The Children We Choose Not to See
Kim Hunt (@slaythegop) joins me to expose how America fails its most vulnerable kids and why no one in power seems to care.
In the span of just 17 days this summer, nearly a dozen children disappeared across North Dakota. Authorities called them “runaways.” Half were Indigenous. “Just because children are classified as runaways doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re safe,” Kim Hunt told me on the Power/Less Podcast. “You don’t know who’s manipulating them. You don’t know who’s grooming them. So I think that they should be treated as abductions until proven otherwise.”
The case has received little national attention, but local outlets have documented the urgency. Between July 27 and August 12, children ranging in age from 3 to 19 vanished in Fargo, Williston, Mandan, Grand Forks, and Ward County, according to InForum. For Hunt, who spent time in foster and group homes as a child, this kind of crisis feels personal. “Most of them aren’t even reported,” she said. “And then, why are they running away? What is their household situation that they’re running away from? There [are] so many questions.”
While North Dakota scrambles to explain why children are vanishing, Arizona is mourning one lost after months of ignored warnings. In July, 11-year-old Rebekah Baptiste was found unresponsive and died days later.
School staff had reported suspected abuse for eight months. Police and child services investigated repeatedly. Still, she was left in the care of her father and his girlfriend. Now she is gone, as reported by the Arizona Republic. “She was investigated multiple times and then was still left in the care of her father and his girlfriend. And now she’s dead,” Hunt said. “Someone needs to be held accountable because I believe this was investigated at least six times. And the fact that each time she was still left in the care of her family and now she’s dead just shows that this was completely preventable.”
For Hunt, the obsession with reunification in the child welfare system is part of the problem. “They seem to think reunification is what defines their success, when success should be defined by the safety and the wellbeing of the child,” she explained. Even when schools and advocates speak up, state agencies often fail. Hunt believes caseloads and burnout are a major factor. “We need to give these CPS workers more of an incentive, but they also need a reduction of their caseload so that they have the capacity to handle these types of things. But they can’t cut back on those caseloads unless we have more people willing to take on this kind of work,” she said. She shared the story of someone she knows with a master’s degree in social work who left the field entirely: “She opted out and chose to work at Chick-fil-A because it’s mentally taxing.”
If the system is already strained, the coming years may push it past collapse. Congressional Republicans are moving to slash federal programs that support children, from Medicaid to SNAP to child welfare. According to a report from First Focus, children account for 23 percent of the U.S. population but receive less than 9 percent of federal spending. Their analysis warns that the proposed budget will gut safety nets like CHIP, Medicaid, child nutrition, and housing programs. The Center for American Progress calls it “one of the largest ever cuts to basic supports for children.” Hunt’s response is sharp: “When you slash food, health, protection, you’re not just saving money. You’re sentencing children to invisibility.”
For Hunt, many foster cases could be avoided if families had basic support. “I think that children ending up in foster care is completely preventable,” she said. “I think a lot of the times it’s due to financial strain. And if families had access to health care or to education or to public transit so that, you know, parents can get to jobs or if we had affordable or free child care so that the parent can go to work and not have to worry about who’s going to watch their child — there’s so many ways that we can prevent children from ending up in the system to begin with.” She also pointed to the way politicians exploit “protecting children” as a rhetorical weapon while ignoring real crises. “They know focusing on things like trans people is such a non-issue and they deflect because it’s easier to distract people than it is to address the real issues,” Hunt said. “Under the guise of protecting children by eliminating trans athletes, you’re still removing their healthcare, you’re still removing every social safety net that they need to survive.”
The stories from North Dakota and Arizona reveal a grim truth: America consistently fails its most vulnerable children. Whether through bureaucratic neglect, systemic racism, or deliberate budget cuts, kids who need protection the most are too often written off as invisible. Hunt’s closing words linger: “If we don’t see them as our own, if we don’t fight for them, then we’re just telling ourselves we’re fine while they disappear.”
You can watch and listen to the entire conversation below:
Kim Hunt is a political commentator and organizer whose work focuses on exposing far-right extremism and holding conservative movements accountable. Through her social media presence, she has built a wide audience by blending political analysis with a commitment to advocacy, aiming to inform, mobilize, and empower people to challenge disinformation and authoritarian trends in U.S. politics.
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