When child care can cost more than your rent or a mortgage, or you have to sacrifice a paycheck in order to be able to take care of a loved one, that can motivate how people vote. Each election cycle, we see candidates recognizing that more and more.
Words such as 'relationship,' 'affair,' 'involvement,' or 'seeing each other' imply mutuality and consent. In the context of child sexual abuse, these implications are false. A child cannot legally or developmentally consent to sexual activity with an adult. Describing abuse using relational language risks distorting the inherent power imbalance and shifting perceived responsibility away from the adult perpetrator.
Not long ago, Vermont had a population problem. Then Act 76 ushered in affordable child care for the first time in the state's history. Vermont had a problem. Child care was too expensive. We would be paying $3,500 a month, more than twice our mortgage. Some parents were giving up their careers to stay home After daycare, you come home with maybe $60 extra a week. It's just not even worth it at that point.
The lawmakers provided examples of childcare workers ensnared by Trump's deportation push, including a nanny in Wisconsin, an asylum seeker with no criminal record who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a routine check-in, and immigrant teachers at a preschool in Washington DC who lost their work authorizations and were forced to quit due to TPS terminations by the Trump administration.