In her home country of Slovenia, Melania Trump grew up going to Formula 1 races with her father.

The first lady of the United States will combine her lifelong passion for cars and racing with a new one on Thursday: foster youngsters.

Prior to this weekend's Grand Prix in Washington, DC, she is collaborating with IndyCar and Fox Corporation to introduce new scholarship options for young adults leaving foster care. The announcement will be made at the White House Rose Garden with President Donald Trump.

Melania Trump, who has kept a considerably lower profile during her husband's second term and hasn't been seen in public since the FIFA World Cup on July 19, is making a rare public appearance at the event, which her external senior adviser described as "a plopdown on culture like you've never seen before." However, it also reflects how she is steering her own path as first lady, avoiding some of the more conventional, public responsibilities of the position while working behind the scenes on important policy initiatives, particularly with regard to her foster care program, "Fostering the Future."

The president's close friend Sen. Lindsey Graham's funeral, 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 are just a few of the events that Trump has missed in recent weeks where the absence of any of her predecessors might have been noticeable.

The majority of that time has been spent away from the White House, which is undergoing construction due to her husband's numerous side projects, and at the president's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Additionally, much of Trump's public appearances earlier this year were devoted to pushing her multimillion-dollar partnership with Amazon on her documentary of the same name, with the exception of a surprise remark aimed at distancing herself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

However, sources told CNN that the first lady and her team are deeply involved in a more targeted policy operation away from the spotlight than during her husband's first term, when her multifaceted "Be Best" effort failed to garner much traction or results.

What first sparked the first lady's interest in foster care is unclear. She has been involved in other child-related initiatives, such as encouraging the responsible application of AI and assisting in the reunification of children who were split up from their families during Russia's conflict with Ukraine. However, her office refused to disclose details regarding her particular motivation regarding this matter. (The US Department of Education estimates that 400,000 American adolescents are in foster care; according to the National adolescents in Transition Database, one in five of them become homeless once they leave the system.) Shortly after her husband's first term, in 2021, Trump started her advocacy by starting a number of scholarships.

Since taking office again, she has pushed for an executive order signed by the president in November of last year, which officials claim has sparked state-level action to monitor child welfare data and abolish the so-called orphan tax; introduced IRA-style savings accounts for foster children; and obtained a $25 million investment in her husband's 2026 budget for housing and assistance for young people leaving the system. Although the legislation is still stuck, her team is working closely with Congress to restructure programs supporting housing, education, and training programs for foster adolescents and former foster youth. She has made appeals on Capitol Hill for youngsters aging out of the foster care system.

One senior administration official told CNN that her office is "thinking much more about legacy," including hiring "folks with bona fide policy chops to help implement that."

Foster youth advocates have noted that Trump has hired Sarah Gesiriech, a former USAID official who advised former first lady Laura Bush and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as her director of policy, despite the fact that she has assembled a much smaller staff of seven, compared to more than a dozen on her team during her first term. According to the senior official, Trump's staff regularly interacts with agencies, frequently with specific requests.

They are actually motivating organizations to take steps that will help foster youngsters. The first lady's office is in the cockpit, but the agencies must ultimately take those steps," the official stated.

While most child welfare experts who talked with CNN praised the first lady's efforts, others privately questioned whether the job she is doing has been damaged by other measures implemented by her husband's administration.

Chantal Hinds, a lawyer and senior policy manager at Children's Defense Fund of New York who focuses with historically underprivileged and marginalized children and families, said, "It's good that there is a national conversation about these young people."

"But what's going on with the administration and how those things will also impact and probably hinder the true effectiveness of some of these changes that are happening for young people is the big elephant in the room," she stated.

The Trump administration "is putting families in more precarious situations," according to Hinds, who mentioned cuts to safety net programs like food stamps and modifications to the Medicaid system. She warned that this could lead to an increase in "the number of young people that enter the system to begin with." Hinds also noted that over 30% of foster youngsters identify as LGBTQ, pointing to the Trump administration's targeting of transgender rights.

What did she say to the first lady? Continue to advocate while opposing some of the actions of her husband's administration.

When CNN asked if Melania Trump, who has a history of independence, had given any of that pushback in private, the first lady's staff did not reply.

However, the senior official claimed that Trump's focus on foster youngsters has already "accelerated action," increasing acceptance of what has traditionally been a bipartisan issue in some political quarters. This has been the case with "kin licensure," a policy that supporters have long advocated for that permits family members and relatives to register as licensed foster parents.

Some red states have said, "Hey, thank you so much." With our legislative, we were running into some obstacles. We've overcome some of those early obstacles now that we can claim this is connected to the Trump Fostering the Future initiative," the official stated.