“Let this serve as a reminder that poverty is a policy choice,” said one advocate. “In the richest country in the world, it is absolutely inexcusable that millions of our children go to school hungry because they are living in poverty.”

Surrounded by students, teachers, and advocates, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday afternoon signed into law a bill to provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to all of the state’s roughly 820,000 K-12 pupils regardless of their household income.

The move to make Minnesota the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals—joining California, Maine, and Colorado—elicited praise from progressives.

“Beautiful,” tweeted Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University.

UC-Berkeley professor and former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich wrote on social media: “Let this serve as a reminder that poverty is a policy choice. In the […]