In another concession to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration shut down a crucial program that catalogued war crime. This included a database that tracked the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia—another obvious sign that President Donald Trump has little to no care for the wellbeing of children.
Managed through an initiative at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, the database played an important role in the International Criminal Court’s 2023 charges against Putin related to the illegal deportation of children.
Researchers were informed last month that the State Department had “quietly” terminated the contract to comply with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, though sources say that the database may have been deleted in the confusion wrought by DOGE’s cuts.
“We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted,” Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The news comes after a report from The New York Times about the Trump administration halting food testing programs and shutting down a group that studied bacteria in infant formula.
“It’s as if someone, without enough information, has said, What’s a good way to save money on our automobiles? Let’s just take out the seatbelts and airbags, because do we really need them?” Darin Detwiler, a food safety consultant and associate professor at Northeastern University, told the Times.
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has exposed his lack of integrity when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable populations, particularly through his awful mishandling of the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas.
Couple that with Kennedy’s plan to destroy children’s teeth by eliminating fluoride from drinking water, and the threat to U.S. children’s health is glaring.
Before that, the Department of Agriculture pulled $1 billion in funding for programs that helped feed school-aged and low-income children. The programs, which were created during the Biden administration, provided funding to local farmers and food vendors to help combat food insecurity.
And, of course, Trump has made it clear that he plans to dismantle the Department of Education, which Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been working toward by firing half of the department’s staff.
But the harm to children goes far beyond Trump, with the GOP’s legion of creeps frequently being connected to accusations of child abuse.
For example, Trump’s short-lived attorney general nominee, former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, allegedly paid multiple women—including a child—for sex, according to a damning ethics report.
And Gaetz’s former associate and alleged party bro Joel Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison for various crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor.
Similarly, just last month the Trump administration was trying to assist alleged rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate and his brother in their extradition case.
More recently, Minnesota’s MAGA state Sen. Justin Eichorn was arrested in a police sting for allegedly soliciting a minor for sex. His arrest came just days after one of Trump’s former “spiritual advisers,” Robert Morris, was indicted and charged with five counts of “lewd or indecent acts to a child,” stemming from when he was traveling evangelist in 1982.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the hypocrisy displayed by Trump and Republicans who claim to crusade for children’s welfare yet enact policies and maintain alliances that actively cause them harm.
