The COVID-19 pandemic brought the child care crisis into the national spotlight, but families, providers, and children have long experienced challenges due to the lack of comprehensive child care and early education systems. To date, the $50 billion in pandemic relief funding Congress has delivered to support children, families, and early educators has made a substantial impact on the state of child care in our country. States have used the federal child care relief dollars to expand child care assistance eligibility, waive parent/caregiver copayments, increase provider wages, eliminate child care deserts, and much more. To highlight the impact of the federal child care relief dollars, child care leaders in Louisiana, Michigan, New York, and Virginia took part in interviews with the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) to document how they used this substantial new funding to improve their child care systems. States’ innovative implementations of pandemic relief dollars demonstrate just how impactful increased child care funding can be. (author abstract)