America’s Children: Props or Priorities?

Just about every politician has cited children as the reason to support some policy or another. You can count on hearing a brief – usually very brief – mention of kids in stump speeches, debates, and inauguration speeches to signal morality or urgency… but there is an ever-growing divide between those who use children as rhetorical props and those who wield political capital to deliver real improvements to children’s lives.

In the cultural arena, Republicans have done a great job branding themselves as defenders of children, on the surface at least. But let’s call it out y’all.

The GOP has framed their opposition to issues many of us categorize broadly in the culture wars category – think inclusive education, book banning, gender affirming care. They have been using kids as a rallying cry and fear-mongering tactic to back up school censorship and punish families with transgender or other gender diverse adolescents, from the presidency all the way down to your local school board or library committee.

But when it comes to actual policies that broadly shape the majority of American children’s lives, the GOP drops the ball.

You don’t have to look far for examples of this… how about last week when the “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed and signed into law? That was a major victory for MAGA and a massive blow to Medicaid, the #1 insurer of children in our country. But looking further, this is the Project 2025 culmination of year-and-years efforts on the state level to purge Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP, usually in the same states where governors and conservative state legislators pride themselves on having “family values”.

Meanwhile, many progressives and liberals alike have increasingly grounded their platforms on policies that actually prioritize children’s tangible needs. As a pediatrician, I can hardly explain how excited and hopeful I felt for a Kamala Haris presidency – not because of a fear of Trump, but because of what her agenda promised. Her campaign included proposals for expanded Medicaid, renewing and improving the Child Tax Credit (which Republicans allowed to die), and a brand new Newborn Tax Credit for families welcoming an infant into their lives. Obviously, none of that has come to fruition, but I believe Harris’s campaign may have moved the needle.

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At the state level we see elements of this agenda in action as well. Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tim Walz of Minnesota both worked with narrow democratic majorities in their statehouses to make universal free school meals a reality. Free school meals as a policy is not symbolic, it is tangible and life changing for hundreds of thousands of kids in those states.

Other examples include Colorado and Vermont following suit with free school meals, California expanding access to preschool and committing billions of state funds to combating the pediatric mental health crisis, and New Mexico passing a constitutional amendment to dedicate permanent state funds to early childhood education. All of the above have passed with democratic majorities and little support from across the aisle.

The distinction is pretty clear. One side of the aisle uses children as emotional leverage in culture wars, while the other builds policy rooted in evidence, compassion, and long-term investment in the future. In a country where 1 in 6 children are living in poverty and where access to basic health and education largely depends on your ZIP code, this difference is not rhetorical, it is life-changing.

My good friend Annie Andrews has also been a shining beacon of hope and a voice of reason for kids in the political arena. From gun violence to health care access to public education, her campaign against Nancy Mace in 2022 and her current bid to unseat Lindsey Graham (happy belated Pride) in 2026 put kids front & center. I hope that we are in the middle of a cultural and political shift, but until the good guys start winning some seats back, we are stuck with the phonies who claim to have family values while smacking meals from hungry kids’ hands. And yeah, that is 100% my shameless plug to ask y’all to support Annie!

If children are truly our future (they are) our politics should reflect that not only in words, but in budgets, legislation, and leadership.

And in my opinion, the current Trump/MAGA/GOP trifecta is failing… bigly!