Trump officials bar Head Start providers from using 'women' and 'race'
in grant applications
[January 06, 2026]
By MORIAH BALINGIT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is telling Head Start
providers to avoid dozens of terms in federal grant applications,
including “race,” “belonging” and “pregnant people” — a directive that
could reshape the early education program.
A coalition of organizations representing Head Start providers and
parents said in court filings last month that the Department of Health
and Human Services told a Head Start director in Wisconsin to cut those
and over a dozen other terms from her application. She later received a
list with nearly 200 words the department discouraged her from using in
her application, including “Black,” “Native American," “disability” and
“women.”
President Donald Trump's administration associates the terms with
diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root
out across the government.
The guidance could lead Head Start centers to preemptively drop anything
that could be seen as fitting the administration’s definition of DEI,
said Ruth Friedman, who led the Office of Child Care under President Joe
Biden.
"Grantees are sort of self-selecting out of those activities beforehand
because of fear and direction they’re getting from the Office of Head
Start that they can’t do these important research-based activities
anymore that are important for children’s learning and that are actually
required by law,” Friedman said.
The filings came in a lawsuit filed in April by parent groups and Head
Start associations in Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and
other officials. They allege the Trump administration is illegally
dismantling Head Start.
The plaintiffs say the administration is trying to force providers to
change how they operate in violation of the Head Start Act, which
requires directors to provide demographic information about their
families, a task that becomes difficult if they are banned from using
“Black,” “disability” and “socioeconomic.”
Health and Human Services officials said they do not comment on pending
litigation.
Head Start centers receive the bulk of their funding from the federal
government. The long-standing preschool and family support program
serves babies, infants and toddlers who come from low-income households,
foster care or homeless families.
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Plaintiffs' attorneys say the anti-DEI guidance has generated
confusion for Head Start programs, which are operated by nonprofits,
schools and government agencies. The grant application itself
contains many of the banned words, asking directors to include
demographic data about their community that includes estimates of
the number of pregnant women and children with disabilities.
“This has put me in an impossible situation,” the unnamed Head Start
director in Wisconsin wrote in the court filing. If she complies
with the Head Start Act and includes the banned words in her
application, she could end up losing her grant, she said. But if she
follows the Trump administration’s guidance, she said she fears
she’ll face penalties for violating the law down the line.
Another Head Start, located on a Native American reservation in
Washington state, was told to cut “all Diversity and
Inclusion-related activities,” leading it to drop staff training on
how to support autistic children and children with trauma, according
to the court filing. Officials there also told the director that she
could no longer prioritize tribal members for enrollment — even
though the Head Start Act expressly permits this. The word “Tribal”
is among the disfavored terms.
For some, the new grant application rules are another attempt to
undermine Head Start, a program with a history of bipartisan support
that some conservatives have been attacking as problematic and
ineffective.
“They don’t believe these public programs should actually be open to
serving all communities,” said Jennesa Calvo-Friedman of the ACLU,
an attorney for the plaintiffs. The effort to ban words from
applications “is a way to gut the fundamentals of the program.”
Not long after Trump took office, his budget chief unsuccessfully
tried to halt all federal grants, saying they needed to be reviewed
to root out any DEI efforts. Head Start was not supposed to be part
of the freeze, which was quickly reversed, but in the months
afterward, grantees reported problems drawing down their funding.
Some had to briefly close.
The Government Accountability Office later said the delays violated
the Impoundment Control Act, which limits when the president can
halt the flow of government funds.
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