'How Can They Not Feed the Kids?'

[justaprogressive]

Last year, Stephanie Couch had some help getting through the summer months when her two daughters, ages 11 and 14, were out of school. Both girls receive free breakfast and lunch at school, but those meals disappear during the summer. In 2024, the Tennessee resident received Summer EBT—short for electronic benefit transfer—which loads $120 for each child onto a card that parents can use to buy groceries to fill that gap. “It meant a lot,” she said. She was able to buy all of the fruits and vegetables her growing children needed.

This summer looks different: While last year Tennessee and Indiana joined the Summer EBT program, also known as SUN Bucks, this year their Republican governors chose to opt out of the federal program. That left Couch with a lot less money. Some nights, meat was off the table; other times, dinner was just ramen. She’s skipped both meals and bills to get through the summer, sometimes not paying her electricity bill in full or paying her rent late. Her girls have noticed that there’s less food in the house. “When we don’t get nothing to eat, they know,” she said.

Couch, a single mother, works full time as a custodian on the Fort Campbell army base. “I’m not just laying around just waiting on a handout. I work,” she said. “But I don’t make enough to really cover everything.”

She called her governor’s decision not to participate in Summer EBT this year “wrong,” adding, “How can they not feed the kids?”

In 2020, Congress created Pandemic EBT, a program that sent the parents of children who receive free and reduced-price school meals up to $120 per child, paid for entirely by the federal government, while schools were remote and, after in-person school resumed, during the summer break. Summer EBT, the first new federal food program created in decades, was meant to step in once that program ended to keep money flowing to families during the summer months when their children don’t get fed at school, but states had to opt in and cover half of the cost of administration. Last year was its first year, and 13 states, all with Republican governors, decided not to participate. Indiana and Tennessee weren’t among them. But this year they reversed course and decided to join those states sitting it out. Capital & Main reached out to the governors of both states, as well as the agencies that administered last year’s programs, but did not hear back before publication.

https://prospect.org/health/2025-08-22-how-can-they-not-feed-the-kids-summer-ebt/]

[JustAnotherGen]

1. What limited contact I have

With magapublicans? They don't care. They simply don't care. They aren't like us at all.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Because they're not embryos.

[Midnight Writer]

3. My MAGA neighbor says that if you keep feeding "them" then they will become lazy, worthless breeders

and we will end up paying for their kid's food, too.

"Hunger is a powerful motivator."

[Blue Owl]

4. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Are there no illegal detention facilities?