Welcome to Thursday! Today is Rosa Parks Day (and her birthday), National Homemade Soup Day and World Cancer Day. Yesterday, we learned that 7,600 active Utah Republican voters have left the party since the U.S. Capitol attack while former President Trump has support for his list of Republicans who should be “punished.” Which way will the party go?
If you only have time for one thing today: Nicholas Kristof pens a piece titled “We are a nation of child abusers” – that’s an attention-grabber. He starts with this: “Imagine you have some neighbors in a mansion down the road who pamper one child with a credit card, the best private school and a Tesla. The parents treat most of their other kids decently but not lavishly — and then you discover that the family consigns one child to an unheated, vermin-infested room in the basement, denying her dental care and often leaving her without food. You’d call 911 to report child abuse. You’d say those responsible should be locked up. You’d steam about how vile adults must be to allow a child to suffer like that. But that’s us. That household, writ large, is America and our moral stain of child poverty.” The United States has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world. Some 12 million kids don’t have enough food. In Utah, 1 in 5 children experience food insecurity. President Biden wants to change that. “The American Rescue Plan is the most ambitious proposal to reduce child poverty ever proposed by an American president,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist. Worth the read.
Countdown
29 days to the end of the 2021 Utah Legislature (3/5/21)
69 days until the end of the Cox/Henderson administration’s first 100 days (04/14/2021)
85 days until the Biden/Harris administration’s first 100 days are up (04/30/2021)
