May, 07 2021, 12:00am EDT
![Congresswoman Ilhan Omar](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012580/origin.jpg)
Sanders, Omar, Gillibrand, and Moore Seek to Expand and Make Permanent Universal School Meals
WASHINGTON
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) Friday announced legislation to expand on the success of the universal free lunch approach recently extended by the USDA, and bring long-term relief to millions of food-insecure families. The Universal School Meals Program Act of 2021 would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement.
The Universal School Meals Program Act is cosponsored in the Senate by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and in the House by Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Raul M. Grijalva (Ariz.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Joseph Morelle (D-N.Y.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), Andre Carson (D-Ind.), Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), and J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.).
The bill is also endorsed by over 360 organizations, including the School Nutrition Association, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), Hunger Free America, UnidosUS, Children's Defense Fund, and National Action Network.
"In the richest country in the world, it is an outrage that millions of children struggle with hunger every day," said Sen. Sanders. "Every child deserves a quality education free of hunger. What we've seen during this pandemic is that a universal approach to school meals works. We cannot go backwards. I am proud to introduce this legislation alongside my colleagues to ensure no student goes hungry again."
"No child in the richest country in the world should face hunger," said Rep. Omar. "One in six children in my state of Minnesota don't know where their next meal will come from. Families across Minnesota and nationwide are still struggling from the fallout of the pandemic, and children are often bearing the brunt of this crisis. I am proud to partner with my colleagues to implement a universal school meals program to ensure all of our children have the nutrition they need to succeed."
"Many children in New York and across the country rely on school meals to keep from going hungry," said Sen. Gillibrand. "This important legislation will deliver essential resources for school meal programs to ensure no student is ever denied a school meal. With USDA currently providing universal school meals through the 2021-2022 school year, now is the time to take bold action and make universal school meals a permanent reality. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I will fight for the inclusion of the Universal School Meals Program Act in the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization and look forward to a robust debate on this important legislation. I thank Senator Sanders for his leadership to end child hunger and I will keep fighting to pass the Universal School Meals Program Act so that all children have a reliable source of meals and schools have the resources to administer these critical programs."
"I remember the challenges of keeping my three kids fed, but I felt reassured knowing that when they were in school, they would receive nutritious meals," said Rep. Moore. "Every student should have the opportunity to learn, grow, and focus in school, without worrying about where their next meal will come from. It's why I am so honored to join my colleagues in introducing the Universal School Meals Program Act."
The USDA estimates that 12 million children in the United States lived in food insecure homes at the height of the pandemic. By offering universal school meals this past year, schools across the nation have played an important role in combatting the spike in child hunger brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Through a combination of federal waivers, many schools for the first time were able to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of their income. Following this success, the USDA recently announced it will extend these waivers for the 2021-2022 school year and continue to provide meals to all students for free.
While the extension of these short-term waivers will come as a relief to many families, without a permanent solution to provide free meals to all students, schools will eventually have to revert to the complicated myriad of paperwork and programs that leave out or discourage too many children from accessing meals throughout the day.
Almost 30 million children in this country rely on free or reduced-price lunch. If the pandemic waivers are allowed to expire, many students from homes with incomes just above 130 percent of the poverty line, $34,450 for a family of four, will not be able to receive free meals at school. Research supports universal access to school meals. When all students are able to access breakfast and lunch at school, all students benefit.
The Universal School Meals Program Act provides for the long-term with the most cost-effective and inclusive model for ensuring all students have access to nutritious meals without overwhelming barriers such as stigma, burdensome paperwork, or threats to have their children taken away.
Prior to the pandemic, school participation rates in the universal school meals program more than doubled from 2014 to 2018. This legislation builds off that success and offers major benefits to students, families, public schools, and communities. Studies show that students with access to free breakfast have improved attendance rates and perform better in school. Free and accessible school meals have also shown to reduce financial stress for students and families, improve health outcomes in students, reduce stigma associated with the programs, and lead to fewer behavioral incidents and lower suspension rates.
For communities, the inclusion of local foods in school meal programs protects and promotes small family farms, enriches local economies, and provides nutritious ingredients for our kids. Every dollar spent on local food generates over two dollars in local economic activity, and local food programs provide hands-on education about proper nutrition, regional crops, traditional Native foods, farming techniques, and environmental stewardship. That is why this legislation provides up to a $0.30 per meal incentive for schools that procure 25 percent of their food from local sources. If all schools met the 25 percent local food criteria for school meals, it would provide local farmers with an additional $3.3 billion in income per year, a 28 percent increase in local food sales - an enormous investment for our rural communities.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 75 percent of school districts reported carrying school lunch debt, which in some cases can be hundreds of thousands of dollars and has led to reports of heinous and unacceptable scare tactics to collect. This bill would reimburse schools for all of their delinquent school meal debt and stop the harassment of parents and students.
The Biden administration recently announced more than 30 million children will get nutrition assistance over the summer as a result of the American Rescue Plan. Under the Universal School Meals Program Act, nutrition assistance over the summer would be made permanent for all children regardless of income, including for families that struggle to get their children to meal sites, often an issue in rural areas. This bill also expands the number of allowable meal services for child care providers, and empowers schools to collect relevant data using existing resources instead of putting the burden on individual families to report their income.
Read the bill summary here.
Read the legislative text here.
Read full list of organizational support here.
Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
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"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
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Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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