Landry: Go woke or starve?
Published 11:44 am Friday, July 29, 2022
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Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon. It was an ambitious goal that defined an era and inspired American children to dream of what the future might hold. It asked them to consider what they might create, build, and aspire to accomplish as Americans. But the times, as they say, are a changin’.
Today, Joe Biden has made a pledge of his own: to put a man in a woman’s bathroom. Oh yes, with inflation at 9.1 percent, natural gas and oil prices soaring, and crime at an all-time high, this is the great vision of Biden’s America — one that promises to have the complete opposite effect of Kennedy’s famous speech from 1961.
Instead of inspiring children across America, the Biden Administration has decided to threaten the very food they need to dream, learn, and build the future of our country. Through its United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has decided that it can suddenly interpret the law on its own and make completely new rules without input or debate, the Biden Administration is now holding school lunches hostage — that is $448 million in federal funding for school food programs — until his woke agenda meets absolute compliance.
This means that with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen, Biden’s USDA is telling nearly half a million Louisiana students who depend on SNAP to survive that they must bend a knee to preferred pronouns, boys in girls’ sports, and never-ending restroom politics or they do not get to eat.
These are children from low-income families who depend heavily on the nutrition provided by the breakfast and lunch options offered through their schools with the help of federal funding. These are the children who need that fuel the most and who often must dream the hardest in order to build new lives for themselves through pure determination.
Wasn’t that the purpose of SNAP to begin with? To raise the levels of nutrition among low-income households? To strengthen the nation’s agricultural economy? Alleviate malnutrition and hunger? Now Biden is threatening hunger if schools do not play ball. What a turn of events!
The fact is only Congress can make laws, and the Biden Administration cannot simply steal food out of the mouths of our children to serve a radical agenda by force. That is why I have joined 22 attorneys general across our nation to sue the Biden Administration and its USDA. They are playing legal chicken, hoping we will blink first so they can force their sexual word games on our children; and they are so desperate to do it, they will tell your child she cannot have food unless she plays along.
I will not cower to crazy. Earlier this month, I got a legal victory over Biden in a similar case. A federal judge agreed with me and my colleagues to halt Biden’s Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from their attempt to force schools to allow males to compete on female sports teams, to prohibit sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and to compel individuals to use biologically-inaccurate preferred pronouns. I expect a similar result in my latest lawsuit, and I will not rest until we win again. Louisiana’s future is too important.
Without opposition, Biden’s latest attempt at sleight-of-hand could affect nearly 30 million American children a day, based on a flawed understanding of the laws on the books and unlawful directives that failed to follow necessary procedure. But that is all this administration has: telling lies and hoping you never go looking for the truth.
It may not be rocket science, but it sure does stink.
Jeff Landry is the attorney general for Louisiana.