Let's how Republicans do that
It’s a disturbing hypocrisy.
If cutting federal spending is a desirable
Republican goal over all else, okay, that’s understandable even if
disagreeable. If promoting a religious-based view of morality is
super-important, at least I can follow that without regard to my opposition.
But to hear Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(R-Ga.) draw ovations at the CPAC conservative conference last week that “When
it comes to kids, I think the Republican Party has a duty — we have a
responsibility — and that is to be the party that
protects children,” it’s at odds with the votes and actions
that GOP lawmakers take on issues like extending child tax credits or even
child health insurance measures.
Of course, Greene was talking about her “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” that outlaws a dozen or more medical interventions used to treat gender dysphoria in transgender young people – a bill that went nowhere last year.
The measure would also prohibit using federal
funds for gender-affirming health care, including in Affordable Healthcare Act
plans, regardless of state laws that she and her Republican colleagues say they
support more generally.
She would protect some children, not
others.
In Arkansas this week, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a newly passed bill that would remove the state’s requirement for children under 16 to prove their age to get a job.
In
her view, deleting the requirement would underscore the idea that it is parents
who decide whether their minor works at a job up to eight hours a day or not,
adding that other child labor laws remain in effect. It’s essentially an
identification document for minors.
This bill emerges among coincidental disclosures
that thousands of migrant minors are being put to work nationally at factory
and slaughterhouse jobs that often are hazardous – prompting a federal Labor
Department crackdown.
It’s frankly hard to see elimination of
regulation as protection for child services when the marketplace says
otherwise.
What About Real Child Services?
This last week marked the expiration of the
pandemic-ordered boost to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) benefits, the formal name for food stamps. It
has been credited with keeping 4.2 million children in 32 states from poverty
conditions. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act had passed in
2020 to temporarily boost SNAP benefits.
Some states — including the same Georgia
and Arkansas — have stopped issuing the emergency allotments, according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
You might have thought that promoting the
GOP as the Party of Child Protection would include food help.
Republicans last year made clear that they
would oppose extension of child tax credit direct payments to families that had
been adopted during the pandemic. And even federal subsidies for health
insurance for eligible low-income uninsured children and pregnant women whose
income is too high to qualify for Medicaid is capped after 2027.
In all the speechifying among conservatives
trying to out spiral one another towards the destruction of the nation’s social
service nets, you hear few MAGA leaders talking about spending on child
services.
By comparison, the morality-fueled
opposition to abortion runs high and hot in this political crowd, with states
that rank low in public services for children continuing to invent new ways to
discourage lingering legal abortion within their states – or even across state
borders.
Texas legislators have a bill that would
bar use of credit cards in the state for any abortion services and another
seeking to bar the internet from offering abortion information – without regard
to legal or practical considerations – and attorneys general from red states
successfully got Walgreen’s to decide against distributing abortion medications
even in some states where they are legal. Other states are considering bills to
charge women criminally for use of medical abortion pills.
The lists of states measuring low on a
range of child protective services, from infant mortality to poverty to
graduation rates show a high correlation with the states supporting the most
severe forms of anti-abortion legislation. Few of those supporting
anti-abortion laws are also voting for child services.
The Politics of Woke
Clearly, we also are seeing the protection
of children argument at heavy use in the world of education. Public schools and
teachers are finding themselves at the sharp end of attacks on what is
considered teachable curriculum, on the use of books that continue to be
banned, and on the use of public education monies for parochial school
tuitions.
We’re watching Tennessee ban drag shows in
the name of protection rather than address oversexualization of our advertising
or the mental health fallout of the body shaming that seems to mark increased
social media usage by pre-teens.
Clearly, school shootings don’t seem to
make it into these Republican lists of needs to protect children. The mass
shooting incidents continue as we place worship of guns several notches ahead
of child protection.
“Child Protection” as a Republican mantra
has become a plank in the culture wars to protect children from being “woke.”
The Republican translation of “woke” is anything that disturbs traditional
thinking about a dominant White, Christian society and pushes back against an
America that increasingly is a multi-racial and identifying in more
gender-fluid ways.
If these same Republican speakers were
truly caring of more individualism in America, of eliminating bars to allow for
individual parents and households to decide for themselves about cultural issues,
then they would be turning away from such campaigns that dictate what ideas are
held to be acceptable.
We’d be a lot better off if Republicans and
Democrats alike would start with whether children have food, health, housing
and opportunity and gun control laws rather than a prescribed set of books and
school bathroom usage codes.
Terry H. Schwadron
retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The
Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin.
He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of
several Pulitzers in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in
newsrooms, built technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to
recruit and train minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident
of Harlem, he volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs,
tutoring and is an active freelance trombone player.
