Just a week into his second term
as president, Donald Trump's
administration tried to snatch away trillions of federal
dollars from their rightful
recipients. Money for healthcare,
medical research, housing, child care, food for the
hungry, and even disaster relief efforts —
Trump's freeze on federal aid tried to stop it
all.
In an interview on CNN, Republican
Congressman Rich McCormick of Georgia had the audacity
to not only defend the dangerous move,
but to also suggest the most morbid
idea for the children who would go hungry
without the school lunches provided by federal
aid.
"You're telling me that kids who stay at
home instead of going to work at Burger King,
McDonald's, during the summer, should stay at home and
get their free lunch instead of going to work? I think
we need to have a top-down review."
McCormick's idea to
make hungry children work for food is neither backed by
compassion nor science. We
know from research that hungry kids do
worse in school; they struggle to pay attention, retain
information, and solve problems. Why,
then, would we assume they would be happy and successful
if, on top of all of that, they had to start working an
adult job?
Children should be able to
focus on their childhood, not on working so that they
don't go hungry. While the federal aid freeze
has been blocked, we cannot let up the pressure even for
a moment. Trump and his followers like McCormick will
continue to try to test their limits of power and attack
the most vulnerable of our society, but
this block proves that when we fight back, we
win.
Sign the petition for
all of the hungry children who need our support under
this administration, and tell Trump and his supporters
to stay away from their
funding!
