When Alex Adams arrived in Washington late last year as the Trump administration’s point man on child care, he was little known outside his home state of Idaho, where he had helped engineer a massive deregulation effort that became the envy of many conservative activists. He made his intentions clear right away. Federal child care regulations, he told his new staff, should “fit on an index card in my back pocket,” according to two people who heard him make the remark. Now, five months into his