Trump disregarded the children during the shutdown, but not his self-glorifying projects. And then the Epstein saga reemerged.

Bob Sheak, Nov 14, 2025

The Shutdown and the effects on children

The shutdown lasted 43 days, the longest federal shutdown in American history. From October 1 to November 12, 2025, government operations were partially frozen, millions of workers were affected, and the economy faced mounting pressure. Among the victims were children. Trump exacerbated a problem affecting children that already existed. Michele Kayal puts it in context (https://firstfocus.org/news/what-trump-2-0-means-for-americas-children)

“U.S. investment in the nation’s children has fallen for the third year in a row, according to First Focus on Children’s recently released Children’s Budget 2024, and actions planned by the incoming Trump Administration threaten to accelerate that trend. The report finds that the U.S. allocates less than 9% of the federal budget to children — who make up roughly one-quarter of the population. Overall, U.S. investment in children has declined nearly 6% from Fiscal Year 2023, according to the report, largely driven by deep cuts to food assistance and other life-sustaining programs. 

But it’s been worse: namely, during the first Trump Administration. In 2019, under President Trump, the United States spentmore servicing the national debt than it did on the nation’s children for the first time in history. By FY 2021, President Trump proposed eliminating 59 children’s programs, slashing $21 billion from their services, and reducing federal investment in children to just 7.32% of the budget, the lowest level since First Focus on Children began tracking in 2006.

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More on the cruelty to children

Brad Reed, a writer for Common Dreams, also reports on the cruel effects on children during the shutdown, Nov 4, 2025 (https://www.commondreams.org/snap-beneficiaries-government-shutdown).

“Beneficiaries of federal food aid are expressing anger and bewilderment at the Trump administration’s efforts to use the program as a hostage to end the current shutdown of the federal government.”

“Roughly 42 million people living in the US currently receive SNAP benefits, and The Washington Post estimates that SNAP payments account for 9% of all grocery sales in the US.”

‘On Monday [Nov 3], the Trump administration said that it would partially restart funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the wake of two district court rulings mandating that the administration use emergency funds set up by Congress to continue the program,’ but “that it would only fund around 50% of the $8 billion in total monthly benefits, while also warning that there could be delays before SNAP beneficiaries are able to access the funds.”

The administration has options. “Before the administration allowed more than 40 million people—nearly 40% of whom are children—to go without food assistance on November 1 and refused to use a contingency fund to keep SNAP running, the Republican Party passed roughly $186 billion in cuts to the program in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer.

“The bill expanded work requirements, shifted some of the cost of SNAP to the states, and restricted benefit increases, leaving millions of people vulnerable to losing their benefits.”

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Shutdown Impact on Head Start Programs

First Five Years Fund reports on this issue on Nov. 13 (https://www.ffyf.org/resources/2025/11/shutdown-2025-impact-on-head-start-programs).

“After 43 days, the federal shutdown has officially ended. In the days ahead, we urge Congress to act quickly to provide increased stability for families by passing a spending bill that funds childcare and early learning programs through Fiscal Year 2026. Passing the remaining Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and prioritizing federal investment in early childhood care and education are vital steps for supporting young children and families.”

But, as of 11/12/25, the last day of the shutdown, “Head Start programs in 40+ states did not receive their scheduled funding on November 1st. This put many in immediate jeopardy of closing their doors.

“On November 1st, Head Start programs located in 40+ states and Puerto Rico did not receive their operational funding. These programs serve nearly 60,000 children.” This jeopardizes “access to the care, early learning, nutrition, and the stability Head Start provides. The writers add,

“In addition to those which have closed, many Head Start programs are only able to remain open by making serious concessions. Some have been forced to eliminate transportation and services, while others have had to cut back on staff or shorten operating hours. Still others have had to take out loans or open private lines of credit, raising concerns about paying interest rates and taking on associated risks if their full funding is not issued quickly once the government reopens.” 

There has been some progress. “As of Wednesday, 11/12/25, Head Start sites in 17 states and Puerto Rico had not opened.”

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Cuts to programs for the poor and “a Gleaming new bathroom in the White House.”

Jess Bidgood reports on “Lines at the Food Pantry, Billionaires at the White House” (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/us/politics/shutdown-trump-rich-poor.html). Here’s some of what she writes on contrasting images.

The longest government shutdown in American history is over, but Bidgood writes, “‘there are two sets of images from these last few weeks that could endure well beyond it.

“The first shows the lines snaking out of food pantries after the Trump administration chose not to use available funds to keep full food stamp benefits flowing to millions of poor Americans this month, and fought the federal rulings requiring it to make full benefits available.” This has been discussed above.

“The second, released on social media by President Trump himself, shows his gleaming new bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, renovated in gold fixtures and marble.”

These two images highlight “the striking difference in the president’s treatment of the rich and the poor.”

Bidgood reports on some of the effects of the cuts in programs of social aid to the poor, including cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, programs that Trump vowed to get rid of, which the president refers to as “Democratic things.” There were “sharp cuts to Medicaid by scaling back the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage for the working poor.”

Party time for rich donors and friends

Bidgood continues. “Trump, whose administration is stocked with billionaires, has shown few reservations about cozying up to the wealthy during the government shutdown — nor about the optics of turning the White House into an opulent playground while it was going on.

‘Tonight, for example, he is slated to host a private White House dinner with Wall Street executives like Jamie Dimon. He held a dinner for donors to his White House ballroom project about two weeks into the government shutdown. And then, of course, he attended a glitzy Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, where guests dressed as flappers and the theme was ‘A little party never killed nobody’ — a line from a song in the film version of ‘The Great Gatsby.’”

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Epstein and Trump: More evidence on Trump and girls

The Epstein scandal is relevant in any discussion of the president’s views and contacts with children, in this case with young girls. Indeed, he has a history of denigrating women. Now, the The New York Times reports on the most recent revelations (https://www.nytime.com/live/2025/11/12/us/epstein-files-trump). The article written by Glenn Thrush, Annie Karni and Devlin Barrett was updated on the 13th. Here’s some of what they report.

“Messages in which Jeffrey Epstein discussed President Trump were among 20,000 documents posted online. President Trump called the release a distraction engineered by Democrats.”

“The mocking and accusatory voice of Jeffrey Epstein emerged from a trove of more than 20,000 emails made public by lawmakers on Wednesday [Nov 12], including his claim that President Trump once ‘spent hours at my house’ with a young woman who later accused Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing and trafficking her when she was a teenager.

“In a series of emails with friends and associates — surfacing first in a few messages selected by House Democrats and then in full by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee — Mr. Epstein described Mr. Trump as a ‘dirty’ businessman who was ‘borderline insane,’ untrustworthy and worse in ‘real life and upclose’ than the image he sought to portray to the public.

“Mr. Trump, White House officials and administration allies dismissed the disclosures as the utterances of a discredited sexual predator who had fallen out with Mr. Trump long before his crimes became publicly known. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called the emails a ‘clear distraction.’ The president labeled them a ‘hoax.’”

The reporters continue.

“Wednesday’s document dump was the latest act in the rapidly unfolding political drama engulfing Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican majority. They shuttered the House for the past two months, in part, to forestall a bipartisan effort to force a floor vote on a bill to force the Justice Department and F.B.I. to release a separate set of documents, this one involving their investigation into Mr. Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

“That bid gathered enough supporters to force a vote within weeks, and Mr. Johnson, who has opposed considering the measure, said he would relent and bring it to a vote next week. Congress’s newest member, Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat of Arizona who was sworn in on Wednesday, provided the final signature necessary on the resolution.”

Trump’s response

“Mr. Trump urged Republicans to reject any effort to revive a discussion of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, blaming Democrats for the release of the documents in a post on social media and writing that they were ‘trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown.’”

What else to know:

• Trump connections: The thousands of documents include numerous references to Mr. Trump, including some in which Mr. Epstein discusses their relationship. Others are innocuous. In one exchange, Mr. Epstein is apparently pitched on a transaction related to his Boeing 727 by someone who says they previously worked for Mr. Trump.
• Pressure campaign ramps up: Top administration officials summoned Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado for a meeting in the White House Situation Room, escalating their pressure campaign against Republican lawmakers who have demanded a full release of files related to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Trump also reached out to Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of three Republican women in the House who signed a petition that calls for a vote demanding that the Justice Department within 30 days release all of its investigative files on Mr. Epstein, but she refused his pleas on the petition.
• A de facto adviser: A recurring presence in the messages is the author Michael Wolff, who acted as an adviser to Mr. Epstein. “I believe Trump offers an ideal opportunity,” Mr. Wolff wrote to Mr. Epstein in March 2016, according to the emails, suggesting that “becoming an anti-Trump voice gives you a certain political cover which you decidedly don’t have now.”

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Concluding thoughts

Trump’s priorities favoring the rich, the big corporations, and Republicans is, by now, an old story. Overall, recent polls indicate that the president has low poll ratings for his economic policies, even among about one-third of Republicans. Meanwhile, he and his administration will do their best in trying to fool the public by distracting them from the poor economy and the flood of Epstein revelations. So, far they are failing in these efforts. Despite that, the rich and powerful continue to make record profits, Trump and his family enrich themselves, while tens of millions of Americans struggle to pay the bills.