Republicans escalate their war on children

Good news on the freedom front, though

Welcome to a Wednesday night of Progress Report.

A few years ago, I began urging Democrats to reclaim the term “freedom” from Republicans, who had surrendered their dubious claim to its political potency by fully transforming into autocratic goons.

It now appears as if party leaders have seen the light and adopted my suggestion as a key part of their rhetorical repertoire. Late last month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is now the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, hammered repeatedly on the concept when asked about his strategy for 2024 during an interview with The Daily Beast:

“Focus on those issues around freedom, because we’re really trying to do it: freedom to have our own reproductive care, freedom in the bedroom, freedom to read the books we want to, and I think that is the message,” Walz said. “While they’re messing with nonsense, we’re improving people’s lives, getting things done, and I think that there’s no way that cannot help both the president and down ticket.”

I’d like them to also focus on economic freedom, both in policy and rhetoric. If voters feel a sense of freedom from a relentless grind of bills, credit card debt, the price of groceries, corporate scams, and the absurd cost of childcare, we’ll be in a much better place.

Still, it’s good news, as is the fact that Florida’s leading Republican legislators shot down the prospect of passing total bans on abortion and mail-in voting. This is the first time that I’ve seen Florida Republicans scuttle extremist legislation for fear of public backlash. Ron DeSantis really has lost it.

In tonight’s newsletter, we’re going to dive into some recent news and how it tells a cohesive story about the latest frame that I think Democrats need to push: The GOP War on Children.

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If poor kids in Republican-run states want to eat, they’re just going to have to work for it.

The Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday that 35 states opted into a new federal program that will provide additional SNAP benefits to low-income families every summer. The government estimates that 21 million kids will benefit from the additional aid, while 10 million children in the 15 abstaining states will miss out on the assistance.

Each of the states that opted out of the program are run by a Republican Party that has made the immiseration of children a prime legislative directive over the past half-decade.

Child poverty is rampant in most of the 15 states, including Mississippi and Louisiana, where more than 26% of kids live below the federal poverty line. The list also includes seven — Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Georgia — of the ten states that have refused generous government incentives to fully expand Medicaid.

Because Iowa had participated in a similar Covid-era program that has since expired, Gov. Kim Reynolds’s rejection of the permanent aid will result in a significant financial blow to around 240,000 residents. The state will also increase the frequency of its eligibility tests in a bid to further reduce SNAP numbers. The crackdown comes amid a record spike in demand at Iowa’s food banks last fall.

In Oklahoma, where Gov. Kevin Stitt just denied 300,000 low-income children extra meal money every summer, legislators explored a rollback this past fall, though it did not wind up becoming law.

Reynolds was roundly criticized late last month when she claimed that additional financial support would do nothing to alleviate Iowa’s child obesity epidemic, an assertion that runs counter to every study ever conducted on the correlation between poverty and nutrition. The governor instead put her faith in a more conservative solution to the lunch money conundrum: rolling back child labor laws.

All the Kids Are Doing It

Iowa helped set the pace for last year’s state-led rush to loosen century-old restrictions on the exploitation of minors in the workplace, framing it as a solution to the post-pandemic “labor shortage” that was requiring employers to pay people living wages to work grueling jobs. I reported on Iowa’s new law and the special interests that pushed it through last spring, then watched in horror as other a dozen other states took up similar bills even as journalists and the Department of Labor were uncovering an unprecedented number of child labor violations.

The DOL, working under a more aggressive mandate, found nearly 6,000 minors working in illegal conditions last year, a 50% jump from the year prior. Minors as young as 12 and 13 were employed at fast food franchises, construction sites, industrial farms, processing plants, and dangerous meatpacking facilities. They often worked late at night to avoid “independent” compliance investigators hired by corporations looking for approval for their supply chains.

Because federal regulatory law is so weak, the DOL was only able to fine employers and subcontractors a total of $8 million for those nearly 6000 violations. That practically incentivizes deep-pocketed companies to hire children, or at least look the other way when their temporary employee firms and subcontractors do so.

Even so, conservative legislators continue to try to further loosen state child labor laws. On Tuesday, a Republican lawmaker in Indiana introduced a significant change to the state statute governing the conditions under which minors can work. Rep. Joanna King’s bill would allow kids as young as 14 to drop out of school and work up to 40 hours a week on a corporate farm.

In doing research for my story last year, I learned that working any more than 20 hours per week leads to a precipitous decline in teenage academic performance.

King, by the way, was a long-time member of her local board of education. Her LinkedIn profile says she “cares deeply about the next generation and how we educate and help them grow into the adults that shape and influence the world.”

There are seemingly exemptions to her deep passion for educating children. The bill is undoubtedly aimed at migrant teens, who are often forced to drop out of school so that they can earn money to send back home to their families. The dots are easy to connect: King has been active in the effort to secure drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, a commendable mission that loses some of its sheen when pursued on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce for the purpose of hiring cheap teen labor.

Another significant child labor rollback was the subject of fierce debate in the Florida House of Representatives on Wednesday. The bill, introduced by Rep. Linda Chaney, would allow 16-year-olds to work more than 30 hours a week during the school year and reduce the number of breaks to which they are entitled.

The bill passed through a subcommittee vote after two hours of floor debate, during which business lobbyists and GOP legislators humiliated themselves and got battered by advocates for migrant farmworkers, Democratic legislators, and other labor activists. If you have any questions about the moral stakes of this legislation, check out the contrasting testimonies in the video above.

In her closing remarks, Rep. Chaney stressed that a bill focused on 16-year-olds does’t have anything to do with children. “This bill allows teenagers to have a choice,” she said, exhibiting an advanced form of political amnesia just months after voting with her GOP colleagues to strip teens of autonomy over most other parts of their lives.

The same happened in Ohio on Wednesday, when the GOP legislature voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill to ban gender-affirming health care for teenagers. Republicans, with an ill-gotten supermajority in each chamber, easily hit the three-fifths majority in the House and look likely to do the same in the Senate.

Democrats, while helpless for now in a gerrymandered minority, publicly fumed over the decision.

“The party of so-called freedom is voting to take away your freedom today, against their own Republican governor,” said Rep. Jessica Miranda (D-Cincinnati). “With this vote to override the governor’s veto today, you are literally killing our children. Take that in for a moment. Literally killing our children. All to win your Republican primary races. Disgusting.”

The GOP’s war on freedom and war on children very often intertwine.

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