Florida GOP ignores "parents' rights," votes to put children to work late into the night

There's some good news for kids elsewhere, though

Welcome to a Wednesday evening edition of Progress Report.

Earlier today, I promised to send paid supporters an updated version of the Wednesday morning edition of the newsletter, which may have been too long for some people to download and read. With so much going on, however, I opted to fill this edition up with mostly brand new stories.

Tonight’s theme is the wide gulf in how our two main political parties treat children. Every election is now a choice between providing kids health care and hard labor.

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👶🏻 🩺 North Carolina just guaranteed that every child currently enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program will keep their health insurance for the next year. The announcement is the first in what the state hopes will be a series of moves to extend eligibility and keep kids healthy.

Nearly a million people enrolled in North Carolina’s Medicaid program during the pandemic, when a federally mandated freeze meant that the state couldn’t remove anybody, regardless of their eligibility. Since beginning the unwinding process in July, more than 160,000 North Carolinians have been purged from the rolls, including 53,000 children.

North Carolina has actually been pretty good about making the effort to keep people enrolled, but among the beneficiaries who did get purged, nearly 90% lost their health care due to a paperwork issue. The federal government has been trying to curb those so-called procedural disenrollments, so it didn’t take long for CMS to approve North Carolina’s request to keep kids on board.

The state has several other federal waiver applications pending, including one that would guarantee kids’ coverage through the age of five and reduce eligibility checks to every other year until an enrollee turns 18.

Each waiver was requested by Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration, as Republicans legislators have yet to strip his office of the power to operate state health programs. Should Republican Lt. Gov Mark Robinson win next year’s open gubernatorial election, he’s just as likely to send every poor child to prison camps as he is to expand their access to health care.

It took them a decade, but North Carolina Republicans finally gave in and expanded Medicaid this fall. With more than 600,000 people newly eligible for the health program, a fair number of the kids who were kicked off of Medicaid over the past few months would probably be eligible again. Still, these waivers are open to any state, and there’s no reason why some can’t follow the lead of North Carolina and Kentucky.

👶🏻 🔨 Speaking of Republicans condemning kids to hard labor, Florida’s new child labor rollback bill came up for debate in committee this afternoon.

I watched the session on the House livestream and found myself unexpectedly riveted by the proceedings, which played out like a clash of two very different realities. Corporate money truly creates a rift in the fabric of space and time.

Some of the exchanges have to be seen to be believed; you rarely get to witness corruption happening in real-time, such a commitment to smiling cynicism, or this level of contrast between the two parties. Luckily, I clipped some of the wildest moments for you, including some delicious moments :