At an Oval Office meeting late last year, President Trump said that he expected to be “a big help” to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who had just been elected mayor. Mr. Mamdani came away from the meeting expressing hope that the two could work together to make New York City more affordable — a central theme of his campaign.
But in the first week since Mr. Mamdani took office, the Trump administration said it froze billions of dollars in funding for child care subsidies and cash support for low-income families in several states, including New York.
Depending on what happens next, the funding freeze could gut child care programs that tens of thousands of families rely on in a city where child care costs have ballooned, according to day care center operators.
“It means we would probably end up closing our doors, because we would not be able to stay open,” said Andrea Davilar, who runs a day care center out of her home in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens.
She looks after 14 children, and the care for all of them is at least partially subsidized by the federal dollars that the Trump administration is threatening to freeze.
The administration’s plan, first reported by The New York Post, would freeze $10 billion in funding to five states controlled by Democrats.
“Families who rely on child care and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement Tuesday.
The Trump administration cited “widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs” in the five states. Last week, the Trump administration held up $185 million in aid to Minnesota day care centers after investigators said that more than a dozen fraud schemes had led to billions of dollars in taxpayer losses.
“Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. The administration has not cited evidence of fraud in New York, and it remains unclear why New York was targeted.
The $10 billion in frozen funding to the five states would include $7.35 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance to families. Nearly $2.4 billion would come from the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care. About $870 million in various social services grants would also be frozen.
In addition to New York and Minnesota, California, Colorado and Illinois face cuts.
In a statement Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said that the states would need “to submit a justification and receipt documentation” before the freeze was lifted.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday morning that the federal government had not yet notified New York State of plans to freeze the funding, but she said that she believed the action was vindictive.
“We feel this is a pending threat to New York,” she said. She tied the threatened funding freeze to a larger set of federal policies that she said were hurting children. “I have to ask the question: Why is there such a frontal assault on children in this nation from this administration?”
She pointed out that federal health authorities had just upended the childhood vaccine schedule, and she referred to cuts and interruptions to food stamps.
“And now they don’t give a damn about child care for kids?” she said.
It’s unclear how much of the $10 billion was allocated for New York. But New York State was allocated $838 million in federal child care subsidies in a recent year. Separately, the state received about $2.4 billion in federal funding through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Christine C. Quinn, the president of WIN, a nonprofit that runs shelters and supportive housing, said that the cuts would force families to choose between health care, food or housing.
“We are looking down the barrel of a humanitarian disaster,” Ms. Quinn, who served as the speaker of the New York City Council, said.
The cuts to child care funding would touch tens of thousands of families in New York and resonate deeply, given mounting child care costs.
“New Yorkers should be outraged by this blatant cruelty,” Dora Pekec, the senior spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, said. “We will work with our state partners to fight this attempt to play politics with our kids’ futures.”
In New York City, most of the federal child care assistance is distributed by the Administration for Children’s Services, in the form of vouchers. Families are eligible if their income is less than 85 percent of the state median income, which comes out to $113,567.65 for a family of four. The assistance subsidizes child care for more than 75,000 children annually in New York City.
Ms. Davilar, the day care operator, said that all the families she serves rely on the vouchers.
Freezing the federal subsidies, she said, would mean that “only parents in really good jobs would be able to afford child care.”
Some of the federal child care funding is allocated to the city’s Department of Education for extended day programming for children up to age 5.
Natasha Cherry-Perez, director of administration at Urban Strategies, which runs child care programs for more than 160 families in Brooklyn, said that freezing federal child care funding would leave working parents in a difficult position.
“Our parents need day care so they can go to work,” Ms. Cherry-Perez said.
Sarah Maslin Nir contributed reporting.
Joseph Goldstein covers health care in New York for The Times, following years of criminal justice and police reporting.
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