The Administration of the 47th President has continued to illustrate its capacity to take PR lessons from George Orwell’s ‘1984’.  The Ministry of Truth – have you listened to the press secretary, who regularly counters reporters’ queries with propaganda (when she isn’t removing them from the press pool altogether).  Ignorance is Strength – wiping out public webpages to eliminate transparency in government.  The list is too long.  But this week’s public signing of an executive order which purports to dismantle the Department of Education (when it does not – only Congress can), with a bevy of small children behind the President as useful props to illustrate his love and support of kids.  If only his love and support was genuine.

We have seen weeks of attacks on children from this administration, both abroad and here at home.  The cancelation of grants from USAID is a major attack on the lives of children – as those grants provide funding for nutritional assistance, vaccines and basic medical care.  The resulting cuts will cost lives.  But perhaps indifference is the philosophy of the Trump Administration.  For in Ukraine, the US had been tracking the tens of thousands of children who were kidnapped from their parents during the war by the Russians – until the administration chose to discontinue this program.  Are we to conclude that these families and their children do not matter?  This can only be the Orwellian version of Christian.

But the Administration’s war on children is not exclusively available to overseas actions.  The Administration is laser focused here in the US on making the lives of disadvantaged children harder.  The budget plan just passed includes massive cuts in the SNAP (food stamps) budget, resulting in families receiving less than they need to cover the cost of meals – less money meaning fewer meals for families.  The cuts already made to the Department of Education gut the Civil Rights Division, which ensures that disabled and special education students (let alone protected classes) will be on their own when their local school districts choose to ignore their pleas for equal opportunities in education.  And while the student financial aid program will continue, the support for parents to access that financial aid will not (as layoffs have stripped this area of the department of minimum staffing) – good luck in getting that FAFSA information to your child’s university of choice in time to make financial decisions around admissions.

But some of the most contemptable decisions around children have come from the Department of Health and Human Services (amidst another attempt to turn the title into an Orwellian parody).  Secretary Kennedy has made every attempt to gloss over the measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico.  His assertion that cod liver oil, natural immunity, and steroids were the solutions and that measles deaths were natural appeared to take this country back to the 19th century (I’m surprised he didn’t mention leeches).  But aside from Kennedy’s affinity for replacing science with fringe solutions he found on social media, his control of the levers of the CDC and FDA should provide us with the most pause.  He has cancelled vaccine panel and policy meetings (that would use science to determine what seasonal vaccines will be distributed this fall) – vaccines that help to build immunity for children across the country and have been the established Iron Dome of health in the US since the ’60s.   He has also recommended that we allow the bird flu to decimate the current bird flock – despite the likelihood that resulting mutations will worsen the situation (can’t wait for the $20 dozen of eggs and $16/lb chicken).  This comes after some of the first human cases of bird flu have been in children.

Indifference?  Ignorance? It really doesn’t matter if the result is the same – our children are at risk.

And the national disgrace continues…