They’ve persecuted immigrants, transgender people and scientists. They’ve targeted the rule of law and free speech. Now, they’re coming for your children, too.

It’s been largely lost in the cacophony over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and vendettas against universities, but administration officials have been gutting services that keep children alive and well. These include programs that feed kids, teach them the alphabet, provide them medical care, guarantee their rights and shield them from abuse.

Destroying these programs is not only cruel and contrary to the far-right’s allegedly pro-family agenda; it’s also tremendously wasteful. Research shows that government dollars spent on kids — especially on low-income kids’ health and education — offer some of the highest returns on investment.

This week, for instance, a leaked document revealed the administration’s plans to eliminate federal funding for Head Start. This comes after officials kneecapped the 60-year-old pre-K program by temporarily freezing funding for its care providers; firing its Washington-based employees; and permanently closing half its regional offices around the country. (Just coincidentally, they only closed offices in blue states.)

Staff in these regional offices were given no prior notice before closing, so some local pre-K programs that have been waiting for local Head Start officials to approve grants don’t know whether they can stay open.

Head Start, which serves low-income children from birth to age 5, began as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty but has received bipartisan support through the decades since. It’s no wonder why: These programs provide educational, nutritional, health and psychological support to poor children and their families. And states get to decide how to administer the programs.

Head Start spending also provides enormous bang for the buck by improving long-term educational outcomes and economic self-sufficiency. In fact, one recent study found the program “pays for itself”: Over their lifetimes, children in Head Start end up making more money, paying more in taxes and needing fewer safety-net benefits. These returns more than offset the up-front cost of enrollment, so the government saves money by paying to educate and care for these kids.

In other words, Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is, once again, making government less efficient.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid off everyone in its lead-poisoning group last week, just as Milwaukee schools beg for federal help with a lead-poisoning crisis. Funding to help states replace lead pipes has also been frozen or delayed.

As the CDC itself acknowledges, childhood exposure to lead is astronomically bad — both for kids affected and for society. There is no universe in which slashing efforts to remediate this toxin makes any fiscal sense.

When not busy firing health experts, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been sowing doubts in some of their greatest achievements. Specifically: childhood vaccines.

A national measles outbreak has already killed two unvaccinated children. But Kennedy continues to amplify anti-vaccine quacks and falsely claim that the shots are “not safety tested.” He has told families that the (at times lethal) measles virus can be easily treated with vitamin A supplements — advice that has led some Texas children to overdose on the nutrient.

And while Republicans in Congress design severe cuts to public health and nutritional programs that millions of children depend on, the Trump administration has already begun the budgetary bloodletting.

The Agriculture Department, for instance, slashed programs that provide $1 billion for food banks and school lunch programs to purchase food from local farmers and ranchers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called this spending “nonessential.” Citing similar reasons, Education Secretary Linda McMahon shuttered most of her department, laying off the employees tasked with measuring whether kids can add or read.

Unsurprisingly, Trump has reserved his greatest vitriol for noncitizen children and kids born in the United States to immigrants.

He has tried to deny them birthright citizenship, Constitution be damned. He has given immigration authorities blanket permission to raid schools and day-care centers, so-called “sensitive sites” that once required advance written permission for enforcement actions. This has led some families to keep their children home from school.

Unaccompanied immigrant children are being denied legal representation, despite court orders. Young victims of child sex-trafficking and other forms of abuse are facing judges alone.

Hostility toward immigrants has had other unexpected knock-on effects on children’s well-being. For example, Florida lawmakers are now trying to loosen their state’s child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants. Apparently Florida’s middle-schoolers are too young to learn where babies come from but old enough to work overnight shifts. The Trump administration has also cut programs that fight child labor beyond our borders.

Perhaps it all makes sense: Why feed, immunize and educate young children in the hopes of turning them into healthier and more productive adults in the future, when you could simply enlist them in hard labor today?

Email: crampell@washpost.com.