Trump vs. Kids
It's about the fear
Anne Lutz Fernandez takes a deep dive into the Trump Administration’s relentless attacks on children.
The bottom line: It’s about fear. When children learn to fear the state, they learn that compliance minimizes pain.
Governing by fear is how dictators get and maintain a grip on power. You may dream of a better way, but you don’t actively seek it because you’ve learned: The state shuts down any unauthorized ideas.
Here’s more from Anne:
Red states have removed child labor protections, allowing kids, especially in low-income areas and migrants, to work long hours in hazardous jobs. Draconian abortion laws endanger the lives and health of girls, including victims of trafficking, rape, and incest. The GOP tax and spending bill slashes food assistance for needy families and schools. Medicaid cuts strip schools of dollars for nurses and psychologists and will make it harder for rural families to get pediatric health care. Trump’s DOE fired the staff that distributes funding for students with disabilities under IDEA.
The second Trump Administration announced early that it would leave no safe spaces for children: not schools, not hospitals, not churches, not homes.
It’s about the fear:
A new report on US immigration policy and mental health confirms what should be obvious: mass deportations are deeply harmful to children in migrant and mixed-status families. And when masked men grab a parent from the school car line or the corner coffee shop, all students in that school or neighborhood are subject to trauma and made to understand: The state can make people disappear. It is to be feared.
What he is doing is sick.