Grinch Governors Go Scrooge on Schoolchildren

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Welcome to a Christmas edition of Progress Report.

This is going to be a quick one — whether you celebrate the holiday or not, I hope you’re enjoying a Monday off from work — with a little bit of news and an opportunity to help a lot of people in need.

By the way, if you need to buy a really last minute holiday present, you could always give the gift of the Progress Report newsletter. There’s so much to come in 2024, including a return to spotlighting candidates in crucial races up and down the ballot, reports on critical local elections and policy battles, conversations with organizers and lawmakers, and pieces you won’t read anywhere else.

As a gift to you, I’m also making subscriptions a whopping 30% off for today only.

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Having never celebrated Christmas at home until meeting my now-wife, I don’t have any treasured holiday traditions. Now that we have a toddler, I’m sure those will begin to emerge, though they may take awhile to stick — Shea doesn’t seem very interested in the tree that suddenly appeared in our apartment, which I respect.

Every year around Christmas, the New York chapter of the Official Liverpool Supporters Club holds a canned food drive for the pantry down the block from our home bar in the East Village. This year, holding the food drive during the match between Liverpool and bitter rival Manchester United led to us collecting more food and cash donations than ever before. I’d call this one of my favorite holiday traditions, but it really shouldn’t be necessary.

Unfortunately, the city doesn’t see it that way. Mayor Eric Adams’ disdain for public service has led to illegally long delays in processing SNAP benefits, keeping poor New Yorkers starving. The city’s Human Resources Administration says it’s rushing to hasten the timeline, in part by hiring new workers now that it’s been granted a waiver from Adams’ hiring freeze.

The progressive City Council has been pushing back on Adams’ new regime of austerity budget cuts, as have unions and nonprofits. Such a strong collective sociopolitical infrastructure doesn’t exist in much of the rest of the country, which is why a handful of Grinch governors are getting away with this latest needless attack in the GOP’s War on Children.

Grinch Governors Go Scrooge on Schoolchildren

In Florida, the DeSantis administration is planning to reject $248 million in federal funds designed to feed low-income children while school is out for the summer. The money would be enough to feed two million children in Florida, where child poverty has skyrocketed over the past few years. More than half of children in Florida live in homes experiencing financial hardship.

Ron DeSantis has a history of spiting hungry children. In 2021, he opted out of a Covid-era food benefit program, then snubbed another program that would have also fed two million children in Florida. By refusing those two programs, DeSantis passed up nearly $6 billion in food aid for low-income Floridians.

As he spites people back home (and lectures all of us with religious hypocrisy), DeSantis continues to flail in Iowa, where the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds has done absolutely nothing to enhance his standing with GOP caucus-goers. They’re a miserable pair, linked by a politics of phony culture wars and unnecessary cruelty, so it was no surprise that just days after Florida, Reynolds announced that Iowa will forgo $29 million because it would also rather see kids starve than accept help from the federal government.

“Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” Reynolds said in a statement predicated entirely on lies.

Contrary to Reynolds’s claim, the federal program, known as Summer EBT, is a permanent new benefit — at least for families in states with governors that aren’t dishonest, moralizing schmucks. An EBT card is very specifically designed to promote nutrition, and there is overwhelming evidence that the lower someone’s income, the more unhealthy their diet. Denying people the help offered by the Summer EBT program is actively promoting childhood obesity.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen also declined the Summer EBT program, citing the same lie about the program’s longevity that Reynolds offered up. That’s $18 million for low-income children turned aside for sheer ideological stubbornness.

We can’t make these moral Visigoths opt into the federal program, much less care about children, but we can do our best to help the food banks, pantries, and charities that are being forced to deal with record demand for their limited supplies. Below, I’ve linked to the donation pages of prominent food pantry networks in Florida, Iowa, and Nebraska, so if you’re in the Christmas spirit and not tapped out from buying gifts, think about sending a bit of money to these vital organizations.

Do me a favor and let me know if you donated, and how much you donated, in the comments. Any little bit helps. Have a wonderful holiday!

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