Heather McGee

Americans of all stripes and all political persuasions don't support the whitewashing of history.

So I do believe this is all quite foolish, quite childish, frankly, and quite temporary.

You know, I am optimistic for a few reasons.

One, because I've spent the past few years on the road traveling to places where white Americans come up to me and say that they are furious, that they were lied to in their own history and schooling, and that they are proud of having woken up and that they'll never go back to sleep.

I'm optimistic because young people, there's a young reader's middle and high school adaptation of The Sum of Us, and so I've been to dozens of schools and libraries.

The thing about young people today is that in their phones, they have access to every piece of information in the world, right?

And so they take as a matter of course that they shouldn't be lied to, that there shouldn't be censorship, that they should have access to all information.

And they are, of course, the most diverse generation in American history.

And they understand what time it is.

And so I do think that the administration's censorship and violations of the First Amendment is

are going to be temporary.

I do believe that they will be reversed when this administration ends.

And I do think that more importantly, they haven't changed public opinion.

In fact, they've really strengthened most American support for unfettered access to the real unvarnished history of this country.

That story is being used as an excuse to do something which has been a long-term project, which has been to shrink the commitments that governments make to everyday people in pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

And what they're trying to do is make parents who are struggling in California and New York to send their kids to affordable childcare and to put food on the table resent Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

But, you know, as soon as I heard welfare fraud, I was reminded of Brett Favre, right, who pushed Mississippi to get $77 million in funding that was supposed to go to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to his alma mater for sports facilities.

Instead, he was personally paid over a million dollars from TANF welfare funds for speeches that he never made.

You don't hear much about that story anymore because it doesn't fit the story that would have everyday folks blame struggling working class people.

And by extension, make them resentful of the very idea of welfare at all.