Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 11 Episode 22
Aired on September 8, 2024
Main segment: The U.S. National School Lunch Program
Other segments: 2024 Venezuelan political crisis, I Voted sticker, 2024 United States presidential election
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[Music]
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight. I’m John Oliver. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re back, and it has been a busy week. Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned home from space without its astronauts on board, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges, and Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro tried to stem protests over what’s widely seen as July’s stolen election with this desperate announcement:
This year, in all of your honor, as a thank you to all of you, I’m declaring that Christmas is moving up to October 1st. Christmas starts October 1st for everyone. [Applause]
Oh, come on! You can’t just throw up Christmas decorations in October to distract from your shitty politics. You’re not Hobby Lobby! Also, Christmas doesn’t start when a president says it does. As we all know, Christmas starts when Mariah Carey pops out of her 11-month coma. Wait for her signal!
But we’re going to move on to the US election, which is entering its final months. Several states have been running contests to pick their “I voted” stickers, and just this week, Michigan unveiled nine winners featuring some excellent choices. Congratulations to Olivia from Holly High School, who designed this colorful sticker that says “Yay, I voted!”
And we also want to show you this one—this one is crazy, and I love it. Jane from BR Branell Middle School created an American flag that appears to be a wolf ripping off his shirt, just tearing up from voting. Yes, everything about that is perfect: the line work, the kinetic energy of the shirt being ripped off, the wolf’s head thrown back in patriotic ecstasy at the concept of democracy!
I know this is not the point, but I would commit voter fraud to get multiples of that sticker. And it’s not just Michigan—Kentucky’s winner was this lovely drawing of a horse. But my favorite was actually this runner-up entry from third grader Cash Litzler of Flemingsburg, who won over the internet’s humor with his drawing that was less conventional than others. But I’ll let him explain the inspiration:
I didn’t know what to draw, so I watched the Spider-Man movies like three days before it, and I was just drawing, and then Mom told me about the contest, and I wanted to enter.
His mom tells me Cash’s thinking is, if Lizard-Man can vote, you can too. Oh, if Lizard-Man can vote, you can too—that’s actually a very powerful message. Because at the end of the day, Lizard-Men in disguises don’t secretly run the government; they get one vote, just like you and me.
As for the presidential candidates, they’re scheduled to debate next Tuesday, and Trump continues to battle the fact that he and J.D. Vance have been called “weird,” a label that seems to genuinely bother him.
J.D. is not weird. He’s a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock. We’re not weird. We’re other things, perhaps, but we’re not weird.
But that is the weirdest possible way to address that accusation. “He’s a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock.” What are you talking about? I’m not sure I’d describe any part of J.D. Vance as rock-solid unless, of course, he was in a West Elm showroom. Though Trump is half-right there: he and Vance are many things—they’re misogynists, narcissists, men who come dead last in plausible “Masked Singer” contestants—but they are also deeply weird.
Each day seems to bring new evidence of Vance failing to connect with ordinary Americans, from being booed by firefighters (whom he referred to as “haters”) to the viral clip of him utterly failing to make small talk in a donut shop. The low point being this:
We’re going to do two dozen, okay? Yep. Just, you know, random sort—some of this, some of that.
How long have you worked here?
I’ve been here since the beginning of July.
Okay, good. How about you, sir?
Uh, almost two years.
Okay, good. So, everything’s just… everything, yeah? A lot of glaze here, some sprinkles, some of these… cinnamon rolls, just whatever makes sense.
How are you that bad at basic human interactions? “Whatever makes sense”? If you don’t know what donut to order, just say, “Surprise me.” It’s fun! It’s annoying to every server who’s ever lived, but at least it’s a human response. But “whatever makes sense”? My freaky little friend, you’re in a donut shop—nothing makes sense there!
Some have sprinkles, some are brioches, some contain a jelly found in no other place on Earth, but you’re eating cake for breakfast! It’s total chaos!
But picking out a donut is something most of us figured out by age three. And Trump clearly should have known about Vance’s lack of charm because it’s been on display for all to see—from his podcast appearances, where he said things like, Women who don’t have kids are choosing a path to misery, to awkward moments like when he showed up to a picket line last year and tried to turn a fist bump into a handshake, only to awkwardly offer his own fist bump and get left hanging.
Just this week, a clip resurfaced of him during his Senate campaign two years ago, flop-sweating through some shitty jokes about Kamala Harris:
While we’re on the topic of Joe Biden—if he didn’t make it through his four years, he’s likely to be replaced by Kamala Harris. Who I’ve heard called “Kaka Harris,” ‘cause she has this weird cackle, right? You know, I heard a joke about Kamala recently that I thought was pretty funny. Bill Clinton was watching her on TV, and he thought, “Man, she’s so condescending, mean-spirited, and nasty. Maybe I should leave my wife and marry her instead.”
That’s…look, J.D., comedian to comedian, never make the setup, I heard a joke that I thought was pretty funny recently. And if you do, make sure that what you say next is funny. And also an actual joke.
Trump supporters will insist that this contest is about policy, not personality. But on policy, they’re even more toxic and weird. Just this week, both men addressed the high cost of childcare. Vance suggested, Maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, and Trump gave a very specific question about it at an economic forum. I’m going to play his full two-minute answer here because it is genuinely remarkable how long he takes to say so little.
Can you commit to prioritizing in legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?
Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down… you know, I was… somebody… we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue, but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about—because, look, childcare is childcare—it’s something you have to have in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about—by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly—it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send products into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s going to take care of itself. I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all the other things that are going on in our country. Because, I have to stay with childcare—I want to stay with childcare—but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth. But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So, we’ll take care of it. Thank you, very good question.
What was that?! That applause isn’t satisfaction with the answer; it’s relief that it’s finally over! That is the public speaking equivalent of an audience faking an orgasm—You did it, you did it, you can stop now, please!
Look, the bad news is, for the next two months, we’re going to be subjected to an excruciating amount of nonsense like that. The good news is, come November, there’s a chance for America to reject that. And if that happens, it’s hard to put into words how liberating that might feel. But luckily, I know of one particular sticker that really gets that feeling across pretty well…
[Music]
…And now this.
And now, HSN’s Tony Little has something he wants you to know about him:
People also know I had a lot of challenges in my life, you know. So, I had knee problems, I had back problems. You know, I was hit by a school bus. You’ve even talked about it on air that you’ve had knee issues and you’ve had—
I had every issue. I was hit by a school bus. I’ve always had back issues from being hit by a school bus. I’ve also had back problems because I was hit by a school bus. I wanted people to realize, you know, I was hit by a school bus. I was hit by a school bus. A lot of people know my story: I was hit by a school bus. I hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree.
I was hit by a school bus. I hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. Hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. I hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. I hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. I hit the only hill in Florida on Halloween and hit the tree. I hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. And then I was hit by a lobster truck in Miami.
I was hit by a lobster truck. I was hit by a lobster truck. I had to go out and get hit by a lobster truck. No, I—listen—the lobster truck!
I…lobster truck…hit the only—but the main one was when I was hit with the school bus. I was also hit by a school bus. Hit the only hill in Florida and hit a tree. Hit by a lobster truck in Miami. I mean, that was just my life. But anyway, uh, forget that part of it. Moving on…
Our main story tonight concerns lunch—the meal that you save for friends who aren’t interesting enough for dinner. Specifically, we’re going to talk about school lunch, which is, among other things, the inspiration for this bonkers PSA from the 1980s:
[I’m tired of candy, tired of gum. Tired of hunger and food that’s no fun. I’m tired of pretending I don’t like spaghetti, but school lunch keeps me roaring ready at rock steady! Pizza… spaghetti… burgers with chow, Daddy, in your school cafeteria. It’s the fun place to be for lunch… desserts!*]
Okay, let’s break that down. Straight away, we open on a close-up of “Chow Daddy,” whose very name makes him sound like the undefeated eating champion of the world. Then, he claims, “I’m tired of candy, tired of gum,” a bold choice if you’re writing something kids need to relate to. Before continuing: “I’m tired of pretending I don’t like spaghetti.”
And…what? Who’s forcing you to do that, CD? He then throws in a moonwalk, cementing the notion that he’s a public-access Michael Jackson from Thriller and ends by simply listing foods, finishing with the concept of “desserts.”
I don’t know how that encouraged kids to eat school lunch, but it’s fascinating to watch. And one day, I’m sure we’ll find out how much weapon-grade cocaine it took to come up with that ad.
The lunches Chow Daddy is referring to come from the National School Lunch Program—the federally assisted program that provides meals to school children. It was launched in 1946, and since then has grown to become massive, with over 90% of public schools participating in it. Last year alone, the program provided 4.6 billion lunches, which is incredible. But school lunches are also the subject of constant criticism from kids, which shouldn’t be surprising—kids are picky. Whole new foods are created to combat that. Gogurt only exists because some kid was like, “Over my dead body will I eat yogurt with a spoon. I’d like it to come out of a plastic esophagus,” and the market complied.
But nevertheless, if you ask students for their opinions on their school lunches, they will be brutally honest:
Interviewer: If you had to describe school lunch in one word, how would you describe it?
Students: Weird. Rancid. Raw. Unappetizing. Inedible.
I don’t like the taste or the texture. The food is always cold. The portions are, like, small.
Literally, they gave us two chicken tenders. What am I going to do with two chicken tenders?
I mean, to be fair, she is right about that. The correct number of chicken tenders is not two. That isn’t the correct number for any food. I want my chicken tenders in odd prime numbers: three is a snack, five is a meal, and seven is a cry for help.
But I’m not here tonight to shit on school lunches because the very fact they happen at all is remarkable. School nutrition directors often say they run the biggest restaurant in town, which doesn’t seem like an overstatement when you see this snapshot from a school in Los Angeles:
Usually, they start lunch around 9:00. We have to cook everything in batches because we don’t have enough ovens. And so, from 10:30 to, I’d say, 11:30, everybody’s panning the whole time. So, we do the hamburgers first. We get those going, we get the fries going, then we get pizza going. We got the chicken nuggets for the vegan menu today. So, it’s constantly batch, batch, batch. We serve about, I’d say, 1,500 a day or more…that includes breakfast, lunch, and supper.
Okay, putting aside the cognitive dissonance of having chicken nuggets be the “vegan menu item of the day,” that is really impressive. If you had to do 1,500 of whatever your job is, even once, you would snap. If you were a vet and had to give one dog its ear medicine—fine. Ten dogs—that’s a lot, but okay. One hundred? This is getting unreasonable. But 1,500 dogs need ear medicine, and some of them are vegan?! Just walk the fuck out and start a new life somewhere else.
School lunch programs are such a massive undertaking, they’ve even been referred to as a “daily miracle.” And for many kids, school meals are actually their most reliable source of nutrition, which is why it is so important the program works as well as it can for as many kids as possible.
Unfortunately, in too many places, that is just not the case. So, given that tonight, with many schools around the country just starting back up again, let’s talk about school lunches. And let’s start with the quality of the food, because those students weren’t entirely off-base. Not every meal served inside a school is perfect, but that’s often because school cafeterias are having to operate under severe budget constraints.
School lunches are subsidized by the government, which sets a ceiling on how much it’ll pay for any given meal, but that ceiling is set way too low. One survey of school districts found that around two-thirds said the funds they received were not sufficient to cover the costs of producing lunch, which makes sense when you find out they only get around $4 per meal, which has to cover everything from food costs to equipment upgrades to staff salaries. Just listen to this former head chef at Noma, one of the top restaurants in the world, who founded a company that places professional chefs in school kitchens, explain what happens to that $4 and everything it has to go toward:
That’s actually for maintenance, that’s for paying people to make the food. So, when it’s all said and done, you have about a dollar and a quarter for food. Making a meal that kids really want to eat for a dollar twenty-five is super challenging.
Yeah, of course it is. $1.25 doesn’t cover the cost of food pretty much anywhere. Even at Costco, the hot dog and soda combo is $1.50, and that is only because the co-founder once said—and this is true—“If you raise the price of the hot dog, I will kill you.” That is a real quote from a true leader.
So the budget alone is a real challenge, as is the fact that it’s important kids actually take the meals, because the government only reimburses schools for meals that students take. Meaning if kids don’t like what’s being served and ignore it, the school doesn’t get any money and goes into the hole. So, you need an appealing meal that comes in at rock-bottom prices. That’s a key reason why many schools opt to just heat and serve pre-made meals.
And that approach has opened them up to criticism. Jamie Oliver, a man to whom I am surprisingly not related, had a show in 2010 where he tried to make over the menus in a West Virginia school, and he made a big show of being appalled by what the children were being fed:
When I went in the freezer, the freezer was just basically an Aladdin’s cave of processed crap.
So, this is pizza for tomorrow?
Yeah, yes.
So you have pizza for breakfast? But then they have it for what? Lunch tomorrow?
Mhm.
Bloody hell! So this meat is already cooked?
Yeah.
When it grows up, it’ll be scrambled eggs. So that is scrambled egg?
Yeah.
I’ve never seen that before! It’s egg. We steam it.
I didn’t know what most of it was. And when I don’t know what something is, the alarm bells go off. Do you honestly think that we could do this from raw state every day? Do you really?
Yes.
Okay, I have a lot of questions there, but I guess my first is: I know I have a British accent, and my name is almost his name, and I have a show where I essentially tell America that it’s doing everything wrong. But am I like that? Please tell me I’m not like that.
Because while the dream of every single school cooking from scratch is a lovely idea, it might not be feasible for a lot of school districts. Not only are there cost and labor issues, but they also need to navigate strict nutritional guidelines. The federal government sets standards for things like the amount and types of fruits and vegetables required to be on a plate, but it can be hard to meet them on a tight budget—something famously illustrated during the Reagan era when his administration slashed the federal school lunch budget, then briefly tried bending the nutritional guidelines to a truly ridiculous extent:
Also getting attention today was that elementary school lunch sampled by members of Congress yesterday. The meal, consisting of a small meat patty, six French fries, a glass of milk, and ketchup (classified as a vegetable), was representative of new federal guidelines issued to save money on subsidized school lunches.
Now, much has been made about the whole “ketchup as a vegetable” thing, but I don’t think people talked enough about the mystery meat patty being served with a glass of milk. That looks like a hamburger with terminal illness. It looks like the cracked soil of a Dust Bowl-era farm. You know how ultramarathon runners in Death Valley would eat bananas, then throw them up, and the banana vomit would bake in the sun, forming little patties on the ground? I bet it looks like that.
The point is, ketchup isn’t a vegetable. Reagan made things worse. And I’ve been trying to offload that banana fact for the past five years.
And the thing is, even when we manage to raise the nutritional standards for lunches, it can then be a real challenge to make them appetizing. During the Obama administration, access to school lunches was expanded greatly thanks to the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which also updated guidelines to make meals more nutritious. And while the act produced great results overall, some students hated the new healthier options, sharing photos with the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama, which, to their credit, is funny.
When the nutrition went high, the kids went low. But it did take some trial, error, and flexibility to make those new standards work. For instance, the act required that breads had to be whole-grain rich, but as one food service director in New Mexico said, “Many families in the Southwest will not accept whole grain tortillas,” and I quote, “We simply cannot afford to feed our trash cans.”
Similarly, a school district in Mississippi tried to make a 100% whole grain biscuit, which was not received well by students, so the school is now allowed to operate on 80% whole grain instead—which does feel like a good compromise. Because a whole grain biscuit is not a biscuit. At that point, let’s just make ice cream sandwiches where the cookies are celery and the ice cream is Children’s Motrin, because it seems words don’t matter anymore.
The fact is, school nutrition directors have to strike a delicate balance between the perfect and the achievable. That former Noma chef you saw earlier gets incredibly frustrated when talking about how chefs who work outside of school kitchens tend to look down on some of the food that he makes now:
It’s funny because we’ve had a lot of peers— a lot of my peers have come and seen what we do, and they’re disappointed by what we do.
Interviewer: Your colleagues are disappointed?
Yeah, in the sense that, “I thought this was going to be something else. I thought you were going to be serving a different type of food.” And I said, “I don’t give a f** what you think because it’s not about you.” You know, if you have a $1.25 to feed people, and that’s your constraint, and you’re feeding kids, and you start to prioritize things like sustainability, and locality, and seasonality, then you don’t understand how the world works. You don’t understand what food costs.”*
Yeah, he’s right! I’m not sure why the decor of that stage is Ted Talk In the Jungle, but he is right. It’s all very well for Jamie Oliver to want schools to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients all the time, but it’s a lot harder to be idealistic when you’re serving 1,000 portions of hot lunch to kids in a cramped kitchen, all in 15 to 20 minutes. Reality is a hell of a sous chef.
But let’s say you could create lunches that were nutritious, delicious, and affordable. That still doesn’t address the bigger problem with our school lunch program, which is that, in many states, it is not feeding everyone who needs it. And that is a huge problem because, as I mentioned, for lots of kids, it might be their only guaranteed meal of the day, as this cafeteria worker in Washington State explains:
A lot of kids go home during… I mean, during the Christmas break, they don’t get…have food. They don’t have food, so they’re so happy to come back to school, actually.
The reason I became a lunch lady is because I wanted to give the kids food that didn’t get it at home, like I didn’t. I was always happy to go to school just because I get to eat. We didn’t have a lot of food. Then, when you go to school, you know you’re going to eat. And it’s…that’s worth going to school.
Her commitment to feeding kids is beautiful, and she is right: anything is more appealing if you know there’s going to be food there. A work meeting, a wedding, even giving blood—you think I’m doing that out of altruism? Where else can a grown man drink apple juice and eat little cookie packs free of judgment? Drain me, Nurse Gwen, drain me, but keep the Lorna Doones coming!
School lunch is a critical social good. The problem is, in order to get a free or reduced-price lunch, families have to fill out eligibility paperwork, and that alone can be prohibitive. There may be language barriers for some parents, and for others, social stigma. As one expert points out:
Often times these forms are on a brightly colored piece of paper that says “free school lunch form,” and for parents, it can feel like the form is effectively saying, “I can’t afford to feed my child,” and they’re having to ask their kid to hand that form to a teacher.
On top of that, the thresholds to qualify are often so low that they exclude families who still need it. This year, a family of four earning around $40,000 a year or less is eligible for free meals, and one earning around $58,000 or less is eligible for reduced-price meals. But if you make a penny more than that, your kids have to pay full price, and that can quickly become a steep financial burden:
My son used to always tell me that he didn’t eat because he didn’t want to make me have to pay for it. She says she’s always made just above the cut-off to qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, but her budget is still tight. School lunch for her kids costs more than $250 a month. With four kids in school, that adds up really quick.
Of course it does! And kids clearly should not be refraining from eating for financial reasons—they should be refusing to eat for one of the multitude of standard kid reasons, such as: the food looks weird, it’s too hot outside, it’s too cold outside, or I saw a bird.
And kids whose families can’t afford to pay can accumulate what’s commonly called “lunch debt,” and the cost to schools can be significant. One sampling of just over 800 districts found that their total meal debt exceeded $17 million last year. Unfortunately, the solution some have hit on is to pressure families for that debt—and sometimes children directly—through a practice known as lunch shaming.
You may have heard stories about how some schools have given kids who owe money an alternative lunch, like a cold cheese sandwich, while others required students to do chores. A report from last year found that some schools in Kansas wouldn’t allow kids with unpaid debt to participate in activities or would even withhold grades from parents until debt was paid. And still, other kids have been forced to wear wristbands or had their hands or arms stamped to show they’re behind in payment.
And, incredibly, some tactics have been even worse than that. Earlier this month, the Wyoming Valley West School District in northeastern Pennsylvania sent letters to about 40 families telling them their children could be sent to foster care if they didn’t pay up.
The foster care issue just had me…I couldn’t believe that’s what it said.
Four other Wyoming Valley West school board members agree, as does school administrator Joe Mazur, who signed that letter:
It could have been toned down. I don’t know how to describe it other than in writing, we could have toned it down a notch.
Okay, “could have toned it down a notch” is putting it mildly. Also, that is something that guy should have realized before signing the letter! Frankly, Clippy should have popped up and said, “It looks like you’re threatening to separate families and throw children in foster care over a few hundred bucks of lunch debt. Are you sure you want to do that?”
Lunch debt has become such a ubiquitous problem that kids finding ways to pay it off is now a trope of supposedly heartwarming human interest stories, like these:
A second grader is paying off the school lunch debt for everybody at his school—and kids in six other schools.
Tuesday, fifth grader Dillon Kramer gave the school district a check for $7,300—money he raised to help pay for his classmates’ school lunch debt.
Caitlin decided all of the money she raised would go towards paying off the school lunch debt of 123 students in her San Diego school district.
How about that? Five years old, guys. It’s amazing when someone that young just knows to pay it forward.
I mean, it is amazing—but she shouldn’t have to do it! Let a 5-year-old spend that money on five-year-old things, you know, like a slinky, or Play-Doh, or Fingerlings, little creatures for your fingers—monkeys, unicorns, these tiny little birds—they’re adorable, and they make you feel alive! And the reason I know that is, I actually have one on right now…but even this isn’t managing to cheer me up. You failed me, you little piece of shit.
It’s frankly no wonder that when you combine the stigma of receiving a free or reduced-price lunch and the risk of racking up debt, even kids who are eligible can end up choosing not to participate. In fact, in 2019, nearly 30 million students were eligible for the meals, but only 22 million received them—meaning over 7 million eligible students missed out on meals, with experts arguing that stigma played a big role in that. Which is terrible.
And at this point, I actually have some good news, because there is a way to solve a lot of the problems that I’ve just shown you: it’s a policy known as universal free meals. Basically, every kid at every school can have breakfast or lunch at school if they want it. And while I know that might sound like a utopian dream, the thing is, we actually already did it—for two years during the pandemic.
Federal lawmakers introduced a waiver program that paid for free breakfasts and lunches for every public school kid in the country, regardless of family income. The waivers also increased the reimbursement rate for each meal by around 20%, meaning schools had more money to spend on making and serving meals. And early research suggests that had real benefits: a survey of school districts representing over 5 million students found that, in 2021, average daily participation in lunch increased by approximately 1.4 million, with 95% of districts reporting it reduced child hunger and 82% reporting the program supported academic achievement.
In short, way more kids were eating every day, and it was helping them in school. The way the program worked, but in June of 2022, it expired. And unfortunately, some lawmakers were completely fine with that:
By returning these programs back to normal, we can uphold our responsibility to taxpayers and the principle that aid should be targeted and temporary.
Wow. That is heartless. “Aid should be targeted and temporary” sounds like something a Reagan action figure would say when you pull its string—along with “Take that, Welfare Queen!” and “Jodie Foster sure would be impressed if I died!”
And when the cut-off came, teachers who saw the program roll back firsthand can tell you it was rough:
On the first day of school this year, I announced to my students that school lunches were no longer free. And this moment stays with me: the confusion, the darting eyes, the questions. There were students who realized in that moment that they were not going to eat that day.
For f***’s sake! No teacher should have to do that. Especially that one, who clearly cares about her students. I know a fun teacher when I see one, and that is a fun teacher right there. Bright color-blocked outfit, fun glasses, purple hair—there is a class of misfit 7th graders for whom she is their absolute queen. If you get assigned to Ms. Jung’s class, you are making dioramas, you’re doing non-stop skits, and you’re building the sickest plastic bottle hydroponic garden system in the entire school. Ms. Jung’s got passes to the Science Museum of Minnesota, and if you go with her, you’re touching a dinosaur bone.
For many families, the program expiring meant they had to navigate the eligibility forms for the first time. One school nutrition director in Ohio said she had to deny one single mother who told her she’d missed the cut-off for reduced meals by just $100 of gross income.
And all of this resulted in a lot fewer kids getting lunches, and students from low-income families across the country are now accruing lunch debt in record numbers.
Now, to their credit, some states have refused to go backward, and these eight have passed universal free meal programs, often funding them out of state budgets. Though passing those laws wasn’t always easy. In Minnesota, for instance, you’ve probably already seen the joyous photo of Governor Tim Walz being hugged by school kids when he signed his state’s program into law. But some Republican lawmakers there fiercely opposed it, offering some less-than-convincing arguments.
Senator Steve Drazkowski: Mr. President, I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry yet today. I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat. Now, I should say that hunger is a relative term, Mr. President. You know, I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess I’m hungry now.
What an asshole. First, I don’t care what you had for breakfast. Second, that’s not how societal problems work! You can’t just go, “I haven’t seen hungry people, so they must not exist.” Before seeing this clip, I’d never seen Chris Pratt’s evil Midwestern twin, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t out there sucking.
And he wasn’t the only opponent. This state representative suggested that the state expand the program, but stop short of making it universal, using herself as an example of why that would be going too far:
*We are using taxpayer dollars to feed my children. I have two kids in public schools at the North Branch High School right now. That means that the taxpayers are subsidizing me to the tune of $1,376. That means, right tonight, you are giving me a $1,376 tax break. Me. That’s my benefit from this bill.*
Okay, you’re welcome…or maybe I’m sorry that happened to you? I don’t really know what to say. You’re saying a good thing, but you seem very upset about it.
But a few things about that: I know capping eligibility might sound like it makes sense, and the state actually looked into doing that but decided against it. As it turns out, it would have increased the administrative complexity, and the increased cost would have eaten into whatever savings they might have seen. Also, crucially, by making lunch accessible to all kids, they could remove the stigma for those whose families can’t afford it, which is more important than you might realize. A study in Massachusetts found that 42% of families with children eligible for free or reduced-price meals reported their child would be less likely to eat a school meal if it wasn’t free for all children, which does make sense. Kids are perceptive—they notice who isn’t taking lunch or is forced to eat a cold cheese sandwich, and they definitely notice whose hand got stamped.
And look, I’m not saying that there aren’t complications here—of course there are. And deep down, you probably already knew that. After all, you’re watching It’s Always Something With White Collar America. Making that many meals consistently is difficult. Remember, we’re talking about the biggest restaurant in town, and there are a lot of moving parts here, from the sheer scale of the program to sourcing food and making it taste good to adequately training and paying cafeteria staff. All of which means universal free meals aren’t cheap. In Minnesota, they budgeted it at $400 million over its first two years, but it’s projected to cost about $80 million more than that. Though part of the reason for that increased cost is higher-than-expected participation in the program, which is obviously a good thing, because for the final time: the benefits here are clear.
As the head of Minnesota’s Department of Education spelled out:
Our educators that I’ve met and that we’ve talked to this entire fall consistently tell me that their students are more attentive, and they’re ready to learn, and they directly attribute this to the availability of nutritious meals all across the state of Minnesota, and throughout the day.
Yeah, that is thousands of kids who aren’t going to class feeling hungry, shamed, or excluded. That should be the standard in all 50 states. And if it helps, maybe we should be considering lunch as an essential school supply, you know, like books or desks. We accept that they’re subsidized by the government as an investment in kids’ futures, and I’d argue lunch should be too. And the way to achieve that shouldn’t be by asking each state to fund it out of their own budget, but by passing legislation at the federal level, similar to what we did in the early days of the pandemic.
Because while that was a truly terrible time, it’s worth also remembering that we got some major stuff done back then too. We socially distanced, we watched Tiger King, we got our families familiar with Zoom in a way that we’re all still paying the price for, and, it turns out, we fed kids.
In speaking to experts for this story, many said that before 2020, they thought universal free meals would be incredibly beneficial, and it would also never happen—America just doesn’t do that sort of thing. But then, it did happen, and seemingly overnight. And in this one particular area, Americans got to experience what it was like to have the federal government be responsive to the needs of the vulnerable.
And once you see what it looks like to help kids, you kind of can’t unring that bell. In fact, you should keep ringing it so hard the rope comes off in your hands, because we have the power to ensure that no kid in this country is hungry when school gets dismissed. And we should be exercising that power, making sure that all kids are, in the words of America’s second-favorite moonwalking werewolf of the 80s, roaring ready and rock steady with pizza, burgers, and, of course, desserts.
And now, this.
And now, people on TV debate when to decorate for Halloween.
Host: I already saw Halloween decorations out on people’s porches. I’ll be honest with you—I may be decorating by Sunday or Monday.
Host 2: Okay, just do it now! Please decorate the studio and purchase an oversized skeleton from Home Depot this second!
Host 3: So I know Zack was saying something about decorating for Halloween—is it too early? I would say no!
Host 4: Never too early! Correct. It’s never too early to prepare for the eve of frights and ghouls and the Minions from the animated motion picture Minions! I’ve got at least two neighbors who have already put up all of their Halloween decorations. That’s impressive!
Host 5: I’m going to make my husband wait till October. Yeah, that’s, I think, a reasonable time.
Host 6: It is not reasonable! Let your husband cover your windows with fake cobwebs right there, or I will call the police!
Host 7: Is it too early to decorate for Halloween? Yes? No? No!
Host 8: And I was out and about early in the morning, and there was a couple outside already putting up their giant skeleton. That’s two months—two months early, right?!
Host 9: That would be this past weekend. I wonder how hard that is to…
Host 10: That would be equivalent to October 25th, saying Christmas decor should go up!
Host 11: Shut up! What the f** is this?!*
Host 12: Through the forecast, I saw something that said if you decorate for Halloween earlier, you’re a happier person. So if it makes you happy, yeah, do it!
Host 13: I bought a couple pillows. I’m not going to lie. We watched some scary movies—we had a list of scary movies that we put together last night to watch!
Host 14: Gotta get ready!
Host 15: Yes! Why not?! Honestly, these ladies seem super chill, and I will totally watch scary movies with them.
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That’s our show! Thanks so much for watching. We’re off next week for the Emmys, but we’ll be back on the 22nd. See you then! Good night!
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[Music]
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