Trump is trying to steal food out of the mouths of nearly 1 million low-income school children.You read that correctly. Under his rabid and heartless "anti-welfare agenda", he's been pushing federal agencies to find ways to kick impoverished and vulnerable families out of programs they desperately need.
His most recent target: children's school lunches.Currently, the National School Lunch Program, operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), feeds more than 30 million children. Most have to manually, laboriously enroll in the program, except those who come from the most financially fraught homes. This subset, defined as children whose parents receive SNAP benefits, are automatically enrolled in the free school lunch program.
...Or they were. Until now.
Under Trump's new plan, though, these children would be deprived of their previous status.
Losing automatic enrollment means their families — who are already facing other ample hurdles and challenges — will
have to navigate exhausting bureaucratic red tape in order to manually re-enroll. And it doesn't take a genius to realize that means hundreds of thousands of at-risk kids will therefore
lose access to meals.Right now, 982,000 children are at risk of going hungry and foregoing vital nutrition that they need to develop their brains and their bodies, and to focus and improve school performance.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Research shows not only that a nourished child is a better learner but also that the child is a better test-taker and participant in school."
Low-income children are the very students who need this kind of solid foundation the most. Why would we go out of our way to deprive them of this?
Tell the USDA: stop making innocent children pay the price for your political wars. Continue providing easy access to free school lunches! 