U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are unable to effectively monitor more than 600,000 children who illegally crossed the southern border unaccompanied by a guardian since 2019, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

The rising cost of child care in New York City is driving families with young kids to pack up and leave the five boroughs, according to a new report set to be released on Monday.

The Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, released new data showing families with children aged 6 or younger are twice as likely to move out of the city as families without young kids. Households with young children make up 14% of the city’s population but 30% of those fleeing the five boroughs, according to the group’s findings.

The Supreme Court handed down a strange set of opinions on Monday evening, which accompanied a decision that largely reinstates Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The ban was previously blocked by a lower court.

None of the opinions in Labrador v. Poe spend much time discussing whether such a ban is constitutional — although Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion does contain some language suggesting that he and Justice Amy Coney Barrett will ultimately vote to uphold the ban.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday to allow an Idaho law protecting children from life-altering transgender procedures to go into effect while the law is challenged in lower courts. 

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho to enforce a controversial ban on gender-affirming care to minors as the law is appealed, temporarily reintroducing one of more than a dozen state bans on gender-affirming care, an increasingly hot-button issue for the GOP.

The Supreme Court approved a stay on a federal District Court decision, allowing Idaho to enforce the ban, with the high court’s conservative justices forming the majority opinion and its three liberal justices dissenting.

Brunswick Hills police are investigating how a 3-year-old child was able to get a hold of a loaded gun and shoot himself with it; that gunshot ended up killing that little boy.

Police got the call about the shooting Wednesday around 5 in the afternoon at a home off of Marks Road. They were told a 3-year-old boy accidentally shot himself in the chest with a gun.

A major Massachusetts hospital group has reviewed studies showing that “Black pregnant people” are more likely to be tested and reported for drug use than “white pregnant people,” and they have come up with a stunning solution: Stop automatically reporting to state child welfare agencies babies born with illegal substances in their systems.

A few weeks ago, I got a panicked message from Jason Cohen, a dad in upstate New York. He told me that the day care where his twin toddlers had been happily ensconced for over a year, J.A.C.E. Daycare and Early Learning Center in Wappingers Falls, was closing unexpectedly and had given parents less than two weeks’ notice and no clear explanation. But Mid Hudson News reported that the center was “suffering extreme financial stress and defaulted on a major loan.”

The challenges facing families with young children are legion.

From affording the costly basics — like diapers, clothes and food — to the exhausting search for high-quality, reasonably priced child care, parents and caregivers have their hands full. And it's hard to imagine government, as polarized as it is, agreeing on anything that might help.

And yet. A new report suggests there are bold moves that folks across the political spectrum can agree on.