Brandi Slaughter

advocate & activist ❤️ beaches & music, Professor @UMDPublicPolicy links=info, not an endorsement.

[First Focus Campaign for Children @Campaign4Kids]

Immigrant moms with American babies anxiously await birthright citizenship ruling - ABC News https://t.co/5mdA0WzyOn

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

School lunch debt shouldn't exist.

Full stop.

We're humiliating 6-year-olds over $2.75 while giving massive tax breaks to corporations.

This isn't a budget problem. It's a cruelty problem disguised as fiscal responsibility.

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

How we frame children and family issues matters. Kids often have unique concerns, needs, and interests.

A society that truly values families must see and value children as individuals with their own perspectives, vulnerabilities, and rights.

To center children is not to oppose families; it is to ensure that family policy begins with the child’s well-being as the irreducible unit of concern. That begins with how we talk – and ultimately, with how we legislate. (1)

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

You’ll want to see this one again 😍

Enjoy the highlights from a thrilling win in Newcastle 👇

[KIDS CAN'T WAIT @KidsCantWaitUSA]

US children are much more likely to die than kids in similar countries, study finds | CNN https://t.co/FmYrXPHVzB

In response, Congress and President Trump are cutting $1 trillion out of health care and coverage. Lack of insurance increases mortality.

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

We have a moral obligation to Make America’s Children Healthy rather than to Make America Uninsured Again, as H.R. 1 does.

Instead of 17 million people losing health coverage due to $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, and the ACA, we should strive to ensure that all children have health insurance coverage.

We should not impose massive new government bureaucracy, red tape, and administrative barriers to health coverage for children and families, like H.R. 1 does.

Children should be immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases…full stop.

We should be doing everything we can to improve gun safety and reduce firearm deaths in children.

We should be investing in, rather than cutting, efforts to reduce infant and maternal mortality.

We should be investing in, and not eliminating, efforts to improve public health, including lead abatement.

We should be investing in rather than slashing pediatric medical research.

We should improve child nutrition and provide fresh foods rather than slashing SNAP by nearly $200 billion and gutting farm-to-school programs, as this Administration has done.

We should ensure all emergency rooms meet pediatric readiness, equipment, and staffing standards, as it will save the lives of children.

We should follow the legacy of JFK, RFK, and EMK on child health and well-being. https://t.co/lTq10EXfIg

[Senator Patty Murray @PattyMurray]

PLEASE READ and SHARE from the CHILDREN'S Hospital Association:

“Your child—regardless of their insurance status—could see the services they rely on reduced or eliminated... The bill amounts to fewer doctors and nurses to see your child, longer wait times, and sicker children."

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

This Op-Ed by @TheFGA’s @nstehle is both sad and disturbing.

Medicaid is NOT a zero sum game where some people have to lose health insurance and have their healthcare and lives threatened to ensure others get it.

Nick is undoubtedly aware that children often fare poorly in such political picking and choosing of who is worthy or not. But just in case he is not, in 2017, the Senate voted to disproportionately slash child health by 31% versus just 1.9% for senior citizens in Medicaid.

@JohnCornyn may remember John McCain voting NO and saving children from that disastrous consequence by a single vote.

Also in 2017, the @HouseGOP decided Medicaid needed to prioritize certain populations over others. Left off their priority list: CHILDREN.

The current @WHOMB Director @russvought has also called for rationing and prioritizing certain groups over others in Medicaid. In a budget document he put together at the Center for Renewing America, the group that was left off his priority list: CHILDREN.

Speaking of the federal budget process, senior citizens get 6-7 times the funding that children receive in the budget. So in a zero sum game world, Nick’s belief that children would be prioritized is terribly misplaced and mistaken.

In fact, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is the ONLY federal health insurance program that is block granted, set to expire, and with which Congress forces child advocates to beg for its extension every few years. Lawmakers would never do that to Medicare or their own health insurance. Just the health care of children is subjected to that process.

So Nick, your call for the rationing health care for some arbitrary definition of “deservingness” is deeply troublesome and, in such a political zero sum game, is a losing proposition for children everywhere.

Your son’s problem isn’t that a mother might get life-saving health care for cancer treatment. It is that Gov. @SarahHuckabee and the Arkansas Legislature have chosen not to fund this important Medicaid option for kids.

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

You are slashing Medicaid AND the Children’s Health Insurance Program AND the Affordable Care Act AND SNAP or food stamps by over a trillion dollars AND increases the uninsured by over 10 million people and access to food by several million as well.

Children are specifically targeted in places in the bill for cuts and with increased bureaucracy and red tape that will cause children to lose their health care and food.

Children will also bear the burden of the huge increases in the debt caused by this bill.

All to provide tax cuts for the wealthy, corporations, and people who want to buy gun silencers and tanning beds. (1)

[Rep. Ro Khanna @RepRoKhanna]

My amendment guarantees no American child under 18 loses Medicaid because no kid should go without a doctor. But Republicans in Congress are blocking a vote.

Why are they fighting to protect tax breaks for billionaires, but not guaranteeing healthcare for America’s kids?

[ProPublica @propublica]

New: The administration is quietly putting America's children at risk by cutting funds and manpower for investigating child abuse, enforcing child support payments, providing child care and much more. https://t.co/zrVgELAG9Z

[First Focus Campaign for Children @Campaign4Kids]

Good bills reintroduced this week: Child Care Nutrition Enhancement Act and Early Childhood Nutrition Improvement Act! TY @RepBonamici @RepMackenzie @RepGregLandsman @SenBlumenthal @SenTinaSmith. Proud 2 join 100+ orgs asking Congress to support kids https://t.co/c9Icr7PKek

[Brandi Slaughter @bnslaughter]

It was an honor to represent @DeathPenaltyAct at @RepPressley Presser today! President @JoeBiden please act now! #endthedeathpenalty https://t.co/qVXFVYXqsQ

[Death Penalty Action @DeathPenaltyAct]

President @JoeBiden needs to immediately commute every death sentence on federal and military death rows. If he does not, every one of #Trump's executions will be on his hands: https://t.co/GBL9NshvlK #StopExecutions #PROJECT2025 @POTUS #StopTrumpExecutions

[Death Penalty Action @DeathPenaltyAct]

Death Penalty Action Board Member @bnslaughter will speak to the #StopTrumpExecutions campaign at a press conference with @RepPressley @RepJamesClyburn @RepMGS and others. Our release & comments are here: https://t.co/g5RVn28Qla

#StopExecutions #ClemencyNow #CommuteTheRow

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

Here is the @First_Focus statement on the election…

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

Making our mark in the Champions League ✨

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

Fact Sheet: Children's Budget 2024 Overview | @First_Focus on Children https://t.co/3M77vjwoot

#InvestInKids

[Bruce Lesley @BruceLesley]

Children are often ignored in the halls of Congress. To be frank, their invisibility is akin to a political form of child neglect.

But sometimes, just every once in a blue moon, there is a vote and we can see for ourselves “who’s for kids and who’s just kidding.”

On August 1, 2024, there was a Senate vote on a bill to improve the Child Tax Credit, but sadly, it failed.

Special thanks to:

✅ Sen. @RonWyden @RepJasonSmith for all their leadership and work on H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief for Families and Workers Act
✅ @SenSherrodBrown @SenatorBennet @CoryBooker @SenatorWarnock for their constant push and support for improving the Child Tax Credit over the years
✅ @SenMullin @HawleyMO for standing with children and families despite strong pressure not to do so
✅ @SenSchumer (and for the record, he strongly supports the Child Tax Credit but had to vote NO for Senate procedural reasons so that he could potentially bring it up again for another vote this session of Congress) for holding this vote on moving H.R. 7024

This bill included improvements to the Child Tax Credit that would have benefitted millions of children and lifted 400,000 children out of poverty.

The Senate vote was 48-44 (although it really was 50-42 because @SenSchumer was in favor of it too and @SenSanders voted “no” because he wanted an even better deal for children). Unfortunately, it needed 60 votes to overcome the filibuster.

Therefore, the Senate failed to overcome the filibuster, even though it passed the House by a bipartisan 357-70 vote.

[Coalition on Human Needs @Voice4HumanNeed]

The majority of American voters support the #ChildTaxCredit—yet 44 Senators just voted against expanding it for 16M children. A vote against the #CTC is a vote against working families struggling to pay for groceries and rent.