Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is rolling back regulations for Head Start, a federal program that serves some 700,000 of the country’s neediest children, in an apparent effort to curry favor ahead of the midterm elections.
The health secretary, 72, said the Trump administration is cutting federal oversight so the popular program can align more closely with states’ ideologies. Critics fear the removal of federal regulations will be the first step to completely gutting the program, however, freeing states from the requirements to provide many of its core components.
The move appears to be a direct appeal to voters in the final months before November, when Republicans are projected to lose congressional seats.
For some, the Trump administration’s decision to use Kennedy as the public face of the initiative may come as a surprise. For months, it has been widely reported that the failed presidential candidate has been muzzled by the White House amid concerns that his vaccine conspiracy theories and radical health views could further devastate the GOP.
But with the midterms fast approaching, the White House appears willing to try almost anything.
“We are removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children,” Kennedy said Wednesday during a call with reporters.
He claimed that limiting the amount of money Head Start centers spend on administrative regulation would save the federal government roughly $2.2 billion on the program, which has a $12 billion price tag. Kennedy asserted the Trump administration will reinvest those savings into Head Start, opening roughly 200,000 additional spots for children.
Head Start, which offers support including childcare, vision screenings, speech and language assistance, and roughly two-thirds of each child’s daily nutritional needs, has generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support since its creation six decades ago.
Last year, however, a budget proposal from the right-wing policy manifesto Project 2025 that called for eliminating Head Start altogether was leaked, sowing chaos across the country. At the same time, the program was hit by fallout from Elon Musk’s failed DOGE initiative, with payment delays, frozen assets, and other obstacles ultimately forcing some centers to shut their doors.
Now, the administration appears to be in damage-control mode. Kennedy claimed that when there were “draconian cuts to many of our agency programs” at the start of Trump’s second term, it was he and he alone who “preserved Head Start from any cuts at that point.”
His phrasing of “at that point” may prove significant. While Kennedy is touting the new rule as a way to expand the program, it uses the exact language outlined in a June Heritage Foundation report on how to dismantle Head Start.
Titled Rethinking Head Start, the document recommends that the Trump administration “cut red tape,” which is what Kennedy vowed to do on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the similarities between the administration’s decision and the Heritage Foundation report.
“My uncle, Sarge Shriver, founded the program on a simple conviction: strong families, wholesome nutrition, and healthy childhood development can change the course of a child’s life,” Kennedy said Wednesday.
As Kennedy noted, his uncle, Sarge Shriver, founded Head Start in 1965. On the 40th anniversary of Head Start in 2005, Shriver delivered a speech calling for the program to never “be destroyed,” saying it “should not be abandoned, reduced in size, or limited in any way!”
Kennedy now finds himself closely aligned with a group that seems hellbent on doing just that.
