Melania Trump made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to push Congress to broaden access to services for young people in foster care as they prepare to leave the system. Speaking at a roundtable, the first lady urged lawmakers to pass bills she said address barriers that young people face outside the classroom.
Trump’s meeting followed her work on foster care issues after President Donald Trump’s first term ended in 2021, and it came after a separate lobbying effort last year seeking legislation to protect women and children from online sexual exploitation. In her Capitol Hill remarks, she pointed to barriers involving housing, transportation and education as factors that can affect young people’s academic performance.
“We can close this gap,” Trump said. “New legislation for the foster care community is a moral imperative.”
At the Capitol Hill meeting, Trump heard from people who said they have lived through the foster care system, including Jaydan Martinez, a freshman at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Martinez said he received just over $2,000 in support per semester but that it “disappeared in the ‘blink of an eye,’” and he urged lawmakers to raise the cap on the financial support.
Jocelyn Fetting, who said she aged out of the system at 21, told lawmakers that thousands who do everything right still struggle because, she said, “the systems to support them have not kept pace with their needs.” Fetting said she lost her parents at age 12 and that during college she worked three jobs while also having scholarships, as she sought to meet needs including housing and food.
Fetting, now 22, described her current work as a substitute teacher for grades pre-K through 8 and as a peer navigator for young adults in foster care. She said the proposed changes matter because “we are expecting young people to achieve self-sufficiency without providing support to do so.”
Republican and Democratic committee members introduced several bills aimed at updating the Chafee foster care program. The proposals are designed to improve outcomes for young people aging out of foster care by increasing their access to housing, education and workforce training, among other supports intended to help them succeed in the shift to adulthood.
The measures face a long road to passage because they were only recently introduced, and lawmakers still must advance them through the legislative process. The committee said the bipartisan proposals would be the most significant update since the Chafee program was created in 1999.
Chafee supports foster youth and former foster youth between ages 14 and 21 as they leave the system. In January 2025, the Government Accountability Office reported how states were returning millions of dollars in unused Chafee funds to the federal government despite unmet needs of foster youth.
Trump also tied the effort to the White House’s broader child-focused “Fostering the Future” initiative. Last November, President Trump created the “Fostering the Future” program by executive order to have federal entities, nonprofits, educational institutions and the private sector work together to improve career and educational opportunities for children raised in foster care. The first lady joined the president in the Oval Office for the executive order signing, and she separately spearheads the initiative as part of her “Be Best” campaign, which the report said offers scholarships to current and former foster youth and has a presence on more than 20 university campuses.