Letting kids starve is not a legitimate position

Some states guarantee free lunch, others strip it away

Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.

Lots to touch on tonight, including the partisan battle over feeding children (welcome to 2023), Ron DeSantis’s disturbing meltdown, an inside look at big labor news, Medicaid unwinding, and more.

We’ve got it all: Some hope, some schadenfreude, some progress, and some outrage. But mostly the first three things.

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The Republican War on Children

There are few things more dangerous in a democracy than policy being seen and covered as an extension of partisan politics. Forced objectivity breeds nihilism, which is really the only way to explain how the GOP’s petty and relentless efforts to make life significantly worse for children this year is not a persistent national outrage.

The expiration of emergency Covid programs over the past two years provided Republican states the opportunity to opt out of a number of generous aid programs that had sustained tens of millions of Americans since 2020. Many of those programs had an outsized impact on children, perhaps none more the expansion of food aid. There’s still plenty of federal money to go around to sustain those programs, but obtaining the cash now requires a proactive pursuit.

So far this summer, seven states have declined to participate in the federal government’s Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer, leaving billions of dollars on the table when it could be helping to fill lunch boxes and dinner tables. Instead of an extra $120 in grocery money per child, Republican lawmakers in Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas are simply providing working families with lame excuses and more financial uncertainty.

Compounding the grocery aid blockade is a steep decline in the number of children who have received free summer lunches this year. The overall 45% drop is primarily the fault of federal bureaucratic delay, but decline has been far lower in states with more proactive, even nominally pro-kid governments.

As we enter August, many cities and states are turning their focus to restoring universal school lunch programs — and in this case, there’s much more good news to report.

On Friday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation that guarantees children across the state free breakfast and lunch during the upcoming school year. On Monday, it was New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s turn to ensure free lunch for every child in her state. There are now seven states poised to provide free meals to all students over the coming school year.

Democratic legislators in Pennsylvania want their state to become the eighth on that list, though Gov. Josh Shapiro’s epic screw-up with regard to school vouchers has his budget and just about everything else frozen for the time being.

Given how much free meals improve educational and social outcomes, it’s less an expenditure than a smart investment in millions of children. While Republicans have no interest in making that investment, local governments are increasingly defying stingy Republican legislatures to do it themselves.