Other segments from the episode on May 4, 2023
Transcript
TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
Hannah Dreier, welcome to FRESH AIR.
HANNAH DREIER: Good to be here.
MOSLEY: You found out about this problem after doing some reporting on a series of Trump administration raids involving undocumented teenagers. What were the first indications of child labor violations that you found?
DREIER: I noticed that a lot of the kids who I was talking to were working overnight in cookie factories. And it wasn't until about a year ago that I came back to this topic and decided to really dig into what might be going on. And what I found was really a child labor crisis in America. We've seen record numbers of kids coming across the border in the last two years. We're talking about 250,000 children crossing without their parents, and the majority of them are ending up in full-time jobs. These are jobs working for household brands like Cheerios, Cheetos, Ford. And all of this is, of course, completely against child labor laws.
MOSLEY: I want to get into how this is even possible. But first, you and your colleagues actually spoke with a hundred migrant child workers in 20 states. And you shared this story of a 15-year-old named Carolina packaging Cheerios. What were some of the stories that she shared with you?
DREIER: So Carolina came on her own from Guatemala last year when she was 14. Like a lot of the kids I talked to, she told me that after the pandemic, food was scarce in her village. Even drinking water was scarce. There weren't jobs. And so she decided to leave and come to this country, where she thought life might be easier. She weighed 84 pounds when she got to the border. And she had an aunt here who she had never met. The aunt took her in but explained that she was already supporting her own children. She didn't have a lot of extra money. And so Carolina went to work at a factory packaging Cheerios. And she would go to ninth grade during the day and then work eight-hour shifts right after school until midnight and then get up again at 6 a.m. the next day. When I talked to her, she was getting sick a lot. Her stomach was hurting. It's very intensive work. You sort of can't take your eyes off the assembly line. It's work where people have gotten their fingers amputated. It can be really dangerous. And she was skipping school more and more because she was just struggling to get through the days without any sleep.
MOSLEY: Working overnights and then going to school during the day. You actually also spoke with teachers who have large populations of migrant children in their classes. What did you hear from them?
DREIER: The teachers were struck by how this has developed in just the past several years. What I heard again and again from teachers is that all my eighth graders at this point are working or all my ninth graders have to pay rent. And this is something that even teachers in English language learner programs, who've been dealing with migrant children for years and years, had never seen before. They tell me that it's really a shift just in the last couple years, where kids are coming over, and they have no support. So they have to pay rent. They have to support themselves. And often, they also are paying off a debt. And they see these kids falling asleep in class or skipping school, slowly dropping out of school or coming in with injuries. And they tell me that they are really shocked.
MOSLEY: Do they have a duty to report this or how do they handle a situation where they have children who they know are working overnight shifts?
DREIER: I think the teachers feel really torn. They see that children are being put in situations that a child should never be put in, and yet, there's no support for these kids. So what the teachers are telling me is that, yes, they know that this is not right, and they worry for some of the people that these kids are living with. You know, sometimes kids are living with uncles, but thousands of these children are living with strangers. One of the real problems here is that there is not a support system for these children. So it's not like the foster care system where there's a social worker who's going to be checking up on these kids or sort of some support in place if things go wrong. With these migrant children, they get released from a shelter to a sponsor and then there's sort of nothing else. There's no follow-up. There's not a simple solution for them. And so for teachers seeing all of this, the question is, what's the alternative? What would be better? It's not clear.
MOSLEY: Carolina shared with you the realities of her village - the lack of food, scarcity overall. Do you have a sense of the realities in Central America where most of these children have fled from?
DREIER: The pandemic has made life a lot harder in a lot of these small villages, hard to the point where children are going to bed hungry. And families don't have enough food. There's not enough work. And so parents are sending their children north. I mean, really, what we're seeing here is the collision of a labor shortage in this country but then also a historic influx of migrant children who are coming here alone because life is so hard in their countries of origin right now.
MOSLEY: So you shared this story with us of Carolina, who was packaging Cheerios. What is the latest with her?
DREIER: Carolina is actually doing a lot better. She is on the road now to getting a work permit, which will allow her to work a safer job. And she also has gotten a lot of outreach from people in her community. She lives in Grand Rapids. She's very connected now to different resources there. Health and Human Services also reached out and offered her additional support. So she is doing better. A lot of the other kids who were are working alongside her packaging Cheerios, these kids were let go from their job packaging Cheerios after our story ran, but many of them have already found other jobs at other factories.
MOSLEY: Did the outrage for Carolina happen because of your reporting?
DREIER: My understanding is yes. And Health and Human Services can't discuss individual cases, but what they've said generally is they don't always know when a child like Carolina has ended up in an exploitive situation. And that makes sense to me because they don't have people going and checking on these kids. So how would they know?
MOSLEY: OK. Hannah, we need to take a break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is New York Times investigative reporter Hannah Dreier. She's been reporting on child labor exploitation across the country for the last year. And she spoke with more than a hundred migrant children across 20 states working in violation of child labor laws. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Hannah Dreier, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who has done a series of reports on migrant children working in violation of child labor laws - in some instances, for major American brands.
I've heard you say the problem of child labor abuse is an open secret in the immigration world. How open of a secret is it? Is this common knowledge?
DREIER: You know, when I started this reporting more than a year ago, I thought that I was going to have to infiltrate human trafficking networks or crack some kind of huge criminal enterprise to get to talk directly to these children. But like you say, it's really been as easy as going to factory parking lots at the shift change and watching for young faces. A 13-year-old doesn't look like a 21-year-old. And so for me, it was really a process of going, standing around at midnight or at 6 a.m. and talking to these kids about their lives, why they had come to this country, the pressure they were under to earn money. I would arrive in a new town and usually I was talking to child workers within a day.
MOSLEY: We know there's been public and political pressure on the administration to process these children through the system quickly to move them out of shelters. How did this happen? What's going on in the background?
DREIER: Yes. So listeners might remember that early in the Biden presidency, there was a huge wave of migrant children coming across the border. There were too many children to house them all in the shelters where these children usually go. And so they were backing up in Customs and Border Protection jails. And there were all these images of children sleeping on gm mats under foil blankets. And the Biden administration started ramping up pressure to get those kids released more quickly. Health and Human Services pared back some of the sponsor vetting.
So usually when a child comes into this country, Health and Human Services finds an adult who can take care of them, make sure that that adult really is who they say they are, that they are going to take care of that kid and send them to school. And some of the things like background checks and interviews got pared back during this time. At the same time, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was pushing staff to release children more quickly. And staff say that they felt immense pressure to just get kids moving out, get kids out to sponsors, to free up bed space for all the new kids who were coming over.
MOSLEY: You obtained audio of Xavier Becerra - he's the secretary, as you said, of Health and Human Services - talking with his team about the need to place children quickly. Can you set up what we're about to hear?
DREIER: Xavier Becerra would have weekly meetings with his staff. And the way staff describe them is he would be berating them, asking why they hadn't released more children, why they hadn't gotten the numbers up. And he would often say to them, this is no way to run an assembly line. People were telling me this. And I was sort of struggling to believe it. But eventually somebody shared a video of one of these meetings.
MOSLEY: OK. Let's listen to a clip.
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XAVIER BECERRA: If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line. And kids aren't widgets. I get it. But we can do far better than this. I need answers. And I know everyone's working hard. I don't want to imply that no one works hard. And the last thing I want to do is demoralize anybody. But we need an answer. I am not going to use the alternative of just opening new sites. I'm not. We're going to get whacked come next year, unless November's election goes differently, every time we have to go to the Hill and explain why we're spending so much money. When we can't - when most people are struggling to spend a little bit of money for their kids on a daily basis, we try to explain how we're spending more than $1,000 a day for kids who may not even have the legal right to be here? Not me.
MOSLEY: Hannah, we hear him saying we're not going to open new sites. He's talking about opening more shelters to accommodate children?
DREIER: Yes, he's talking about expanding the shelter network for these children. And what he wanted to do was just get the children out more quickly so that they wouldn't have these same capacity issues. The children would all fit in the existing shelter structure and then be moved out quickly to live with adults. And Health and Human Services' position has been that once children are living in this country with their sponsor, they're not the agency's responsibility anymore. So from Becerra's point of view, the important thing is to get them moved out. And then that's sort of where Health and Human Services' job ends.
MOSLEY: OK. What has happened since you received this audio and it's been made public? Has Secretary Becerra answered to any of these decisions?
DREIER: Secretary Becerra has said that he prioritizes the safety of children, and what he wants is for them to be moved out as quickly but also as safely as possible. And he would never want a child to be released if they weren't going to a responsible, trustworthy adult. At the same time, Health and Human Services and sort of the Biden administration largely has said that they had no idea so many of these children were ending up working full-time in dangerous jobs. They said that they were shocked. They made a series of changes as soon as our article came out two months ago. And that, for me, has really been an open question because from my point of view, I found these children working in all 50 states. They were not hard to find. And so I have wondered, could it really be that nobody had any clue that this was happening?
MOSLEY: Hannah Dreier is an investigative reporter with The New York Times. We'll hear more from her about her investigative reports over the last few months that have revealed how migrant children from Central America are working in some of the most dangerous jobs in our country. We'll also hear from Jacob Bogage from The Washington Post about his reporting on the efforts on the state level to roll back child labor protections. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Today we are discussing the rise of child labor in the United States. My guest is Hannah Dreier, an investigative reporter with The New York Times. And later, we'll talk with Jacob Bogage of The Washington Post about the conservative state-level efforts to roll back child labor protections.
Hannah, let's talk a little about these sponsors that are taking in these children and putting them to work. Who are they?
DREIER: I talked to sponsors who had basically made a business of taking in children. These children are mostly sponsored by other people from their home countries. So, for example, I talked to one child, Nari Gutzal (ph), who met his sponsor when he was 13 over Facebook. And his sponsor said, if you want to come up to the United States, I'll take care of you. I'll send you to school. Nari came to this country, and once he was released to this sponsor, he discovered that the sponsor was keeping a list of debts. And he owed $4,000. He also discovered that he was going to have to find his own place to live and find a job.
And so Nari went to work. He was working until 3 a.m. at a restaurant. And I've seen the text messages his sponsor would send him. He would threaten him. He would threaten to hit him. He was constantly haranguing him for money. And this is the reality that a lot of children are living. They come up here and sort of make this decision as a child, not understanding what they're getting into, and then find that they not only have to support themselves, but they owe somebody who's supposed to be their sponsor a lot of money.
MOSLEY: Many of these children are working for the intent of sending money back home to their families. Did you find that also to be a reality that they were able to actually work and send home money?
DREIER: Yes. These children are, I mean, incredibly strong and determined, and they are sending home money in many cases. Just - I'm doing some more of this reporting now. Just last night, I was speaking with a child who had managed to buy a trailer for his family and was also sending home money supporting his mother. And this is a young teenager who's working overnights in a factory.
MOSLEY: You found the Department of Health and Human Services has a hotline where the children, when they're in the shelter, they're given this number that they can call if they need help. And some of the kids you spoke with said they called this hotline to report the conditions they were living under to get help. And what happened?
DREIER: They called the number asking for help, and what the kids have told me is nobody ever called them back. One of the worst situations I heard of was a child named Juanito who came to this country, was living with an adult, put to work. He was actually sleeping in a basement. His sponsor had set up three cameras to watch him at all times and was taking his paychecks. He told me that he called and asked for help. And he thought at least maybe the police would come and check out the house. Somebody might come and knock on the door. And instead, nothing happened. He ended up escaping eventually on his own. When I asked Health and Human Services about this, they told me that, yes, they did not have a policy of calling these children back or going out once they were contacted. That's something that they have now changed. And they say that they will be calling back kids who reach out for help.
MOSLEY: Hannah, what is the current backdrop in our labor force right now that is driving this need to use child labor?
DREIER: One thing employers told me again and again is that they are struggling to find people to do this grueling work. Nobody wants to take the night shift. Nobody wants to work on the cleaning crew at the slaughterhouse. And so companies are turning to staffing agencies to try to fill these shifts. And the staffing agencies are then bringing in children. One thing I was surprised to learn is that child labor is almost never a criminal offense. It's a civil issue, and the maximum fine is $15,000. So when we're talking about a company like Pepsi or Walmart, they're going to make that back in a matter of minutes, you know, maybe seconds. Even when a child dies, these companies stay in business and continue on. I found one recent case where a 15-year-old fell from a 50-foot roof in Alabama. His employer paid a fine, but they are still operating and have just sort of continued on.
MOSLEY: You mentioned how many of these children are working in factories that are for big brands. We're talking Ben & Jerry's, Fruit of the Loom, for General Motors, J.Crew, Walmart, Whole Foods and Target. After your reporting, the Department of Labor said that it would crack down on these companies and their suppliers. But before we get into whether they've actually done that, I want to talk about how it's even possible for an underage child to work in a factory for a major brand. Can you explain it?
DREIER: This has to do with how manufacturing has sort of fissured into different levels. So if you are trying to produce Flamin' Hot Cheetos, it's not as simple as a worker is going to work directly for the Cheetos brand. Cheetos is going to go to a manufacturer, and that manufacturer will then go to a staffing agency. So I talked to children who were making Flamin' Hot Cheetos every night, and they told me their lungs were burning from that spicy dust. They were doing this grueling work night after night, but they weren't working directly for this big brand. So when we then went to Cheetos, they said, oh, well, we have no idea this was happening. This is in violation of our policies. And it creates this strange situation where you can easily go to the place where this product is being made and talk to children who are getting off shift at 4 in the morning. And yet the brand itself can still claim ignorance.
MOSLEY: You mentioned fines. What does the law say? What role or burden of responsibility beyond that do these companies have in stopping this practice?
DREIER: So far, the companies at the top of this chain have really managed to get away without a lot of accountability. They have corporate policies that ban child labor. And when those policies are violated, they sort of wash their hands. And the reality is labor inspectors don't even catch the great majority of these cases. The number of labor inspectors in this country is at a 50-year low right now. They're not going out and standing around outside of factories. Mostly right now, they're responding to complaints about working conditions. And children who speak no English who are working illegally and under a lot of pressure to earn money are not going to be asking for help in that way.
MOSLEY: After a child is paired with a sponsor, HHS says that child is no longer their responsibility. Whose responsibility does that child belong to?
DREIER: That's such a good question. That child is no one's responsibility. What we've really seen here is sort of overlapping gaps where these kids have just fallen through every system. So Health and Human Services says, we got that kid to the sponsor. Our job here is done. Child Protective Services says, well, nobody even told us that child was there to go look at, so we can't do anything here. And often these kids aren't even enrolled in school, so they're just completely invisible. Health and Human Services now is starting to take some responsibility. So they're saying, well, maybe we will give that child a social worker. Maybe we will give that child some more services. But really, these children are out there with no support.
MOSLEY: Domestic policy adviser Susan Rice recently stepped down from her post, and we know that she drew criticism from the administration's approach to immigration. What else has changed within the administration since this crisis?
DREIER: So one big change is everybody is now aware and sort of undeniably aware that this is happening. Administration officials say that they didn't know what was happening before. Whistleblowers say they very much did know. But at this point, we're all on the same page. We know that there is this major shadow labor force. And so the Department of Labor is stepping up enforcement, and Health and Human Services is also starting to take some steps to try to help these kids once they're living out on their own.
People who work with these children say that it's really going to be a game of Whac-A-Mole to try to solve this problem through enforcement if children are still here under huge pressure to make rent and pay off debts to adults. And so Health and Human Services is now pledging to give every child at least a couple months of case management after they're released and also to start giving more children access to legal services. One thing that really has struck me is that these kids could be working legally. They could be working at McDonald's or at a grocery store, but they need access to a lawyer to get them a work permit. And with a lawyer, they could still make money and work, you know, not the most dangerous job in the country.
MOSLEY: Hannah Dreier, thank you for your reporting and for speaking with us.
DREIER: Thank you for having me.
MOSLEY: Hannah Dreier is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Coming up, we hear from Washington Post reporter Jacob Bogage about his reporting on the efforts on the state level to roll back child labor protections. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and we're talking about the rise in child labor in the United States. My next guest is Washington Post business reporter Jacob Bogage. He recently wrote an article about state-level efforts to weaken child labor protections and how this effort is being promoted by the conservative think tank the Foundation for Government Accountability. Jacob, welcome to FRESH AIR.
JACOB BOGAGE: Thanks so much for having me.
MOSLEY: Jacob, in March, Arkansas passed a law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. We learned from your reporting last month that Iowa State Senate approved a bill that will allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15-year-olds on assembly lines. Can you tell us more about what is happening in Iowa?
BOGAGE: In Iowa right now, like you mentioned, we have this bill advancing that would roll back vast portions of the state's child labor protections. And the bill that's moving right now is actually a watered-down version of what was originally out there, which allowed children in meatpacking plants. That allowed them to do much more strenuous labor and then also allowed state labor officials to waive other protections if a - if they deemed a 15-year-old to be sufficiently strong enough to do those jobs. This is part of a movement that we're seeing across the country. You mentioned the bill in Iowa. There is a law that was enacted in Arkansas. Nearly a carbon copy of that legislation is advancing in Missouri. There's another bill in Georgia and in Ohio. This is a really nationwide effort going statehouse by statehouse that relaxes some of these regulations.
MOSLEY: One major group behind this effort, according to your reporting, is the Foundation for Government Accountability and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project. Who are the major players behind this group, and what more can you tell us about them?
BOGAGE: So the Foundation for Government Accountability was founded in 2011 by a gentleman named Tarren Bragdon, who was a former Maine state legislator. By his telling, he and his family took a vacation to Florida. They loved it so much. They loved the political climate as well as the warm weather in Florida and moved down there. And 2011 is kind of the high watermark of when the conservative movement starts looking very closely at state and local races and state and local issues, and Tarren Bragdon and FGA tap into that. And their goal is to go state by state and enact conservative or Republican champion causes that hopefully create windows for national policy change.
And this is not some small group, and it's not some secretive group. I mean, this is a group - they've got 115 lobbyists in 22 states over the past few years. They have between 12 and $13 million in revenue. They have their own lobbying arm. They're all over the place, and they tap into very well-established conservative fundraising ecosystems and networks. That is everything from folks affiliated or closely connected with the Koch brothers, who are large libertarian donors - well, one of them is deceased. But that network is a very right-wing or libertarian network, and - all the way through the Uihleins, who spent untold sums on efforts to overturn the 2020 election. These are the kind of folks we're talking about.
MOSLEY: You report that the group's biggest victory was in March, when they helped to design this new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers who are younger than 16. What was their reasoning for this? What's the argument for lowering the age?
BOGAGE: In a lot of businesses, even before states started considering these laws, teens are a crucial source of labor, right? I mean, they are summer camp counselors. They bus tables. They scoop ice cream. You know, whether we like it or not, teens work at McDonald's. And that can be a great job for a teen if the right protections are in place. When we're dealing with a labor shortage across the country, which we are, and we're dealing with an inflationary environment where costs for consumers and for businesses are up, businesses need to cut their costs. And one way they try to do it is through paying their workers less. So there is a great opportunity to do that with younger folks. And so that is kind of the first argument. It's purely economic. We have a labor shortage. Businesses have to cut costs. What's a great way to do that? Employ a younger workforce.
The other argument taps into this emerging kind of, quote-unquote, "parents' rights" platform that we've seen across so many issues, from book bans to library funding to whether adults are allowed to dress in certain costumes around children and drag - you know, things like drag performers. And the FGA's argument is that we need to get rid of this regulation because it should be a parent's right to decide what kind of job their child does. The government, a school official, whomever else that - from the government that issues this work permit or this age verification - they shouldn't be part of the process. A parent should take care of that.
MOSLEY: The issue of parents' rights also doesn't address this issue of migrant child labor that we talked to Hannah Dreier about since the parents are typically back home in Central America.
BOGAGE: That's a great point. A senior Biden administration official a couple weeks back testified in front of a House panel about unaccompanied minors coming to this country. And around 15% of those kids are released to either a distant relative or a non-relative sponsor. And the overwhelming majority of those people are perfectly good people who are perfectly good sponsors and opening their homes to a vulnerable child in a new country. But we're talking about a lot of kids here. Even if the overwhelming majority of those people are perfectly good people and very good sponsors, a lot of them are not. And that puts a lot of kids at risk to be trafficked into this country specifically to be part of the labor force.
MOSLEY: We need to take a break. If you're just joining us, our guest is Washington Post business reporter Jacob Bogage. He recently wrote an article about state-level efforts to weaken child labor protections and how this effort is being promoted by a conservative think tank. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Jacob Bogage, business reporter for The Washington Post. He recently wrote about state-level efforts to weaken child labor protections.
There seems to be this rapid movement, I mean, just across the country. You mentioned some of the other states - Minnesota and Ohio - allowing teens to work more hours in more dangerous occupations like construction. There's this bill in Georgia that would prohibit the state government from requiring a minor to obtain a work permit. How are these state efforts complicating crackdowns on the federal level?
BOGAGE: That's a great question. And frankly, a lot of this is spurred on by reporting that, I think, your other guest, Hannah Dreier, is doing at The New York Times and one of my colleagues, Lauren Gurley, is doing here at the Post, exposing chronic child labor abuses across the country. I think when we talk about this issue, it's important to understand how a child labor violation is investigated. The paperwork here, believe it or not, is actually very important. If I'm a federal child labor investigator and I go down to Arkansas because I want to investigate reports of minors working at chicken processing plants - which, by the way, multiple chicken processing plants in Arkansas have been cited for illegally employing minors - the first thing I do is I show up at the state employment office. And I say, give me all of the working papers, all of the permits for the minors that are employed in your state, because I want to look at those to see if they're accurate. I want to know where I should be devoting my resources, where I should start my investigation. The Arkansas legislation and the legislation in Missouri and Georgia and Iowa would eliminate that paper trail.
The other part of it is there's federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938 - I mean, this bill is nearly 100 years old - that codifies a basic floor of protections for children in the workplace. It says how many hours children can work and says in what environments they can work, what jobs they can do. What we end up seeing is federal law and state law in direct conflict, but the results of these state proposals - that would make it harder for federal officials to do their jobs.
MOSLEY: You mentioned that the Foundation for Government Accountability has hundreds of lobbyists around the country. How do they go about doing the job of getting these laws passed?
BOGAGE: FGA is part of this group called the State Policy Network, which is a confederation of think tanks and lobbying groups, kind of just like them, all over the country. They practice what they call the IKEA model, which - I love the name for this because think about going into IKEA, and you go in the showroom, and you see the wonderful bookcase that you like, and then you go downstairs into the little warehouse section. And you pull the, you know, bookcase off the shelf and throw it in your cart, and you get home. And it has the cute little instruction manual, and you can put together your bookcase with an Allen wrench.
That's what FGA does, except they do it with state laws. They say, you want to roll back child labor protections? Cool. Here is a cute little instruction manual so you can pass that law with an Allen wrench. We'll provide the research. We'll provide the lobbying support. We'll drum up, you know, public support. We'll talk about it on Fox News. We'll do whatever you - you know, we can be all of the little components for you, so all you have to do is tighten a few screws. That's really effective, and it's not just with child labor. FGA is a successful group in terms of rolling back antipoverty programs, tightening restrictions around who gets food stamps, tightening Medicaid expansion. They're a very successful group, and this is a very well-worn and well-proven technique to get policy done at the state level.
MOSLEY: Right. You actually spoke with lawmakers who were not necessarily parroting back but repeating language that you had read that they had written as kind of, like, a blueprint to talk about these potential laws.
BOGAGE: Well, I think the best illustration of that is - yeah, FGA writes this white paper on their website saying teens are a crucial source of labor, and parents should have the right to get the government out of the way, and so they should decide where their teens are going to work, and work builds character and all of these talking points. Within a few months, they have sent a senior legislator in Missouri bill text and said, here's bill text. Please introduce this bill. And, you know, the lawmaker does. And then the Missouri Senate holds a hearing on the bill, and the FGA's lobbyist shows up and says, gee - literally tells the senator, I have nothing to add to your opening statement other than you're right. And the opening statement is nearly word-for-word what the white paper says on the FGA website. I mean, that is how soup-to-nuts we get here, which is here's the policy idea. Here's a bill. You're going to hold a hearing on the bill. We're going to show up and - you know, and lobby at the hearing.
I don't want that to come off as this idea of it being - of that being a bad thing because if you agree with these policies, that's a - I mean, that is so incredibly effective. In this case, that bill is making it easier for children to work dangerous jobs for long hours. And so we'll continue to report on the way corporate America influences this policy at a state level. But in the very near term, I don't think you need to look very far to see who the beneficiaries, the corporate beneficiaries, are of this kind of legislation.
MOSLEY: Jacob Bogage, thank you so much for your reporting and thank you for joining us.
BOGAGE: It's so good to be with you.
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