When Alex Adams arrived in Washington late last year as the Trump administration’s point man on child care, he was little known outside his home state of Idaho, where he had helped engineer a massive deregulation effort that became the envy of many conservative activists.
He made his intentions clear right away.
Federal child care regulations, he told his new staff, should “fit on an index card in my back pocket,” according to two people who heard him make the remark.
Now, five months into his job as head of the Administration for Children and Families, which controls about $25 billion in child care and preschool funding for some 2.3 million poor children, Mr. Adams is preparing what he has said will be a “bonfire” of regulations.
Among his top targets: the most sweeping overhaul in a generation for Head Start, which provides child care and preschool to hundreds of thousands of the nation’s poorest children. Mr. Adams intends to loosen or eliminate the rules that limit how many children can be supervised by each teacher, according to three people familiar with the plans. Conservatives say the changes could give more poor children access to the service, yet many child care experts say they could jeopardize quality and safety. The alterations are expected to affect almost every other aspect of Head Start as well, such as nutrition standards for meals and health standards that require staff to ensure that children get access to medical care.
“We’re going to barbecue a lot of sacred cows,” Mr. Adams, who declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article, recently told the Imprint, a podcast about family policy. His office is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
As the Trump administration continues a quest led by its budget director, Russell T. Vought, to erase regulations and shrink bureaucracy in ways often unseen beyond industries and others who interact directly with the government, Mr. Adams is applying those conservative ideals in an area that will directly touch millions of Americans — particularly poor families who rely on federal subsidies for day care and other needs.
He appears to be relishing the role. In February, his office posted a cartoon on LinkedIn of Mr. Adams burning a hole through a stack of regulatory documents, sporting retro black-framed glasses, a Trump-esque extra-long red tie, and wielding a flaming match.
Mr. Adams has demonstrated an ability to tap hot-button issues important to the Trump administration. When Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials began highlighting rampant fraud involving day care centers in Minneapolis’s Somali migrant community, Mr. Adams attempted to cut off child care subsidies to Minnesota and four other Democratic-run states — a move that was blocked by the courts.
He is planning regulatory changes that would disqualify American children from receiving child care subsidies if one or more of their parents are not U.S. citizens, according to two people with knowledge of the effort who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not final.
President Trump last year tried but failed to freeze funding for Head Start, and considered proposing its full elimination, calling its curriculum “radical.” But Mr. Adams’s effort to transform the program by undoing regulations could have implications for many more young children than just those enrolled in Head Start. That is in part because preschools that enroll a mix of Head Start recipients and other children are generally required to follow the program’s rules and ratios for all students.
Mr. Trump has indicated in recent weeks that he would like to curtail federal spending on child care.
“We’re a big country, we have 50 states, we have all these other people, we’re fighting wars,” Mr. Trump said this month. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care.”
Mr. Adams’s efforts have drawn fire from critics who warn that deregulatory changes such as putting teachers and day care workers in charge of larger classes could endanger the children.
“There’s a difference between common-sense streamlining of regulations and throwing the rules that keep children safe into a bonfire,” said Elliot Haspel, an early-childhood education expert at Capita, a family policy research organization.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, said that Mr. Adams “has demonstrated what effective leadership looks like by cutting unnecessary red tape while maintaining appropriate health and safety standards in programs.”
Mr. Nixon said that The Times’s description of Mr. Adams’s plans to deregulate Head Start by lifting federal child-to-staff ratios and other rules was “an inaccurate characterization.” But he also pointed to the health department’s proposed 2027 fiscal year budget for the program, which describes an approach that would “streamline” federal standards on “health and safety requirements, child-to-staff ratios, and definitions of quality.”
Before joining the administration, Mr. Adams was a minor celebrity in conservative circles for his work in Idaho.
As budget director for five years under Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, Mr. Adams pushed policies that helped make Idaho the most deregulated state, according to George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, which tracks state regulations.
Elon Musk, who stormed into Washington after Mr. Trump’s 2024 election win to oversee his austerity program, the Department of Government Efficiency, posted a chart then showing Idaho’s plunge in regulations, writing, “Wow,” and adding a heart-eyes emoji.
When Mr. Adams took the helm of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in June 2024, he moved fast to cut what he called “rocks-in-shoes” regulations. He erased a rule requiring foster parents to receive training and limited child care subsidies to only families who are very poor.
He worked with Idaho lawmakers to craft a law loosening teacher-child ratios. Federal recommendations currently say that a single caregiver should supervise no more than four infants, six 2-year-olds, nine 3-year-olds, or ten 4- to 8-year-olds. Under the new Idaho law, one person can care for up to six infants, nine 2- to 3-year-olds, thirteen 3- to 5-year-olds or twenty-five 5-to-13-year-olds.
The goal, said state Representative Barbara Ehardt, a Republican who worked with Mr. Adams on the measure, was to make it easier for parents to operate small day care centers out of their homes.
“One more child can make or break the business,” Ms. Ehardt said.
After his confirmation by the Senate and his November swearing-in, Mr. Adams devoted his first days in Washington to foster care.
He sent letters to at least 10 states directing them to roll back rules that require foster and adoptive parents to affirm the preferred gender or sexual orientation of gay, bisexual or transgender children in their care. Those rules, he wrote violate the First Amendment and “exclude loving families from adoption based on ideological, religious litmus tests.”
Some of the letters included an implicit threat to cut off funds if the states did not comply. “As you know,” Mr. Adams wrote, “my responsibilities include monitoring the use of relevant federal funds and ensuring compliance with federal law.”
Massachusetts and Vermont soon reversed their policies.
In a step that won bipartisan accolades, he directed 39 states to end their so-called orphan tax, which diverts survivors’ benefits for foster children whose biological parents have died to welfare agencies. Idaho and 10 other states have already ended the practice. Since his letters, the governors or legislatures of at least eight states have moved to make the changes.
When attention turned in December to the day care fraud scandal in Minnesota, Mr. Adams sent letters to state officials there demanding the “complete universe” of personal data on families receiving subsidies, including Social Security numbers and alien registration numbers, which can be used by the Department of Homeland Security to track applicants for asylum.
Mr. Adams said the demand for data was intended to “give confidence to the American taxpayer” that the money was not being improperly spent. It is illegal to use federal subsidies to pay for child care for undocumented children.
After Mr. Vance and Mr. Musk shared a video by a right-wing influencer purporting to show more fraud at day care centers in the Somali community, Mr. Adams followed up with similar demands for data about child care subsidy recipients in New York, California, Illinois and Colorado. He threatened to cut off $10 billion in funding if the states did not comply.
The states sued, saying the administration had no justification for the action beyond a “desire to punish” them for their political leadership, and courts have halted the freeze in funds.
Mr. Adams also ramped up verification requirements for all states receiving child care subsidies, saying his agency would send payments only after receiving photo evidence or receipts detailing how the money was spent.
That process halted payments to hundreds of day cares in states that struggled to adapt.
In Missouri, for instance, state officials found that their access to a state account that distributes federal child care subsidies was suspended with no notice. Days passed before Mr. Adams’s agency informed them about the new requirements, and the funds remained blocked for almost two weeks.
The freeze temporarily halted subsidy payments to 1,743 Missouri child care providers, or roughly 53 percent of day care providers in the state, according to the Missouri Department of Education.
Jamaica Showers, who runs a day care in St. Louis serving 27 children, 23 of whom receive federally subsidized tuition, said that just six children attended during the period that funds were halted.
Ms. Showers said the episode has her questioning whether she should accept children who rely on subsidized tuition. “It feels very scary now,” she said.
On Jan. 6, the same date that his agency sent the letters to the four states, Mr. Adams agency also proposed repealing four regulations that had been designed to make it easier for child care providers to receive the subsidized tuitions for low-income children. The changes are designed to save taxpayer money on child care — but small day care owners say they would reimpose burdens on them.
The current rules require states to send child care subsidies to providers at the beginning of pay periods, based on enrollment numbers — the same method used to fund public schools. Without the rules, providers would be reimbursed afterward, based on documented attendance — and would not be paid for days that children don’t attend.
The proposed changes would also make poor families pay more out of pocket, by deleting a requirement that their co-payment make up no more than 7 percent of household income. And they eliminate a requirement that states reserve child care slots for children with disabilities.
The proposed rollbacks, which are expected to be made final in the coming months, have received more than 12,000 public comments.
Among the many commenters opposing the rollbacks was Crystal Rogers, who runs Cozy Couch day care in Martinsburg, W.Va. She said the changes would hurt her small business, along with other mom-and-pop operations — the very businesses Mr. Adams has said he wants to encourage.
“If they take away enrollment-based pay, I will have to close. And I know a lot of other providers will as well,” she said. “My mortgage, utilities and insurance, my food bills — they don’t stop when a child is sick. Tying payment to attendance means that if a child is sick for a week, I lose a week of pay.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times.
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