In the United States Congress, most Republicans will not support a child allowance to keep children, and their families, out of poverty. On the question of health care, there are 10 states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming — where Republicans have refused the Medicaid expansion passed under the Affordable Care Act, depriving millions of Americans, including many children, of access to regular medical care.
And in the wake of yet another school massacre — in Nashville, where a shooter killed three adults and three children at a private Christian school — Republicans refuse to do anything that might reduce the odds of another shooting or make it less likely that a child dies of gun violence.
“There isn’t anybody here that, if they could find the right approach, wouldn’t try to do something because they feel that pain,” said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday. “And yet, when we start talking about bans or challenging on the Second Amendment, I think the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going to with gun control.”
“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” said Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who represents the district in question. “And we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals.”
In 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control, firearms were the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States.
When you put all of this together, the picture is clear. The Republican Party will use the law and the state to shield as many children as possible from the knowledge, cultural influences and technologies deemed divisive or controversial or subversive by the voters, activists and apparatchiks that shape and guide its priorities. When Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty say jump, their only question is: How high?
But when it comes to actual threats to the lives of American children — from poverty, from hunger, from sickness and from guns — then, well, the Republican Party wants us to slow down and consider the costs and consequences, and even possible futility, of taking any action to help.