Erica Meltzer of Chalkbeat reports that two federal judges issued injunctions against a new Trump rule that bars undocumented children from enrolling in Headstart. The rule may seem gratuitously cruel to some, but it’s business-as-usual for Trump. Interestingly, the judges who issued the rulings are both Republican appointees, one by George W. Bush and the other by Donald J. Trump. (How did they slip past Leonard Leo and Mitch McConnell)?

The Trump administration’s effort to prevent undocumented immigrant children from enrolling in Head Start preschool programs is on hold nationwide after federal judges issued injunctions in two separate lawsuits. 

The Department of Health and Human Services in July declared that Head Start, along with a wide swath of health care services and workforce training programs, should be considered public benefit programs, a category of programs only available to U.S. citizens and immigrants with particular statuses, such as legal permanent residents and refugees. 

Undocumented immigrants are already excluded from most welfare programs, but the rule changes abruptly expanded the list of programs that would need to verify participants’ immigration status.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the rule change on behalf of four state Head Start associations as well as some parent groups. Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed their own lawsuit. 

In both cases, federal judges ruled this week that the Trump administration had not followed appropriate procedures for changing rules; that in some cases the rule changes appeared to go against Congressional intent; and that providers, families, and state governments would suffer significant harm if the rules were allowed to go into effect.