2026-08-20T10:00:29.847Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
梅拉尼娅·特朗普在祖国斯洛文尼亚长大，儿时常与父亲一同观看一级方程式赛车比赛。
本周四，这位美国第一夫人将把自己长期以来对汽车和赛车的个人兴趣，与一项全新的事业结合起来：帮扶寄养青年。
她将与印地赛车联盟及福克斯娱乐集团合作，为即将脱离寄养系统的年轻人设立全新奖学金项目。该项目将于本周末华盛顿大奖赛赛前，与总统唐纳德·特朗普一同在白宫玫瑰园的发布会上正式揭晓。
此次活动是梅拉尼娅·特朗普罕见的公开露面。她的外部高级顾问将此次活动形容为“一场前所未有的文化热点事件”。特朗普在丈夫的第二任期内一直保持极低的曝光度，自7月19日国际足联世界杯以来就未曾公开露面。但这一活动也反映出她正在为第一夫人一职开辟自己的道路——避开该职位中一些较为传统的公开角色，转而在幕后扎实推进实质性政策工作，具体而言就是她的寄养青年帮扶倡议“培育未来”（Fostering the Future）。
例如，近几周来特朗普缺席了多场活动，即便她的缺席可能会引发关注：包括总统密友、参议员林赛·格雷厄姆的葬礼、改期后的白宫记者协会晚宴，以及近期在多佛空军基地为在伊朗战争中阵亡的美军士兵举行的遗体告别仪式。
这段时间里，她大多待在总统位于新泽西州贝德明斯特的高尔夫俱乐部，而非白宫——目前白宫正处于大规模施工阶段，因为她丈夫有多个私人项目正在推进。今年早些时候，除了一份意外发表的声明，试图与被判有罪的性犯罪者杰弗里·爱泼斯坦划清界限之外，她的多数公开露面都用于宣传她与亚马逊合作的同名纪录片项目，该项目为她带来了数百万美元收入。
但据多位消息人士向CNN透露，在镜头之外，这位第一夫人及其团队正积极开展一项比丈夫第一任期内更为聚焦的政策工作。她在第一任期内推出的多维度“最好的自己”（Be Best）倡议未能获得显著影响力或实际成果。
目前尚不清楚是什么最初激发了第一夫人对寄养帮扶工作的兴趣。她此前也参与过其他儿童相关的工作：例如推动负责任地使用人工智能，以及努力促成在俄罗斯对乌克兰的战争中被拆散家庭的儿童团聚。但她的办公室拒绝提供她在这一问题上具体动机的相关信息。（根据美国教育部的数据，全美约有40万青年处于寄养状态；根据全国青年过渡数据库的信息，每五名脱离寄养系统的年轻人中就有一人会陷入无家可归的境地。）特朗普的帮扶行动始于丈夫第一任期结束后不久，她在2021年就推出了一系列奖学金项目。
自回到白宫以来，她推动总统在去年11月签署了一项行政令，官员们表示该命令已推动各州开始采取行动，追踪儿童福利数据并废除所谓的“孤儿税”；她还推出了类似个人退休账户的寄养儿童储蓄账户方案；并在丈夫2026年的预算案中争取到了2500万美元拨款，用于为脱离寄养系统的年轻人提供住房和支持服务。她曾在国会山呼吁关注即将脱离寄养系统的儿童，她的团队也正与国会密切合作，全面改革针对寄养青年和前寄养青年的住房、教育和培训项目支持计划，但相关立法目前仍处于停滞状态。
一位资深政府官员向CNN透露，她的团队“更多地在考虑遗产问题”，包括引入“具备真正政策能力的人才来协助落实这一目标”。
尽管特朗普的团队人数比第一任期时大幅缩减，目前仅有7名工作人员，而第一任期时团队成员超过12人，但寄养青年倡导者已经注意到，她聘请了前美国国际开发署官员萨拉·杰西里奇担任政策主管。杰西里奇曾为前第一夫人劳拉·布什以及爱荷华州参议员查克·格拉斯利提供过咨询。这位资深官员表示，特朗普的办公室经常与各政府机构开展对接，并经常提出具体要求。
“他们确实在推动各机构采取有利于寄养青年的行动。最终还是需要各机构来落实这些行动，但第一夫人的办公室正处于主导地位。”该官员说道。
接受CNN采访的儿童福利专家普遍对第一夫人的帮扶行动表示赞赏，但也有部分人私下质疑，她丈夫领导的政府推出的其他政策是否会破坏她正在开展的工作。
“就这些年轻人展开全国性讨论是件好事，”纽约儿童防卫基金的律师兼高级政策经理尚塔尔·欣兹说道，她的专业领域是历史上被边缘化和服务不足的儿童与家庭群体。
“但我认为，最大的问题在于本届政府的其他政策会如何影响，甚至可能阻碍这些针对年轻人的改革真正发挥效用。”她说道。
欣兹举例指出，特朗普政府削减了食品券等社会保障项目的预算，并对医疗补助系统进行改革，称这些举措“让家庭处境更加岌岌可危”，这可能会“导致最初进入寄养系统的年轻人数量增加”。她还提到特朗普政府针对跨性别群体权利的举措，并指出约30%的寄养青年身份为LGBTQ群体。
她对第一夫人的建议是：继续推进帮扶行动，但要反对丈夫政府推行的部分政策。
第一夫人的办公室未回应CNN的置评请求，即长期以来颇具独立个性的梅拉尼娅·特朗普是否曾私下对丈夫政府的部分政策提出过反对意见。
但这位资深官员表示，特朗普对寄养青年问题的关注已经“加速了相关行动的落地”，使得在一些政治领域，这个历来属于两党共同关注的议题获得了更多支持。以“亲属 licensing”政策为例，这是倡导者长期以来推动的一项政策，允许亲属和家庭成员注册成为持证寄养父母。
“我们已经听到一些红色州表示：‘非常感谢。此前我们在州议会遇到了一些阻碍。现在当我们能将其与特朗普的‘培育未来’倡议联系起来时，我们就克服了最初的一些障碍。’”该官员说道。
Melania Trump prioritizes policy over public presence this term
2026-08-20T10:00:29.847Z / CNN
Melania Trump grew up attending Formula 1 races with her father in her native Slovenia.
On Thursday, America’s first lady will merge that longtime personal interest in cars and racing with a new one: foster youth.
She’s teaming up with IndyCar and Fox Corporation to launch new scholarship opportunities for young adults transitioning out of foster care, to be unveiled at a White House Rose Garden announcement alongside President Donald Trump ahead of this weekend’s Grand Prix in Washington, DC.
The event — which her external senior adviser previewed as “a plopdown on culture like you’ve never seen before” — marks a rare public appearance for Melania Trump, who has kept a much lower profile during her husband’s second term and hasn’t been seen in public since the FIFA World Cup on July 19. But it’s also reflection of how she’s charting her own course as first lady — eschewing some of the more traditional, public roles of the job while engaging behind the scenes in substantive policy work — specifically on her foster care initiative, “Fostering the Future.”
In recent weeks, for example, Trump skipped events where any of her predecessors’ absence might have been noticed: the funeral of the president’s close friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner and a recent dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base for US service members killed in the Iran war.
She’s spent most of that time at the president’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club and away from the White House, which is an active construction zone amid her husband’s various pet projects. And earlier this year, aside from a surprise statement seeking to distance herself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, many of Trump’s public appearances were dedicated to promoting her multimillion-dollar deal with Amazon on her eponymous documentary.
But away from the glare of the cameras, sources told CNN, the first lady and her team are intensely engaged in a more focused policy operation than during her husband’s first term, when her multi-pronged “Be Best” initiative failed to gain significant traction or results.
It’s not clear what first spurred the first lady’s interest in foster care. She’s been engaged in other efforts around children — to promote the responsible use of AI, for example, and working to reunite kids separated from their families during Russia’s war against Ukraine. But her office declined to provide information about her specific motivation on this issue. (Approximately 400,000 American youth live in foster care, according to the US Department of Education, with one in five experiencing homelessness when transitioning out of the system, per the National Youth in Transition Database.) Trump’s advocacy began shortly after her husband’s first term, when she launched a series of scholarships in 2021.
Since returning to the White House, she’s pushed for an executive order signed by the president last November, which officials say has kickstarted action at the state level to track child welfare data and to end the so-called orphan tax; debuted IRA-style savings accounts for children in foster care; and secured a $25 million investment in her husband’s 2026 budget for housing and support for youth transitioning out of the system. She’s appealed on Capitol Hill for children aging out of the foster care system, and her team is working closely with Congress to overhaul programs supporting housing, education and training programs for foster youth and former foster youth, although the legislation remains stalled.
Her office, one senior administration told CNN, is “thinking much more about legacy,” including by bringing in “folks with bona fide policy chops to help implement that.”
While Trump has assembled a much smaller staff of seven — compared to more than a dozen on her team during the first term — foster youth advocates have taken note of the hiring of Sarah Gesiriech, a former USAID official who advised former first lady Laura Bush and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as her director of policy. Trump’s office frequently engages across agencies, often with specific asks, the senior official said.
“They’re really driving agencies to take actions that will be beneficial to foster youth. Ultimately, the agencies have to take those actions, but the first lady’s office is sitting in the cockpit,” the official said.
Experts in child welfare who spoke to CNN generally applauded the first lady’s advocacy, though some privately questioned whether other policies driven by her husband’s administration have undermined the work she is doing.
“It’s good that there is a national conversation about these young people,” said Chantal Hinds, a lawyer and senior policy manager at Children’s Defense Fund of New York who specializes in historically marginalized and underserved children and families.
“However, I think that the big elephant in the room is what’s happening on the side of the administration and how those things will also impact and likely hinder the true effectiveness of some of these changes that are happening for young people,” she said.
Hinds cited cutbacks to safety net programs, like food stamps and changes to the Medicaid system, as examples of how the Trump administration “is putting families in more precarious situations,” which, she suggested could increase “the number of young people that enter the system to begin with.” Hinds also pointed to the Trump administration taking aim at transgender rights, noting that roughly 30% of foster youth identify as LGBTQ.
Her message to the first lady? Keep up the advocacy but push back on some of what her husband’s administration is doing.
The office of the first lady did not respond to CNN’s inquiry as to whether Melania Trump, who has long held an independent streak, had offered any of that pushback privately.
But Trump’s attention on foster youth has already “accelerated action,” the senior official said, leading to more acceptance in some political corners of what’s typically been a bipartisan issue. That’s been the case for something called “kin licensure,” a policy advocates have long pushed for that enables relatives and family members to register to become licensed foster parents.
“We’ve had some red states say, ‘Hey, thanks so much. We were hitting some brick walls with our legislature. Now that we’ve been able to say this is related to the Trump Fostering the Future initiative, it got us over some of those initial hurdles,’” the official said.