There is literally nothing forward-thinking about Donald Trump. The president’s 19th-century immigration deportations have added to the labor shortage in the United States of America.
A rational person would see this mistake and seek to correct it by potentially adding more immigrant labor or changing the administration’s immigration policies.
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Trump’s idea is to take America back to the “good old days” when children didn’t go to school, but they went to work to support themselves and their families. At least, the current proposal wouldn’t send kids back to the mines and the mills, but it is a big step back for labor laws that are intended to protect children.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, this Project 2025 idea began at the state level.
Florida and Ohio weakened child labor laws:
This year, legislation in both Ohio and Florida attempts to weaken state child labor standards in ways that challenge federal law. In Ohio, Republicans have reintroduced a proposal to extend the hours employers can schedule 14- and 15-year-olds to work during the school year, conflicting with FLSA guardrails in place to ensure that young teens can enter the workforce without jeopardizing their health or education. A concurrent resolution introduced with the child labor bill calls on Congress to amend the FLSA to align with weaker hours guidelines proposed for Ohio. As of this publication, the legislation has passed the state Senate and is now being considered in the House.
Florida and Ohio did enact changes to child labor laws.
As we will discuss below, these attempted changes aren’t really about kids.
