Kansas GOP senators push MOMS Act for mothers, while Trump slashes family programs | Opinion

In Washington, they celebrate Mother’s Day with new legislation.

So it goes: Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall of Kansas, along with Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, this week officially signed on to cosponsor the MOMS Act.

That’s short for More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed — a new GOP bill intended to “provide critical support to women” during the “prenatal, postpartum and early childhood development” phases of motherhood.

It sounds good, right? New mothers and families can use all the help they can get.

“Strong families are the bedrock of America and healthy mothers are central to healthy, thriving families,” Moran said in a press release.

As a former OB-GYN, “I understand firsthand the importance of supporting mothers throughout their pregnancy and into motherhood,” Marshall added.

Of course, the devil is in the details. Anybody can slap a pro-motherhood label on a bill while incorporating some bad provisions.

And sure enough, the MOMS Act includes a provision to create child support requirements for the fathers of fetuses — The Unborn Child Support Act — a provision typically associated with anti-abortion rights “fetal personhood” efforts. The bill is endorsed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Americans United for Life, March for Life Action and the National Right to Life Committee, among other groups.

So there’s that.

But there are a few items that seem on their face to be unobjectionable. The bill would fund grants for pre- and post-natal telehealth. And — this seems to be the bill’s top line — the government would create a central database of public and private resources to make life easier for expectant mothers.

Which raises an important question: What’s the point?

‘An assault on kids’

While Moran, Marshall and Schmitt are working to connect moms to those needed resources right at the moment, the Trump administration is gutting federal programs that help children and families survive and thrive.

A sampling of the recent damage:

• The White House in April shut down the “Safe to Sleep” program at the National Institutes of Health, the Washington Post reported, the end of a “decades-long campaign to prevent infants from dying in their sleep.” The shutdown comes right as deaths from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are on the rise after dropping markedly since the 1990s.
• The administration similarly halted funding for a Cornell University research project to develop heart pumps for babies — up to 40,000 a year — with potentially fatal congenital heart defects.
• The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, yanked funding for a program that helped schools buy fresh meat, dairy and produce from local farmers nationwide, providing healthy food for kids who might otherwise live mostly on processed meals.
• Don’t forget that the administration has withheld a reported $1 billion in already-appropriated Head Start funding, forcing some Head Start centers around the country to at least temporarily close. The good news? The president chose this week not to end the program entirely in his 2026 budget. He is, however, still working to dismantle the Department of Education.

The list goes on and on.

“In a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children, told ProPublica last month.

None of this, incidentally, includes terrible Trump policies that aren’t specifically anti-kid — but will still make family life more difficult. His tariffs will likely raise the cost of strollers and cribs, for example. And his administration’s anti-vaccine “Make America Healthy Again” agenda likely will play a role in the rise in measles cases and pediatric flu deaths. Cuts to the SNAP program that feeds millions of Americans could still be on the way.

Heck, the president is even trying to defund “Sesame Street.”

The temptation is to give credit to Moran, Marshall and Schmitt for trying to make life a little easier for new parents. As long as the Trump administration is taking a chainsaw to programs that help kids and families — and as long as they stand by doing nothing about it — the MOMS Act is just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

This story was originally published May 9, 2025 at 5:08 AM.