes in and takes the home for every child banner off the wall.

But I do think the concept of what we're building is going to be durable based on the demonstrable actions of states clamoring to join this. I think you're working on that some people might not be aware of is dealing with the orphan tax where an orphan, their parents, there's sort of a death tax on them where they're not receiving the money that their parents left behind, maybe from Social Security. What is this and what are you doing to make change in this area? Yeah, no, I'm glad you asked. When I was in Idaho, I ran our state child welfare system, and first time I heard about this, they said it was such a cynical thing that there's no way this existed. And what it is, as you described, a parent worked and through their work, they earned social security benefits.

However, the parent died before they were able to cash out those benefits. So they pass it down to their child. And it might be the only support that deceased parent can leave their remaining child. In some cases, that child then enters foster care. The foster care system, the state child welfare agency, is now the parent for that child. And in too many states, states were saying, hey,

that child's in our custody. We're going to take that money from them to help offset our costs, salaries, overhead, you know, transportation, foster care maintenance payments. Those are expenses those states are incurring for every other child, but they're asking the orphans to cover it for themselves. So that's why it's called the orphan tax. States are taxing orphans at 100% of their benefits to offset government expenses. It is literally the worst of the worst government I have come across.

So we sent a letter in December to the 39 states who he said we're stealing those benefits from orphans in December. Yeah, we've had about 10 states change it in the legislative cycle this year. Nebraska's Governor Jim Pillon signed an executive order almost immediately. Governor Landry signed an executive order almost immediately. Alabama adopted a regulation to end it. We've seen legislation that has passed in Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, and Kentucky. In Kentucky, Governor Bashir vetoed it, but luckily the legislature in a bipartisan fashion absolutely steamrolled him and said, we're going to stand with these orpherson.

not Governor Bashir's bureaucrats. And we've seen a lot of momentum, but as I said, there were 11 states initially. We added maybe about 10 this session. So we're at about 21 states that have ended in some form or fashion the orphan tax. We've got a long way to go. We're going to keep at this. And I think it's wrong. I think it's morally wrong.

And we're going to use every lever available to us. We started with Honey and we sent a letter to governors asking to work with them in their offices. And we're probably going to build their way to do. We're probably going to build our way up to the vinegar side of the house and maybe start conditioning some of our grants on it or taking other actions to demonstrate to states. A moral wrong will never be right. The one thing I would add, every governor has the ability to end this today through courage and executive action. Several Republican governors ended it through executive order. I would challenge Governor Walls in Minnesota to end this through executive action and others.

And let's do right by these orphans. What kind of challenges does this create for orphans when they age out of the foster care system? What kind of world are they facing because of this tax? Yeah. So, I mean, this is an area where First Lady Melania Trump has advocated a lot for youth transitioning out of foster care. And they have often the worst outcomes in life. Only 3% of them complete higher education. Depending on what period of time you look at, 20 to 25% of them might be experiencing homelessness at any year. point in time. So having the resources that their parents left for them might change the entire trajectory between success or failure in life. That's a down payment on a house. It's help with

rent. It's education or career technical education. So we're going to look for ways to continue to preserve those resources so that when youth age out of foster care, they have the resources necessary to be successful. This is something of the Biden administration tried to work on as well, I believe on the orphan tax, kind of why do you think that those efforts were less successful and how do you believe that what you're doing, is it different? Will it be more successful than what we've seen in the past? We mean it. I would say the Biden administration put out thin gruel on this and basically tried to create

the perception that they cared about the issue without taking any actual actions or traveling around estates. I'm actually going to be in a state next week to, doing a vet with the governor who's going to be ending it. And, you know, we mean what we say. And we're going to continue to push on this. And states can even cash the disability checks of children. Is that correct?

And what can be done about that? Yeah. Certainly some states have addressed both. We've been laser focused on the survivor's benefit aspect of it because it was an earned benefit of the parent. The disability benefit is a little bit more complicated under federal policy because if If you accumulate too much there, you might lose eligibility for certain benefits within Title IV. It's a little bit more of a hydraulic system. So it takes a little bit more to disentangle, which is why we focused heavily on the survivor's

benefit side right now. What's your message to states who have not yet done something about this orphan tax? What would you say to them in hopes that they'll change this policy? Yeah. Moral wrong will never be right. Let's do right by these kids. If you're not asking other kids in the foster care system to cover their full freight, and you should not, you should not be taxing your orphans, arguably, your most vulnerable.

And I think the other thing I would say is the only argument we've heard against it ends up being budget. I'm a former state budget director. For six legislative sessions, I ran a state budget, everything from education funding to transportation funding. There is no state budget director that I have ever come across. that wants to balance their budget on the backs of orphans. Have an honest conversation with your state budget director, put a little bit of elbow grease in this, and demonstrate the creativity with which I know

every state budget director and child welfare director in the country can muster. Speaking of the budget, the president's budget came out a few weeks ago and had some specific reform suggestions for ACF for the Head Start program. Could you describe what that budget is calling for and how you're going to be playing this out

if that's approved? Certainly. Yeah, I'm very excited about what President Trump is doing with Head Start. It's part of a broader child care affordability agenda for sure. If you just look at what President Trump did in the first term, signs in the largest nominal increase in child care funding in U.S. history, doubled child tax credit. He's got an incredible record on this, and we're proud to support that. Head Start is part of that broader agenda. With that, the president's budget said, Head Start is too regulated federally. It's two one-size-fits-all. Head Start regs come from ACF and push out to all 1600 centers, regardless of where they're located. And some states might choose different parameters. So the suggestion with the budget is that we work more closely with states and leverage

state health and safety standards, leverage state education requirements, state ratios of pupil to teacher, and work more closely with states. rather than set one size fits all parameters. What works in Ohio might be different than Vermont. What works in Vermont might be different than Massachusetts or Florida. So leveraging the state laws where possible for, and we think in so doing that will allow us to cover more Head Start spots. Right now, Head Start is one of those programs where the budget is going up,

the number of kids covered is going down. I just met with one of the predecessors who ran Head Start in a previous administration, and she was saying in her time, we had more than a million kids in Head Start. Today, it's around 750,000 or fewer. Costs are going up, kids are going down, and maybe there's some alternate pathways. And I think the president's direction in the budget is an exciting one that we look forward to working with with the stakeholder community. The term administration has started working with a different provider.

to run the National Human Trafficking Hotline after there were concerns that calls from people being trafficked were not being answered. Could you describe how this has been going, kind of some of the positive changes or changes that you've seen from this new provider taking over? Yeah, so sometimes no news is good news. Yeah, we did a competitive bed

and through that competitive process, we selected a vendor. We had a transition period to make sure that there was no gap because human trafficking is one of those. is one of those significant issues that you need people to be able to access services whenever they need it and wherever they need it.

So we had a diligent rollout plan to ensure that there were no gaps in service and I'm not aware of any issues that have been reported. We, I know when we changed, there was some outreach to some of the attorney generals and others who had raised some of the initial concerns and I have not heard any of those continued concerns since. When it comes to human trafficking, a big concern we've heard about throughout the Trump administration

is the missing migrant children who may be being trafficked. Could you talk a little bit about your side of working on that issue of all these children that we don't know where they are, and many of them have been found, but could you talk about your... Yeah, so HHS basically set up a war room to start to track down those missing children and have made contact with tens of thousands of them. I think the last number I saw was like 140,000, but I'd have to double check that. They have done yeoman's work, chasing down these children, and getting them the resources they need

and preventing them from being trafficked or other things like the previous administration fast-track them too. The other thing is the President's border policies are clearly working. We are almost at a record low of current kids in our custody as unaccompanied alien children. And I think just three years ago,

we were at 23,000 kids in care. And the last I saw was around 1900. So the border policies are working. Kids are not flooding here in vulnerable situations. They're not being trafficked through fast track sponsorship, through poorly vetted sponsors. And, you know, I commend the broader border policies of this administration. What's next for that effort to find the remaining children, even though so many have been found, some have not been tracked down. What can we expect to see from this?

You're going to see continued effort because these protecting children's safety and preventing them from trafficking is so important. One last question for you. Foster care is, of course, a huge priority for First Lady Melania Trump. What's it like to work with her on this subject? No, her office has been incredible. So there's no argument First Lady Melania Trump is the highest ranking public official to have ever engaged directly in the foster care issue.

And it's something that her and her office care deeply about. They engaged on this in the first term. They engaged in it between administrations, and they put it front and center by signing that executive order last November. I know the six-month anniversary of that executive order is coming up in May. And we'll be talking a lot about all of the accomplishments under that. You know, we've talked about a home for every child. We've talked about some of the work to engage faith-based providers. But there's been a lot of other work with IT systems improvements for child welfare and others.

I think you're going to really show a track record of success. As a former state child welfare agency director, I will say if we follow the First Lady's directives to a T, we'll make a meaningful difference for children throughout this country. The other thing I'd say is First Lady just went up to Capitol Hill to talk about some legislative reforms to benefit all. older foster youth to help them with education and training vouchers, to help them with housing. And I know if we can get that legislation across the finish line, it will make a real difference for children as well. So grateful for her efforts and grateful for the partnership. That's great to hear.

Well, thank you so much for sitting down for this conversation today. Thank you.