During his unsuccessful foray into California politics, the muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair used to tell audiences that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” And enough observers and pundits have enough invested in the narrative that red states only want to restrict access to abortion, and don’t care about what happens to mothers or their babies after birth, that I fully expect the ignorance to persist for years to come.
But back in the real world, the facts on the ground are changing. In the two years after the Dobbs decision, every state that enacted restrictions on abortion also expanded safety-net support for families—some modestly, some in significant ways. And while DOGE and its acolytes make headlines for applying a crude libertarian approach to the federal workforce, state lawmakers are doing a better job reading the tea leaves.
America is realigning politically along educational lines, and the voters that helped power the Trump 2024 election victory are less likely to have a college degree and more racially diverse than past Republican coalitions. Delivering for that coalition of the working-class requires more than corporate tax cuts. And at the state level, that means focusing on families.
At a high level of generality, the blue-state model promises high taxes and high levels of social services. Red states have generally based their approach to governance on keeping tax rates light and opting for a light-touch approach to social spending.
But the wheels have started to wobble on states like California and New York, plagued by a tolerance for disorder and an allergy to development that leaves cities drug-ridden and housing costs soaring. The states with the highest relative population growth since Covid are not the lumbering blue giants but the upstart Sun Belt states and friends: Idaho, Florida, Texas, Utah, South Carolina have been among the leaders in attracting new families, drawn to saner governance and low housing costs.
The question facing many of those states is how to back up a pro-family cultural agenda with an economic platform. No one wants Tennessee or Georgia to adopt the high tax rates and progressive largesse of big blue states. But smart, targeted investments to recognize the financial burdens many parents bear are starting to take place, particularly in a treacherous post-Dobbs environment. And while there is still much more progress to be made, momentum is starting to build in places that don’t get much elite media attention. The future of productive conservative populism may very well be found in states like Arkansas.
In February, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law a bill that will ensure every public-school student has access to free school breakfasts starting next year (private schools are eligible to apply to participate in the school lunch program.) This puts them in relatively rare company—the only states to guarantee free breakfast before now were progressive states, such as California, Colorado, and Vermont. It’s not just a token gesture, requiring $14.7 million annually to pull off. And in a state where one in five kids live below the federal poverty line, it’s a tangible investment in healthier kids and more productive school environments.
Plus, it’s politically popular. When the Institute for Family Studies and my organization, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, polled parents across five Sun Belt states, free school meals surprised me by blowing many other pro-family policies out of the water, with strong support across party identification, age, and racial background. Eighty-eight percent of parents across the Southeast said they supported universal school lunches, with moms being especially likely to support the concept.
Arkansas remains the only state not to have extended Medicaid coverage for up to a year for postpartum moms, but thanks to the efforts of state Rep. Aaron Pilkington, who has been a champion for conservative policies that support healthy mothers and children, that may soon change. Pilkington was also the lead sponsor on the “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies” act that was signed into law by Gov. Sanders earlier this year.
That bill recognized Arkansas’ relatively high rates of maternal and infant mortality, and sought to expand preventative care without giving into the left’s narrative that childbirth is a uniquely dangerous procedure that requires access to abortion. It requires the state Medicaid agency to cover postpartum depression screenings, blood pressure monitoring, birth doulas and home visiting programs, and establish presumptive eligibility, which reduces barriers to accessing these services for low-income women.
Some may be disappointed that Arkansas won’t be ushering in a Scandinavian-style welfare state any time soon. But in the context of a state that voted for President Trump over his 2024 opponent by a two-to-one margin, commonsense investments in healthy moms and stronger families deserve applause.
And it’s not just safety-net improvements that are the measure of a responsive policy agenda: Arkansas was in the vanguard of states moving to ban the use of smartphones in schools, a move that will benefit all parents. Gov. Sanders signed a no-phones-in-schools bill in February that will take effect next year; other states are sure to follow.
Other states have been pushing ideas that respond to the politics of the present moment. Sensing a political vulnerability, many red states have increasing subsidies for child care. Conventionally, child care benefits are only made available to families contingent on all parents working or looking for work. A better use of resources would be to create a more egalitarian source of support that covers nearly all families with children, like a state-level child tax credit, or at least pursue both strategies in conjunction, rather than only pass legislation that benefits families without a stay-at-home parent.
“A bipartisan coalition in Nebraska introduced bills to expand child credits.”
The Indiana state senate, for example, unanimously passed a newborn child credit, where parents making up to 720 percent of the federal poverty line would be eligible for a $500 tax credit the year during which a family welcomes the birth of a child. Passage is not guaranteed, but the odds are good. Similarly, lawmakers in Montana have introduced a “birth day tax credit,” where new parents would receive $3,000 as a credit against federal, state, and payroll taxes upon the birth of a child. Other proposals are under consideration: Georgia is on the verge of passing a tax credit of up to $250 for kids under 7, and expanding state tax credits for child care expenses; a bipartisan coalition in Nebraska introduced bills to expand child credits, provide free school meals, and invest in maternal health care.
That’s not to mention other recent wins: Tennessee is the first state in the nation to cover infant and toddler diapers for parents on Medicaid. Utah expanded their non-refundable child tax credit to include all children under age six. Alabama became the latest red state to guarantee paid parental leave for state employees. The state of Louisiana created a Pregnancy and Baby Care Initiative focused on reducing maternal and infant mortality. The list goes on.
But these efforts don’t fit the narrative, so they don’t get much attention. And not all of the cynics’ skepticism is unjustified. Congressional Republicans have the tendency to view the upcoming tax negotiations as an opportunity to slash Medicaid spending merely to pay for tax cuts rather than as a chance to reform the system. Too many would-be influencers seem to understand being “pro-family” as consisting mostly of opposing transgender athletes in women’s sports, a position with which supermajorities of all voters (including nearly half of Harris voters) now agree.
A robust, pro-family populism should push for more. But it should not ignore the progress that has already been made. The Republican party has realigned to include more working-class voters of every age and stripe, something that politicians in Arkansas—and, hopefully, across the conservative coalition—are increasingly responding to. With enough success stories, maybe the media will realize it too.