Data Disappeared
Over nearly four years, the Trump administration has” defunded, buried, and constrained dozens of federal research and data collection projects across multiple agencies and spheres of policy: environment, agriculture, labor, health, immigration, energy, the census.” This is an accounting of the damage.
The Hell of American Day Care
An investigation into the abysmal state of child care in the United States:
“All too often, it takes an incident to force a closure. Last November, for instance, DFPS closed a center after a caregiver left a nine-month-old infant alone on a changing table without a belt. The baby fell onto a concrete floor, sustaining a serious skull injury. In addition to the caregiver, DFPS cited the director for failing to ‘contact the parents the next day when a “mushy” bump was observed on the infant’s head.’ I asked McGinnis how many of the area’s providers she’d trust with her own child. She answered promptly: ‘Twenty percent.'”
The Two Year Window
But a scientific revolution that has taken place in the last decade or so illuminates a different way to address the dysfunctions associated with childhood hardship. This science suggests that many of these problems have roots earlier than is commonly understood—especially during the first two years of life. Researchers, including those of the Bucharest project, have shown how adversity during this period affects the brain, down to the level of DNA—establishing for the first time a causal connection between trouble in very early childhood and later in life. And they have also shown a way to prevent some of these problems—if action is taken during those crucial first two years.
The first two years, however, happen to be the period of a child’s life in which we invest the least. According to research by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, children get about half as many taxpayer resources, per person, as do the elderly. And among children, the youngest get the least. The annual federal investment in elementary school kids approaches $11,000 per child. For infants and toddlers up to age two, it is just over $4,000. When it comes to early childhood, public policy is lagging far behind science—with disastrous consequences.
The Worst Case
How health care reform really could get repealed—and why the repercussions would go well beyond health care. “The legal debate surrounding repeal is complicated and multi-dimensional. But part of it revolves around a novel philosophical twist: a distinction between activity and inactivity that, repeal advocates say, makes the insurance requirement an illegitimate exercise of federal authority.”
The Operator
Why is the most powerful health care lobbyist playing nice? Story on Karen Ignagni
