'A giant leap backwards': Indiana opts out of summer program for hungry schoolchildren

[Emile]

Last summer, hundreds of thousands of Hoosier families who qualify for food benefits and reduced-price school meals got a summertime boost: $120 per child monthly for food while schools were closed.

But relief for those 669,000 children may only have been a one-time blip. Indiana won’t participate in a federal summer food service program, known as SUN Bucks, in 2025.

“We made a great step forward last summer in giving families the ability to purchase the food that they need for their kids when they need it. And it just feels like a giant leap backwards to take this program away that the federal government is still operating and we could opt into it,” said Kate Howe, the executive director of the Indy Hunger Network. “But Indiana has decided that they don’t want to.”

Awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, SUN Bucks can be combined with free summertime meals and meals-to-go programs to ensure schoolchildren don’t go hungry. School breakfasts and lunches are often the only reliable source of nutrition for many students, and they lose access when the academic year ends.

Read more at: https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/05/07/a-giant-leap-backwards-indiana-opts-out-of-summer-program-for-hungry-schoolchildren/

[Scrivener7]

1. Indiana has a lot of Mississippi in it.

[cbabe]

2. Oh yes. It's not all corn and hogs and racing cars.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780735225268

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Timothy Egan. Viking, $30 (432p) ISBN 978-0-7352-2526-8

The shocking story of how Ku Klux Klan leader David C. Stephenson seized and lost control of the state of Indiana in the 1920s is told in Pulitzer winner Egan’s evocative latest (after A Pilgrimage to Eternity). An itinerant newspaperman and petty criminal, Stephenson took charge of Klan recruiting efforts across the Midwest and was named Grand Dragon of the Realm of Indiana in 1923. Buoyed by skyrocketing enrollment numbers—by 1925, “one in three native-born white males wore the sheets,” Egan writes—Stephenson effectively ran Indiana, controlling the governor, both houses of the state legislature, and a private police force of 30,000 men, which he utilized to “harass violators of Klan-certified virtue.” Though journalists and others sought to counteract the Klan’s influence, Stephenson’s power remained unchecked until he kidnapped and raped a Department of Public Instruction employee named Madge Oberholtzer in 1925. During the incident, Oberholtzer dosed herself with bichloride of mercury; she died an agonizingly slow death 29 days later, but not before she dictated a full account of Stephenson’s crimes. Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, Stephenson became a symbol of the Klan’s cruelty, hypocrisy, and corruption, and the organization’s grip on Midwestern politics crumbled. Dramatic twists of fate and vivid character sketches distinguish this harrowing look at a forgotten chapter of American history. It’s a certifiable page-turner. (Apr.)

(maga pre-cursor)

[Buddyzbuddy]

3. Well why in the heck aren't they working?

Those children don't need an education or a helping hand. They need JOBS! J....O....B...S.
what a bunch of layabouts. I'm sure the youngest of them can be well trained in one of those millions of jobs that Bessent and Nutlick have been telling us about. Speaking of Nutlick, let's not forget about that convict Navarro too since the tariffs are his plan.

Have the citizens of Indiana begun selling off their farms yet for pennies on the dollar to billionaires that are waiting, patiently?
Those guys are so smart and patient, to a fault. They didn't even have to implement eminent domain like they do in urban areas.
Yup, once again, showing the Dems a thing or too.
And we all know, Jesus never said anything about taking care of the least of us. F.ck that one set of footprints in the sand sh.t. Let's hear it for Pence's Bible thumping state of Indiana. Hip, hip, hooray!