Three top Senate Democrats are accusing the Trump administration and Republicans of “taking a wrecking ball” to childcare programs, highlighting the issue in a midterm year where many Democrats are running on inflation and the high cost of living.

Childcare costs have skyrocketed in recent decades, outpacing inflation. There’s bipartisan consensus on the crisis: an found that 76 percent of Americans, including over 70 percent of independents and Republicans, view the cost of childcare as “a major problem.” 

Democrats have long highlighted the issue, but many Republican politicians also agree there’s a problem — if not on the solutions to it. Republicans, who largely oppose major new spending on social programs, control the White House and both chambers of Congress, meaning that Democratic-controlled states and cities like New York City and New Mexico have been taking the lead on major investments aimed at making childcare more accessible. 

Now, in a new report, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and two fellow Senate Democrats are accusing the GOP of having “inflamed the childcare crisis.” 

The report on childcare from Schumer and Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, released Tuesday and shared first with The 19th, is the latest in a series of reports highlighting what Schumer says are the Trump administration’s “broken promises” in areas including healthcare, housing and energy affordability. 

Even as childcare costs rise for families, wages for childcare providers remain low and draw fewer workers, creating a shortage of childcare slots and leaving many providers in a precarious position, especially since the funds Congress passed to stabilize the childcare industry during the COVID-19 pandemic have run out.

“People in the richest country in the world should not view child care as a financial burden,” Schumer said in a statement. “Senate Democrats are fighting to lower costs while continuing to expose how Trump and his administration’s continued broken promises have led to families struggling to make ends meet.”

The report from Schumer, Murray and Warren charges that President Donald Trump and Republicans have “abandoned America’s children and families” by passing tax breaks for the wealthy and pursuing the war with Iran. 

“Trump promised no new wars and lower costs — he broke that promise and even insisted that America couldn’t pay for child care because we had to pay for wars instead,” Murray said in a statement. “Meanwhile, Democrats are putting forward an agenda that will make life more affordable for American families in all 50 states — and we’re making high-quality, affordable child care a top priority.”

The Democrats point to Trump’s comments in April, when he “the United States can’t pay for daycare” because of the conflict in the Middle East, saying: “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”     

“The fact is that Trump and Republicans have done nothing to address the child care crisis in this country — in reality, they have made it worse,” the report says. “Rather than lowering the costs of child care for the American people, Trump has taken a wrecking ball to federal programs and infrastructure that help American families access affordable child care.” 

The Schumer-led report charged that the Trump administration has “systemically attacked and undermined early childhood education programs” with funding pauses, delays and personnel cuts at offices overseeing the federal government’s funding of childcare and , which funds early learning for low-income children. It also accused the administration of “waging an all-out war” on the childcare sector by freezing over $2 billion in federal childcare funds to five Democratic-controlled states over in childcare programs.  

Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have introduced bipartisan proposals on childcare, and Republicans are also embracing the issue. Republican Reps. Ashley Hinson of Iowa, a candidate for U.S. Senate, and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, who is seeking reelection in a competitive district, are among the cosponsors of the recently introduced bipartisan Child Care Modernization Act. 

“Family is at the heart of everything I do, and I’ll keep fighting to make it easier to raise one,”  

Mackenzie highlighted the rapidly increasing costs of childcare about the bill, saying: “It’s more important than ever that we deliver the relief and reform that working families need to thrive.”  

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a fellow Pennsylvania Republican, cosponsored a bipartisan bill to expand a tax deduction for teachers to early childhood educators that . He’s also a cosponsor of the Improving Child Care for Working Families Act with Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington. 

But there’s been little appetite among Republicans for the kind of large-scale federal investments many Democrats argue are needed to make childcare affordable and accessible nationwide. Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York , the Childcare for Every Community Act, which proposes new federal investments to create universal and affordable childcare. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans’ party-line tax-and-spending bill passed last year, expanded some childcare subsidies and tax credits used by parents and employers, changes that experts said primarily benefit middle- and higher-income families. The Democrats’ report noted that childcare costs are especially burdensome for the lowest-income families and that “many parents — disproportionately women — are forced out of the labor market as they simply cannot afford the high cost of care.” 

Democrats have also criticized the bill for cutting Medicaid and food assistance programs, which many of the lowest-income families rely on. Federal cuts, combined with the COVID-era federal childcare funds running out and other economic pressures, have, in turn, .

“Americans are drowning under child care costs that just keep going up, and instead of doing anything to fix it, Donald Trump slashed the programs that help families afford care and gave billion-dollar tax handouts to giant corporations,” Warren said in a statement. “Fixing the affordability crisis in this country means delivering universal child care, and Democrats are fighting to get it done.”

In the absence of major federal action, some Democratic-controlled states and cities are leading the charge on universal childcare. And as Democrats focus on affordability in their messaging ahead of the 2026 midterms, candidates across the country are campaigning on universal childcare, universal pre-K and early childhood education.    

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who and is working with Gov. Kathy Hochul to phase in his childcare plan, recently made New York the first city to open . New Mexico also became the first state in the country to families last year. 

The state’s departing Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told The 19th that New Mexico’s investment also raised salaries and expanded benefits for childcare providers, a woman-dominated industry. “It’s time,” she said, “that America embraces universal childcare.”  

“When people refer to states like ours that still have some deep-rooted poverty issues, if we can do it, then anyone can do it,” Lujan Grisham said in an April interview. “I’m not suggesting that it is a quick, 24-hour fix. … It took us all this time to build it out, but it is doable. And I think it could be some of the most important, impactful set of services and legislation for New Mexico families, and then a blueprint for American families, since the FDR investments in Social Security.”

In remarks at the Center for American Progress’ IDEAS conference last month, Warren argued that Republicans are “fumbling the childcare issue at the most basic level.” She also criticized her own party for not making major investments in childcare in its major party-line spending bills when Democrats controlled Congress for the first two years of President Joe Biden’s presidency, saying “we lost childcare because not enough Democrats who were already in office were willing to fight for it.”

“It would be political malpractice for Democrats not to be talking about childcare every chance we get, going into the midterms and beyond,” Warren said. “When I look at the upcoming Democratic presidential primary, every 2028 candidate who understands what’s happening in this country, who wants to win, and who will deliver for families, will make universal childcare a core piece of their agenda.”   

was originally reported by Grace Panetta of . Meet Grace and of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

On Thursday morning, Kenyan McDuffie , effectively clearing the way for Democrat Janeese Lewis George to become the city’s next mayor.

The Associated Press had not formally declared a victor as ballots continue to be counted under the District’s new ranked-choice voting system. But Lewis George maintained a substantial lead, and McDuffie acknowledged that the remaining votes were unlikely to change the outcome.

The result marks a significant turning point for a school system that has been governed by Mayor Muriel Bowser for more than a decade. For education advocates, Lewis George’s victory raises new questions about the future of a reform agenda that has driven notable gains in student achievement during that time. The Democratic nominee has proposed some changes to school governance — including an end to the IMPACT teacher evaluation system, as well as a move toward greater independence for the superintendent’s office — and her breakthrough suggests that voters are willing to embrace a broader shift in political leadership.

Correction appended June 16

The mayor’s race in Washington, D.C., technically won’t be settled until this fall. But on Tuesday night, the winner of the Democratic primary will assume presumptive leadership over a school system educating nearly 100,000 students.

That expectation is a function of sheer partisanship: Over 90% of local voters , opening a wide path for the party’s nominee to march to City Hall in November. But the road ahead for public education is much less certain. After nearly two decades of outstanding growth in both student enrollment and academic outcomes, as well as 12 years of leadership from a largely consensus-minded incumbent, the next mayor will need to provide answers to a range of new problems afflicting K–12 schools.

The District’s long economic expansion of the 2000s and 2010s, which drew into its orbit, finally stalled in the face of federal job cuts and a pandemic-fueled flight from the urban core. Combined with a decline in birth rates, the slump has caused the student rolls to go negative for the first time in recent memory — just as on the horizon. Even a promising recovery from post-COVID learning loss is imperiled by a collapse in daily attendance, with missing one-tenth of the school year or more.

The two leading candidates to succeed Mayor Muriel Bowser are widely seen as ideological opposites. Attorney Kenyan McDuffie has courted business groups with a moderate pitch to bring down crime and avoid overextending city finances. Janeese Lewis George, a city councilor and self-described democratic socialist, won over the Left with a huge proposal to offer subsidized to all Washington families.

The broader clash in visions — playing out in the national Democratic Party — is overshadowing a K–12 debate that could be more consequential in the long run. signal continuity with foundational policies enacted in the hard-charging reform period of the 2000s, including direct mayoral control over schools and holding teachers and schools accountable for student performance. Lewis George has issued a subtle challenge to that settlement, voicing a desire to grant education leaders more independence from the mayor’s office and scrap a framework.

The progressive favorite’s eagerness to break from the status quo secured the support of the Washington Teachers Union, which has long sought to de-emphasize teacher quality metrics and win more bargaining latitude for its members. WTU President Laura Fuchs, a frequent critic of the leadership of both District of Columbia Public Schools and D.C. charter schools, said teachers “worked very hard to minimize the harm” imposed by top-down reforms. Under Lewis George, she argued, educators would enjoy much better relations with city leaders.

“We do believe we will have a much friendlier and more listening ear” with Lewis George in power, Fuchs said, while adding that she did not believe the candidate would necessarily supply every item on the union’s wish list. “What Janeese represents, in so many ways, is that she takes us seriously and believes that we are partners.”

Neither of the two contenders could be reached for comment for this article. But the differences between them highlight a fissure in their party that has widened since the Obama-era peak of ambitious experimentation in public schools. Washington has seen some of the in student achievement of any American school district in this century, with student test scores climbing persistently during a time when they were stagnant almost everywhere else. But national Democrats have made little hay about the generational gains, which have attracted fewer boosters and national headlines than similar turnarounds in red states. 

Thomas Toch, director of Georgetown University’s FutureEd research institute and a defender of the District’s model of educational improvement, called the city’s approach “a beacon nationally” and warned against a change in direction.

“It is one of the most important reform success stories in the country, in part because the city has continued to do well by its students for a long time,” Toch said. “The leaders have sustained the reforms, and the reforms continue to make a difference for students.”

Michelle Rhee’s legacy

When Toch and others refer to “the reforms,” they are largely describing a package of policies that began in 2007, when Mayor Adrian Fenty overhauled school governance in what was then one of the lowest-performing urban districts in the country.

Virtually overnight, the governance of DCPS was transferred to Fenty himself, who also wielded substantial influence over a rapidly growing charter school sector. His hand-picked schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, soon rolled out a new evaluation system known as IMPACT, which ranked teachers based on their students’ test scores; top performers received hefty raises, while .

The groundswell seemed to crest in November 2008, with Rhee posing for in Time magazine and president-elect Barack Obama embracing a similar suite of K–12 recommendations in his national agenda. But Washingtonians grew weary of the pace of change, including the that received failing grades, and turned the mayor out of office.

But his successor, a reform critic who challenged Fenty , surprised many by opting away from a course correction. After another — particularly alienating to some parents in the wake of a — voters again soured on their leadership, selecting Muriel Bowser as the city’s mayor and reelecting her twice.

Part of Bowser’s success may lie in the public’s in local schools. While the tumult over the initial reforms quickly stirred anger, subsequent data on student learning has proven highly favorable.

Findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal exam commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card) show that D.C. fourth and eighth graders comparable to virtually any other major city between 2003 and 2019. A 2021 by the research group Mathematica estimated that Washington’s ascent through the 2010s was comparable to the massive leap made by New Orleans schools in the wake of the district’s post-Katrina restructuring.

While the pandemic pushed achievement downward for a time, local testing from the past few years shows that year-over-year academic progress since the COVID nadir preceding the public health emergency. The Education Scorecard, a data project led by scholars at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford, that DCPS schools saw the fastest recovery of those in any city between 2022 and 2025.

Chelsea Coffin, and education policy specialist for the D.C. Policy Center, called the latest round of state assessments “a very good sign for D.C. students.”

“What we saw last school year were really large gains — even compared to what D.C. had been posting pre-pandemic — in both math and English, across almost all wards and most major subgroups,” Coffin said. “D.C. has a long way to go in terms of all students being on grade-level, but this new forward momentum is really exciting.”

David Grosso, a former city councilor who chaired the body’s education committee between 2015 and 2020, said in an interview that the stream of good news has mostly quieted the consternation that greeted Fenty and Rhee’s dramatic shakeup.

At the time of his election, Grosso recalled, “people were clamoring for success right off the bat. After five years of reform, they were asking, ‘Why aren’t our schools all better?’ The challenge was to explain to people that when you have 100 years of bad schools, you can’t turn it around in five years.”

Teacher evaluations under fire

But dissatisfaction has lingered among detractors of the reform regime, none more energetic than the Washington Teachers Union. 

Pointing to the District’s , which have exceeded 20 percent in some years, the WTU’s leaders lay the blame with IMPACT. Fuchs dismissed the evaluation system as “a tool of control,” saying that it mandated an overreliance on testing and made teachers fear for their livelihoods. 

“Any time they find the union finding a quote-unquote ‘loophole,’ so people could keep their jobs, they cut it off,” Fuchs remarked. “Anything that gives teachers a little bit of power or wiggle room, they cut it off.”

Indeed, refinements to IMPACT have been ongoing since its debut. led to over 20 instructors being ranked lower than they deserved in 2013, denying bonus payments to several and resulting in one mistaken termination. More recently, DCPS officials intended, in part, to combat perceptions that evaluations . 

Echoing some of these complaints, Lewis George has declared that she will end IMPACT if elected. In circulated by WTU, she claimed the system “undermines educators’ expertise and students’ joy of learning.” While committing to retain mayoral control, she has also suggested that she will transform Washington’s office of the superintendent into an independent agency — an idea that could lead to less direct oversight over student data and standards, .

Ongoing resistance from the union and its allies may help to illustrate the somewhat muted response to D.C.’s positive trajectory. While states like Mississippi and Louisiana have emerged as widely cited examples of educational success in deeply conservative locales, Democrats are less likely to harp on the consistent growth attained in the single bluest jurisdiction in the country. Toch said the critiques of progressives and unionized workers now make the story an awkward fit with the party’s national profile.

Still, he added, it would be a profound mistake to walk away from teacher ratings, even if IMPACT could potentially benefit from tweaks. The data organized through the rubric provided the “foundation” for many other workforce improvements realized in recent years, including the opening of new leadership opportunities for teachers receiving good ratings.

“It’s discouraging to hear someone even consider abandoning it,” Toch said. “How would you do pay-for-performance? How would you create a career ladder if you couldn’t distinguish between good teachers and bad teachers? That’s the problem we had in the District in the past, and it still exists in much of the country.”

Whether Lewis George or McDuffie ultimately claims the Democratic nomination, the next mayor will have to navigate structural challenges that go beyond old battles around reform. The city faces mounting budgetary shortfalls that threaten its ability to spend at the level to which both charter and district schools have become accustomed.

Funding for school renovations and new academic programs will likely need to wait until the District’s financial picture adapts to a post-COVID, post-Trump reality in which both businesses and the federal government have shrunk their local presence. Even the pay incentives provided through IMPACT add to the fiscal pressure.

Bisi Oydele is the CEO of Education Forward D.C., a reform-friendly advocacy group. While stressing the need to pursue retrenchment equally, among both DCPS and charter providers, he acknowledged that educators and families might have to prepare for leaner times.

“You can track the CFO revenue projections, and they’re not great,” Oyedele said. “D.C. spends about $2 billion on education per year, and that is obviously tied to revenues and economic forecasts.”

Grosso also noted the long set of issues that the mayor and city council will confront through the end of the decade, including the likely need for schools to tighten their belts and the immediate task of finding a replacement for outgoing Chancellor Lewis Ferebee, who announced his resignation last month. 

Amid that flurry of contingencies, he cautioned policymakers against pursuing “reform for reform’s sake.” While he had previously pursued some major policy changes through the Council — including one resembling Lewis George’s notion of making the superintendency more autonomous — such moves needed to be carefully studied before action was taken, he concluded.

“If I didn’t learn anything else in all the years I was making education policy, at least I learned this: If you make massive changes… and you don’t have a real understanding of what the outcome will be, then you shouldn’t make the change.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the first female mayor of Washington, D.C.