The opting out is especially wild
Like, Republican governors are being actively presented with money to feed kids and affirmatively saying 'I would like children to starve actually'
(Also, if I'm a Dem campaigner, I'm making some ads and placing some op eds about this immediately)
The governors of a dozen Republican-led states — AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, MS, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY — opted out of a new federal food assistance program, leaving about 9.5 million students without the aid this summer
100% they aren't accepting the funding so they can turn around and campaign on ineffective social programs or blame it on immigrants and their base and media will fail to call them on it.
Maybe, but it's more straightforward than that:
Remember how mad Republicans were getting when the government started slinging stimulus checks?
It was because they didn't want people to realize that, legally, the government can just throw cash at people at any time, no sweat.
IE, Republicans are terrified of the salt of the earth realizing that there's actually nothing stopping the federal government from radically improving their lives ... except ...
Republicans.
They explicitly fear (and say so) that if the government gives people money to meet needs, then people are going decide it's a reasonable thing to vote to take away Republicans money and give it to everyone else.
Like, this horror of "spending someone else's money" and the assumption that it is going to be Those People spending My Money is a core part of the rhetoric about why democracy is bad in general.
