Fox News host Charlie Hurt proposed bringing back child labor on Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday to fix the labor shortage caused by MAGA Republican President Donald Trump's racist, xenophobic deportation policies. The Trump administration tactics include ICE abductions that target anyone who looks Latino—legal permanent residents and United States citizens included.
Hurt was joined on the couch by MTV Real World San Francisco and Road Rules party girl-turned-Christian nationalist trad wife Rachel Campos-Duffy and conservative student organization Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
After airing a segment where Campos-Duffy—the child of Cuban immigrants—and Hurt wandered around a blueberry-growing operation, she proposed government subsidies to hire farm workers.
Campos-Duffy said:
"We enjoyed that blueberry farm and it has sparked massive debate on this couch which has been going on all morning. And the debate, you guys is, what should government–look, it's very labor intensive to do, for example, blueberries."
"So what should government subsidize? Our government subsidizes ethanol."
Kirk interjected, "it shouldn't" and Campos-Duffy parroted him.
She continued:
"[The government] subsidizes the corn for fructose corn syrup that then goes into processed foods. I would be totally fine with the government subsidizing labor so there’s more fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the organic kind, for people."
Hurt responded:
"The answer for this, and I just got accused of being a libertarian by Charlie K[irk]."
After some banter over whether Kirk said libertarian or corporatist and which is worse, Hurt said:
"My solution to this... the answer to this: You stop paying people not to work."
After waxing nostalgic about pulling tobacco leaves for harvest in his youth, Hurt proposed:
"Allow children to do it as summer jobs. The idea that your government—your precious government—doesn’t allow children to work summer jobs in blueberry fields is just mind-blowing to me."
FYI, pulling tobacco leaves by hand for harvest is dangerous—especially for children—due to the risk of Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS). GTS is a form of nicotine poisoning that occurs when nicotine is absorbed through skin from direct contact with the tobacco plants or the liquids extruded when leaves are cut or pulled during harvest.
One change made with child labor laws was removing children from unsafe jobs.
Even notorious racist Campos-Duffy managed to briefly look horrified that Hurt's solution for inexpensive, highly-skilled farm workers was unskilled, untrained, inexperienced, but still inexpensive children.
You can watch the moment here:
Campos-Duffy—mother to nine children with fellow MTV partier-turned-resigned Wisconsin Republican Representative-turned-Fox News MAGA pundit-turned-Trump administration Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy—briefly seemed like she might disagree with Hurt.
She countered:
"It’s very difficult work, by the way."
But as she always does, Campos-Duffy bowed to the opinion of whatever man is currently seated next to her.
She quickly added:
"It’s fine, I’m totally down with everything you’re saying."
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Several red states, like Arkansas and Kentucky, have already reversed or relaxed restrictions against child labor.
@fathitler.com/Bluesky
Some rural areas do still employ children for supplemental or small-scale manual harvests. But large, fast production environments require strength and skills children don't have.
Add to this that many crops are harvested in the fall, when children should be in school full time, and Hurt's solution gets worse and worse. Should we return to the era when all children below a certain income level left school at 10-12 years of age to work full-time?
Some rural harvests have worked around school schedules.
Several school districts in Aroostook County in Northern Maine still return to school early in August then shut down for 3-6 weeks to harvest potatoes during the "potato recess" or "harvest break" in late September or October. When picking was completely done by hand, most schools in the Aroostook shut down with kids of all ages getting paid by the barrel of potatoes picked.
Then by the 1980s, potato harvesters eliminated the need for younger kids or any kids at all.
Soon only high schools in districts with a lot of potato farms took the harvest break. That too continued to dwindle as technology improved.
In the 2020s, the few high schools that still close in Aroostook are upholding tradition more than meeting a farming need. The majority of students just take the time off or work extra hours at their usual after school jobs, not in the potato harvest.
Children under 16 are almost always prohibited from working on or being around farm machinery, with the exception being the farm owner's children.
There's no way for children to replace skilled migrant farm workers without injuries, deaths, or a loss in education.
But maybe that's what Hurt and Republican controlled states really want—to create a new generation of dirt poor, uneducated slave laborers.
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