TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Signs an Executive Order on Foster Care, November 13, 2025
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Melania Trump: Good afternoon. Please, welcome to the White House. It is truly inspiring to see everyone gathered here together, united in support of this remarkable initiative and community. As I stand here and observe the audience, I recognize the vital importance of each one of you to this mission, to our future generations. In particular, I would like to thank the cabinet secretaries, Congress members, scholarship donors and various organizations for their unending advocacy. A special thank you to my husband for his enduring commitment to fostering the future. The president has prioritized America's foster care children and shortly he will sign our Fostering the Future executive order. Too many people from foster care community end up homeless, in danger on America's streets. It was 2021 when I developed the idea to establish an impactful platform with an important mission -- to provide individuals from the foster care community the ability to secure an entry level job position and in turn financial independence. Fostering the Future, a Be Best initiative, provides individuals from the foster care community with technology-based scholarships to attend colleges and universities throughout America. Fostering the future sets these individuals on their career paths, but more significantly, it equips each scholarship recipient with a fundamental foundation of knowledge that will endure throughout their lifetimes, permanency for those who embody the fleeting. I applaud the American universities that have joined my mission, institutions like Vanderbilt University, University of Miami and Villanova University. Following graduation, scholarship recipients from my program are prepared to enter the workforce and ultimately become leading executives. Predictably, they will manage thousands of employees and generate significant value for American communities through job creation, access to healthcare, food security and other societal benefits.
This executive order, Fostering the Future for American children and families, gives me tremendous pride. It is both empathetic and strategic. It will certainly be impactful. It aims to establish a comprehensive network connecting federal departments and agencies, private sector businesses, higher learning institutions and charitable organizations. This will create new educational and employment opportunities countrywide. Our faith-based organizations will continue playing a vital and consequential role. My hope of course is that this level of coordinated collaboration will sustain, but today I call on leadership from these various organizations, including the private sector, to join my effort, rise above the ease of inaction. I predict this small spark today will ignite a profound and lasting nationwide movement. Our united resolve will foster a thriving future filled with compassion and innovation. Together, we will illuminate the pathway for today's foster children to become tomorrow's builders. And tomorrow's builders will foster the future of America's legacy. Thank you. It is my pleasure to introduce my husband, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Thank you.
Donald Trump: I think it's very good, especially for someone that speaks five languages at least. I think that's pretty amazing. I can't -- I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. Yeah. Well, thank you, Melania, and our country is truly blessed to have this magnificent and very caring first lady. They love her. Every time I get up and make a speech, they say we want our First Lady. I say what the hell, I'm not good enough. [Laughter] But thank you very much. Great job and it's great the work you do in so many ways. This afternoon, I'm delighted to sign a historic executive order, building on the Fostering the Future initiative to make America's foster care system better, fairer and more effective than ever before. And it's been effective, but it's moving in a very strong direction. All of this has been made possible by Melania's incredible devotion to America's youth -- spends a lot of time on it and loves it. And along with our great Usha, you spend so much time and what a combination. First Lady, second lady, what a combination. Thank you. They do a great job. The two of them are amazing women. I want to thank Vice President JD Vance, and Usha. Thank you very much. Vice president -- stand up vice president and he did a big thing today. He's going to be on television tonight with the legendary Sean Hannity. So, everybody has to watch. I'm sure CNN loves this advertisement, but he will be. I heard it was a great interview. And Secretary Scott Bessent. Scott, thank you very much. An extremely non-controversial Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. But he's right, but he's right. And Scott Turner, thank you very much. Doing a great job at home. And thanks as well to Senator Jon Husted and Representatives Jason Smith, Darin LaHood, Zach Nunn and David Schweikert. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, fellas. Great group.
We're also joined by countless distinguished leaders in the child welfare advocacy ministry and charitable foundations, as well as so many wonderful young people who have experienced foster care and use their voices to champion needed reforms. And I want to thank everybody for being here. It's an amazing day at the White House. Thank you very much. And right behind me, by the way, in about two years from now, we'll use a much bigger room because we had to turn away a lot of people and it'll be right here.
This will be the entrance that's a knock-out panel. It's called a knock-out. It looks pretty nice right now, but it's going to look a lot better in a little while. And we're going to go from this room into a room that seats a few more people and it's going to be beautiful. But I just noticed, I happened to be standing here, Peter, and I thought I might as well get your shot right now. A nice, beautiful shot at the future entrance to something that's really become very popular, the ballroom. They've wanted it for 150 years and they're getting it and they're getting the best; it'll be the best anywhere in the world. Each year, more than 15,000 young people age out of the foster care system. And unfortunately, too many struggle to become self-sufficient.
The order I will sign in a few moments will provide vital new resources to help young people transition out of the foster care system and live a very happy and a very successful life -- very, very successful. With this order, I'm directing the heads of the key federal departments and agencies to establish a Fostering the Future program in coordination with our wonderful First Lady's office. They're coordinating and they've already been coordinating for quite some time. And I think it's -- I hear it's going really well. You're going to have some -- when she gets involved in things it works. I can tell you that. Under this major new initiative, great American companies and institutions will be signing a pledge to invest in teaching, training and mentoring America's youth who are transitioning out of the foster care system. This will help provide jobs, education and personal development opportunities to fantastic young people who truly need and deserve them and they're going to get them. A terrific example of the impact these programs can have is Eric Alvarez from Omaha, Nebraska who is with us today. Where is Eric? Where is -- stand up. Good looking guy. Good looking guy. Eric and his siblings were placed in foster care for a year when he was nine. He entered the child welfare system again when he was 15 and today he credits a mentoring and mentorship and work experience program for foster youth with helping him to finish high school and start his adult life and he did really well in high school, by the way.
Really a great student, but he starts life on the right foot, right? Wouldn't you say? I mean, I think you better say yes, otherwise I'm in big trouble. [Laughter] Otherwise, I'm all by myself up here, Eric. That would be -- I hear you're doing incredibly. Now after graduating from the University of Nebraska and interning for Congressman Don Bacon, Eric is pursuing a master's degree at the George Washington University and he is a cadet in the Air Force ROTC who'll be commissioned as an officer upon graduation. And, Eric, I just want to say great job. You've really been outstanding and I think that's probably why you were chosen out of so many people. You've done a fantastic job, congratulations. The new initiative we're establishing will also create an opportunity for foster youth to take full responsibility of the federal Tax Credit Scholarship program established by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill.
So many things, tax cuts and regulation cuts, so many things. The biggest -- the biggest ever passed in the history of our country, I call it the Great, Big, Beautiful Bill. I changed the name a little bit to make it even more sublime. [Laughter] But it is -- there's so many things in there for everybody. The biggest -- we had a choice, we could have done it in nine different bills or try for the one and everybody said no, let's do it in nine. It'll be easier actually, it wouldn't have gotten done. And JD and I and Scott, and all of us got together and we said, let's give it a shot and we got it passed and it was an amazing thing. But it's going to help a lot of people. There's never been anything like it. As in one bill, there's never been anything close. And when you see what's going on with the Democrats, we're lucky we got it passed because we don't have to do anything. All we have to do is implement it now and we'll be implementing it all over the place.
If you think about it, uh, no tax on tips, right? No tax on Social Security, all of the different things. No tax on overtime. You get deductions, if you buy a car, you take an interest rate deduction, an interest deduction against your income tax. It's never happened. Nothing like this has really ever been approved to this extent. And so it is one great Big, Beautiful Bill, but using the tax credit will expand occupational training, education and financial literacy programs for the foster youth and make it possible for more of them to attend the school of their choice. Choice is a great word for a lot of reasons, but it's a great thing with education and we'll also create the new Fostering the Future online platform to help young people find the access and really get great housing, very, very important and beautiful housing, healthcare. And other resources available to foster youth and those transitioning out of foster care. And we think it's going to happen with many, many people, many more than you have right now. Under the Trump administration, we believe that every American child deserves a safe and loving home and we're determined to support the amazing families who helped make that happen.
And we have some of those families in the room today. And I just want to thank you all for being in the White House. There is no place like this and we want to thank you very much for being here. Great families. Thank you very much. Faith based -- thank you. Faith-based nonprofits are the nation's most trusted institutions interacting with the foster care system and practicing Christians and more.
Think of this, more than twice as likely foster care, they'll adopt the general population. They adopt to it so easily. When they get out, they adopt to it just like as it's become second nature, it's amazing. Yet radical left policies and states nationwide make it much harder, not easier for those families to open up their homes. But we're working on that, we're dealing with the radical left. It's not easy, but we're winning and we're winning big. That's why with the order that we're doing today, we're taking the ridiculous woke policies that discriminate against Christians and families of faith. As president, I will always stand by us. We will stand by our country and we will stand for religious liberty. So important, we stand for religious liberty. The Bible tells us. Thank you. Thank you. The Bible tells us that one of the measures of any society is how it cares for vulnerable children and orphans. So important, and it's so big in the Bible. So as we make America great again, we are going to protect American children in foster care and we're going to ensure that they will never ever be forgotten.
These children will never be forgotten and they're going to grow up to be unbelievable strong, smart, wealthy, productive citizens. So once more I want to thank Melania for the great job she does not here only just as First Lady. She's a great First Lady and I want to thank you very much, honey. And the foster families and leaders here today, you're very special people and we're going to work together and we're going to have some absolutely incredible results.
Thank you all for being here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Are you ready everybody? This is it. Too late to change after. Should we sign it? think, right? Susie? Do we sign this? Good. [Laughter] I'm going to ask the First Lady to sign it also. Honey, sign it right there.
Melania Trump: Sure.
Trump: Ok.
Melania Trump: Yes, of course.
Trump: Ok, honey. Very nice. [Inaudible]