Donald Trump MAGA Repubican cult now victims of cruel racist policies and tariff taxes

Dear Editor, The Pine Bluff Commercial news in Arkansas:


What follows is my personal opinion. I have been reading of the poor abused farmers lately. It seems the markets for their crops have been damaged again by Trump. My checking shows that 79% of farmers voted for him. He's a pathological liar, and they knew that at the time!

The reports show that 83% of the white evangelicals voted for Trump who is shutting down USAID and any foreign aid dispensed through them. Thousands of children are now starving becuse that farm produce raised here used to feed them. Way to go hypocrites.

Trump is forbidding truthful history of America to be taught using any federal funds. White folks wrote that history the way they wanted it taught. Trump and his cabal couldn't care less what American Indians consider to be genocide committed against them.

Hundreds of years of enslaved Black folks❓ Careful what you say in class about that. Some delicate white😳😧😥 kids feelings might be hurt❗

A complete cabinet of the least competent candidates imaginable were approved by the most gutless, integrity deprived, Trump servile specimens that the electorate were offered.

Trump is running rampant over the rights and duties of the Congress. Few of the repulsive specimens have the decency to insist that the Constitution they each swore to uphold will be followed. Trump continues to degrade and disparage our military at all levels, both active and veterans. 

Congress, which has three Arkansas veterans, hasn't the courage or integrity to put a hard and fast stop to that. 

As Liz Cheney said, "Trump, whom you adore and cater to, will die. But your dishonor will endure forever on the pages of history."

From Karl Hansen, in Hensley, Pulaski County Arkansas

Donald Trump list of failed accomplishments in just 100 days has dismantled democracy as we know it

Echo opinion letter published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, a Montana newspaper:

OK, 100 days into the horror of the Trumpzi administration so, let’s take a look at some numbers for Trump’s “accomplishments,” shall we?
• 39% approval rating – lowest of any new president ... ever.$6,400 expected increase in new car prices (tariffs).
• 60% rise in egg prices.
• $5.9B expected losses (annually!) in soybean farmers’ sales (tariffs)❗

• $81.65 billion in first-term farm bailouts. This will be worse!
• 200 “trade deals” he claims he has made- without any proof.
• Zero trade deals actually confirmed by any evidence.
• Zero plans to actually lower grocery prices.
• 121,000 fired dedicated federal workers – including 70,000 VA employees.
• $500B of lost tax revenue due to fired IRS workers, especially those who were working on the richest tax cheats (imagine that, huh!).

• $500 million funneled into Trump’s pockets from crypto schemes (Forbes). 24 days spent golfing (25% of his first 100 days!) costing the taxpayers $26 million.

• $6 billion cut from NIH medical research grants for cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.

• $12 billion cut from state health services.
• $90 billion loss in tourism this year (Goldman Sachs estimate). Montana expected to be the No. 1 biggest loser.
• At least 288 people trafficked to El Salvador without due process, in defiance of court orders (and the Constitution!).
• 1,600 pardons for violent January 6th criminals, plus convicted fraudsters (hey, birds of a feather, right?).
• 21 Faux News personalities and six billionaires in his administration.
• 293 times Trump has with cruelty complained about Joe Biden (more than times a day!).
• Four threatened annexations of other countries: Greenland, Gaza, Panama, and ... Canada?!
• One commercial for Tesla on the White House lawn.

Well done, Trump MAGA cult Republican voters! 

Are you “tired of winning” yet❓ 

Enjoy your increased prices on pretty much everything, income losses, and maybe even your farms and tourism businesses.

Unfortunately, the rest of us will also suffer for your voting folly.

From Kevin Crawford in Bozeman, Montana

Donald Trump is irresponsibly destroying America as we knew it but why is he jealous about John and Jackie Kennedy?

One would like to think that RFKjr, (Rober F. Kennedy Jr.) would raise objections about this cruelty towards his family's heritage.  Although RFKjr is an  one of the incompetents in Trump's circus cabinet, he is still a Kennedy, and should express pride in his uncle's legacy, as a former and martyred president.

Trump’s (cruel and insane❗) War on John and Jackie Kennedy.

(IMO Trump is jealous about their lingering 90 percent positive popularity, even today.)

From ripping up the lovely White House Rose Garden to redoing Air Force One and the Kennedy Center, it’s Mar-a-Lago gilt versus Camelot taste. By Margaret Carlson published in the Washington Monthly.

John Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Obviously, Donald Trump never promised us a Rose Garden. 

Nor did he warn us that in his first 100 days, he would rip up the storied Jacqueline Kennedy Garden outside the White House’s West Wing and pave much of it for dancing, making it a glorified patio like the Mar-a-Lago one where he holds court. Nor did he divulge his intentions to force himself on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He muted his obsession with painting over the robin's egg blue color scheme on Air Force One that the Kennedys had given the presidential plane, and that no commander-in-chief since has considered removing, what with its echoes of blue skies and Tiffany’s boxes.

The through line of Trump’s dark to-do list is blotting out the Camelot aesthetic of John and Jackie Kennedy, erasing the halcyon Jacqueline Kennedy years, when the then 31-year-old First Lady remade the White House long after it was due for a lift following the Depression and World War II. After such bleak days, First Ladies Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower concentrated on the country’s recovery. It took the young presidential spouse (née Bouvier) and mother of two to use her brief, shining moment to return the Executive Mansion to its former glory. She did it and won over the country.

The 47th president wants a White House with all the subtlety of a Russian oligarch’s yacht and a Qatari Sheikh’s palace. Gold tchotchkes abound, including two golden cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s aesthetics may prove to be as unpopular as his tariff-happy taxation of everything from coffee to Camrys. There’s a gulf (of America) between the public's impression of Trump’s first term and Kennedy's. According to Gallup in 2023, 90 percent of those polled held a favorable impression of JFK. A scant 46 percent felt the same way towards the first Floridian president.

That’s a lot of ground to make up, and Trump’s left no myth untouched. Erasing Jackie’s magic touch—ordering a coat of robin's egg blue on Air Force One–was high on his to-do list ever since his first term. He told CBS he wanted a paint job that “looks more like America” and “isn’t a Jackie Kennedy color.” Trump came up with a Democratic blue so dark it looks black, and a Republican red so bright it dominates. For their part, Democrats wanted no paint job at all, and neither did the Air Force generals who would be paying for it. He yearned for his long-awaited Boeing to arrive.

Then there is Qatar❗Last Sunday, the Qataris came dangling a fully tricked-out luxury 747, the likes of which no president has seen, including the well-to-do Kennedys with their dump of a Boeing 707. The deal had two parts: The plane would first go to the Department of Defense and then to Trump’s presidential library when he finishes his second (or third?) term. Eric and Don Jr. could then squabble over it when they weren’t collecting billions on their own digital currency and the myriad other businesses they’d hustled across the globe when Dad was in the Oval.

There should be a law, and there is. The Constitution strictly prohibits foreign gifts. But that’s never stopped Trump before who said he’d be “stupid” not to accept the Qatari plane, and so would the U.S. Treasury. “The maintenance we spend on those old planes, you wouldn’t even believe it.” That’s the Donald, always thinking of others, but not with his brain, if he believes a Middle Eastern sultan is spending $400 million for nothing in return.

The attached strings are hanging from every overhead bin. If this were Trump’s twist on the Harrison Ford movie, Air Force One, the president would be midair when the call came in advising him that the aircraft was under Qatari control with a course set for a NATO member with an extradition treaty if he didn’t do exactly as told. Trump actually walked onstage at the 2016 Republican convention to “The Parachutes,” part of the 1997 film’s soundtrack. Life doesn’t imitate art. It cuts and pastes it.

But, alas, Trump may not be getting a shiny new plane under the Christmas tree, after all, just a stocking with three pencils and two dolls. 😜A little due diligence and it turns out the Qataris were trying to dump this plane for years, lowering the price but finding no takers until they found a mark in the author of The Art of the Deal. The 747-8 was illiquid, and its decor appealed to a very small audience of other Qataris and the Donald. Even Middle Eastern oligarchs find millions of dollars in repairs, maintenance, and storage painful. This is why they were happy to unload it and insisted all gifts are final. There would be no returning the plane at the end of Trump’s second term (or third!). It would go to his presidential library and then, perhaps, to the Trump kids to squabble over who would keep it operable. Who’s the “stupid” one now❓

It was audacity, not fortune, when the 47th president pulled off a hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center this winter. Trump mowed down half its board, replacing them with MAGA loyalists, and its head, Deborah Rutter, with Richard Grenell, the director not of plays but of national intelligence, in his first term. 

Trump booted the Kennedy Center’s chair, the noted philanthropist and private equity mogul David Rubinstein, and installed himself. Almost immediately, Lin-Manuel Miranda canceled Hamilton's scheduled performance. To that, Trump huffed, so what, he didn’t like the first Treasury Secretary anyway, even if he was the founder of the New York Post, in 1801.

Maybe “My Shot” and “You’ll Be Back” isn’t the vibe of a septuagenarian whose taste runs to Cats, with its three full-blown renditions of his beloved “Memories.” 

Fortunately, another favorite, Les Misérables, was on the calendar before the hostilities. But in the time it takes to get a drink at intermission, ten members of the Les Miz cast went rogue. Hamilton, he could let pass, but fewer voices belting out “Do You Hear the Voices Sing?” Never! In a statement, Trump lamented the partisan politics; he just wants his Kennedy Center to be “a place where people of all political stripes sit next to each other and never ask who someone voted for.” Except at board meetings.

Trump has taken over a nationally beloved citadel he never set foot in during his first term, after several of the artists being honored criticized him. Chairing his first board meeting, he proposed that as a “king of ratings,” he should start emceeing the Honors because “every network will start bidding on it, going crazy.” Maybe, but CBS’s broadcast already wins the ratings as it is. Since his second coming, the Washington Post cites a 50 percent drop in ticket sales.

Never mind that. On opening night next month, June 11, Trump will debut as chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which could be the Donald J. Trump Center by then. A box seat costs only $2 million, not that much if you consider it includes a VIP reception.

Occasionally, Trump has to go home to eat, pray, sleep, and love—three of those anyway, maybe only two—in a house that Jackie restored to its historically correct state and incidentally invades Trump’s workspace. She traced the Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria made from wood salvaged from one of Her Majesty’s ships, to a storage room in the basement, refinished it, and installed it in the Oval Office, where Trump signs Executive Orders of dubious legality. Jackie’s prime time tour of the White House, broadcast on two networks and syndicated to 50 countries, was watched by 56 million people.

As every president does, Trump gets to add some personal touches to his surroundings: choose which of the Founding Fathers' wigged heads will hang in the Oval Office, the design of the carpet, the material of the drapes, and the placement of family photos. 

But Trumps' gone wild, encrusting anything that doesn’t move with gold lamé, on the fireplace mantel, the ceiling, the Rococo mirrors, gold frames around the portraits (he bumped Obama’s to make room for his), and gold eagles nesting on side tables. There were so many yellow objets behind the president as he called President Voldomyr Zelensky a big loser, it wasn’t farfetched to assume one of them was a trophy Trump collected for being a big winner.

The Oval Office weighed down with metal, Trump moved out of doors to finish Melania’s stripmining of the Rose Garden, which the Kennedys had installed. The main objective was upgrading its slow-draining irrigation system, but Jackie’s crabapple trees somehow disappeared to an undisclosed location in the process. Michael Beschloss, the historian, called Melania’s landscaping an “evisceration” that erased “decades of American history.” He suspected one reason was to clear a better camera angle for her speech at the Republican convention held there due to COVID in 2020.

She fired back that he’d misjudged her landscaping: “His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian."

Starting any day now, Trump will finish the job unless a curator stops him, ripping out the manicured space to pave it over for a terrace (so womens’ Jimmy Choo stilettos won’t sink in the soft ground), adjoining a ballroom he intends to build (like Mar a Lago’s) so that after dinner he can curl his fingers into a ball and fist dance the night away to “YMCA,” once a gay anthem and now a MAGA hymn.

Melania isn't around enough to help Trump’s crusade, only 14 days in the last four months, and her jacket back in the first term was a warning that “she really doesn’t care.” The former model is reclusive, largely emerging to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking and showing up. She’ll get a cut of the $40 million documentary about her life produced by Bruce Ratner and streamed by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon. Inside the White House, she was not keen on her official duties. 

While Jackie formalized Christmas at the White House with a “Nutcracker” theme her first year and a “Children’s Tree” her second, complete with tours, in 2018, Melania featured 40 blood red trees flanking each side of a hall, spooking the children. A viral meme of white Handmaid’s Tale hats atop the trees spooked the parents, and no tours. About the criticism she should have expected, and may have welcomed, she told her long-time friend and a manager of the 2017, inaugural, who by then was taping her, “What the f**k do I care about Christmas decorations?”

The worst thing Trump could do to the Kennedy legacy was give an outlet to a member of the troubled second generation beset by drugs, alcohol, divorces, and suicides. Over a thousand new cases of measles this month, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is still saying from his position of authority, “There are problems with the vaccines.” At Congressional hearings last week, the 71-year-old wouldn’t give a straight answer to a repeated question about whether he’d vaccinate his own children. After a few more grillings like this, he won’t have the credibility to reduce the additives in Cocoa Puffs.

Kennedy isn’t the worst Trump appointee, but the worst Kennedy ever appointed to a post of such urgency. When the opponent of Vax Americana goes dancing on what was once his aunt’s Rose Garden, and watches Kennedy Center board member Lee Greenwood crooning “Proud to Be an American” at the arts center named for his slain uncle, we will have achieved full Trump. The saving grace is that Jackie, who would be 96 this summer, didn’t live to see it.

Margaret Carlson is a Washington Monthly contributing writer.

Constitution 101: Judiciary is equal co-branch of government. Will somebody finally deliver that message to Donald Trump?

Two echo opinion letters published in the Los Angeles Times:

To the editor: The Trump administration’s argument against nationwide judicial injunctions with respect to the issue of birthright citizenship is, at best, tissue thin (“Justices skeptical of Trump plan to limit birthright citizenship but also injunctions that block it,” May 15).

The administration’s idea that all judicial push-back injunctions (yes, plural) to the Trumpian rewrite of birthright citizenship should be confined merely to the specific plaintiffs before the federal judges, the district of those federal judges or the particular state in which the judges preside is, by necessity, precluded by the wording of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That 14th Amendment language clearly confers not only a state citizenship upon the native-born, but also a federal U.S. citizenship. By that wording, any injunction issued preventing President Trump’s attempted rewriting of the 14th Amendment must necessarily carry country-wide scope.

This latest Trump appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is nothing but an obvious unconstitutional dodge and betrayal of his oath of office to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed.

From David L. Clark, in Saticoy, California.

To the editor: Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Paris on March 15, 1789, when delegates at the Constitutional Convention debated inclusion of a bill of rights: 

“In the arguments in favor of a declaration of rights, you omit one which has great weight with me, the legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary.” The Supreme Court may hobble the judiciary as a coequal branch of government.

The judiciary has helped advance liberty when Congress refused. Lower courts advanced liberty in United States vs. Wong Kim Ark (1898) by upholding the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. They ruled that passage of California Proposition 14 in 1964, which would’ve allowed landlords and property sellers to racially discriminate, violated the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment. Lower courts started the liberation for interracial couples to live as husband and wife in Loving vs. Virginia (1967).

I hope future elections uphold the legal check of the judiciary against mob and monarchical rule as a threat to liberty.

From Glenn Shockley, Winnetka, Los Angeles, California

Republicans are cruel to cut Medicaid especially when children's growth, development and health care is on the chopping block

Echo a "national" opinion published in the Anchorage Daily News by By Dominique Dagdag

Opinion: Cutting Medicaid harms kids and America’s future

As a pediatric resident in Texas, I have seen how important Medicaid is for my patients and their ability to access the care they need to thrive, and what can happen when there are gaps in that care.

Recently, I saw a child in clinic for her well-child visit. I noticed that she did not reach all her developmental milestones, although she had been on track in previous visits.

It was then that her family disclosed that she lost her Medicaid insurance, so she was no longer able to attend her therapy sessions that helped her advance in school. She had to repeat the 2nd grade, and now her parents are worried that she might be held back again without the therapies Medicaid was providing her to succeed.

I treated another child in the hospital with a bump on his leg after a fall. Initially, it was thought that the bump was caused by the injury. However, after several weeks, the bump did not heal and became extremely painful — so severe that he refused to walk. He was not acting like the active toddler his family knew. His usual smiles and giggles turned into tears and agitation.

After extensive testing, he was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer. Since he was covered by Medicaid, he was able to quickly connect with oncologists and start chemotherapy. If it was not for this life-saving insurance, he would not have survived.

These are only two stories of the 37 million U.S. children who are enrolled in Medicaid. In Texas, 74% of people enrolled in Medicaid are children, which is why cuts to Medicaid will disproportionately impact children. We know Medicaid is a program that works for children.

When children are enrolled in Medicaid, they are less likely to miss school due to health conditions, are more likely to earn their high school diploma, and are more likely to enter the workforce and contribute to the economy.

Starting with pregnancy, Medicaid provides benefits to both the mother and child. In Texas, Medicaid pays for 48% of births, which provides access to maternal, prenatal, and postpartum care.

Under Medicaid, children also have access to frequent well child visits, which could decrease their chances of developing chronic health conditions later on in life. In addition, if a child needs mental and behavioral health services, Medicaid is the largest federal funding source for this support. 

Medicaid has the powerful ability to provide care that is tailored to a child’s individual needs, helping a child grow into a healthy adult.

Pediatricians like me are alarmed about the Medicaid funding cuts under consideration in Congress for good reason❗ 

Cuts to Medicaid will harm children’s health. Their mothers will not have access to prenatal and maternal services that greatly contribute to maternal survival before, during, and after giving birth.

Medicaid plays a significant role in decreasing maternal mortality rates, and without healthy mothers, there would not be healthy infants. More adolescents will suffer from mental health disorders without available support covered by Medicaid. Children will no longer have access to vital resources such as medications that are essential to treat acute illnesses.

Multiple hospitals in Texas rely on Medicaid funding, particularly in our state’s rural areas, to keep their doors open. If these children’s hospitals shut down because of loss of revenue, it will impact all children, not just those covered by Medicaid.

Our nation’s children are our future. We must invest in children by keeping Medicaid strong. I urge lawmakers to reject funding cuts to Medicaid and protect the program for children in the state of Texas and across the country.

Dominique Dagdag, MD, is a pediatric resident physician in Texas. Her opinions are her own and not those of her employer. Distributed by Tribune News Service.

Democracy protects all the people from autocracy: Protect Migrant rights! Due process under th elaw

Echo editorial published by the Houston Chronicle:

Yes, the Tren de Aragua is a notorious gang. Its members traffic in people and drugs. They torture and kill with impunity in countries where they operate. They are despicable and dangerous criminals.

But, the gang is not what the White House makes them out to be: an invading military force. An invading military force looks like the Russian army, invading Ukraine. Or Allied soldiers, storming the beaches of Normandy.

Listen to someone like White House advisor Stephen Miller, (aka Hermann Göring's dobbleganger❗) and you’d expect Tren de Aragua soldiers to be scrambling onto Padre Island beaches in their own version of D-Day.

So how are we meeting this supposedly clear and present danger? Are Miller and company urging the president at least to call out the Civil Air Patrol, the U.S. Air Force’s civilian auxiliary? Armed with high-powered binoculars, Civilian Air Patrol members and young cadets could rush to the shores of the Gulf of — Mexico❓ America❓ — and scan sea and sky for jets flying in formation from the south, for submarine conning towers on the horizon.

Of course, the White House crew doesn’t actually believe we face a military tanks-and-commandos invasion. 

When the MAGA Republican administration use the word “invasion,” they mean something different. Usually, they’re talking about the huge number of people who either presented themselves at the border or crossed illegally during the first years of the Biden administration.

Those people look nothing like an organized army, or even a rag-tag militia, bent on some military objective. They’re a mix of individuals. Some are legitimate asylum seekers fleeing persecution; some are people simply seeking better jobs; and yes, some may be dangerous criminals.

The dangerous criminals should be deported; that’s a no-brainer. And that’s regular old law enforcement, not warfare.

But rather than sort through these people, to do the hard, slow work of separating the vicious from the well-meaning, the Trump administration is whipping up an emergency to justify acting in bad faith. The president effectively closed paths to asylum and terrified would-be migrants by sending (as far as we know "innocent") immigrants to a Salvadoran prison known for its cruelty, and without so much as a charge, trial or sentence.

It took a federal judge from Texas — a Trump appointee, in fact — to call the administration on its absurd and blatantly unconstitutional misuse of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It’s a wartime authority enacted during the presidency of John Adams. The act allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation with whom we’re at war. Presidents have invoked the act three times: The War of 1812, World War I and World War II. It’s probably best known as the dubious rationale for the incarceration of more than 100,000 innocent❗ Japanese Americans during World War II.

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., a 2018 Trump appointee, issued a permanent injunction last week against the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador without any semblance of due process — a right guaranteed by the Constitution. A former partner with the Houston law firm Baker Botts, the judge wrote that Trump’s reliance on the act “exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

Doing his own research, Rodriguez found that the words of the Alien Enemies Act in their original sense referred to armed forces. “[Trump’s proclamation] makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” he wrote in a 36-page ruling.

“Plain, ordinary meaning.” The judge’s words could have tripped off the tongues of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, perhaps the two most fervent constitutional “originalists” on the Supreme Court. The OG of “originalists” himself, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, would have concurred. Whether Rodriguez is an originalist, we can’t say. What we can say is that he respects the Constitution, a claim we cannot make for this president or his anti-immigration henchmen.

On Sunday, Trump admitted that. During an interview on “Meet the Press,” he was asked whether he believes he needs to uphold the Constitution. The president responded, “I don’t know.”

Never mind that upholding the Constitution is literally the president’s job. When Trump took the oath of office — which is all of one sentence — he swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He’s not supposed to stress-test the Constitution, bend it to his will or look for loopholes.

But that’s not how Trump sees it. “I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said,” he said during the NBC interview. His “brilliant” lawyers are trying to twist plain language and subvert American values. Trump is treating the Constitution like pliable taffy — not like the rock of American government and values.

Rodriguez is merely the latest of numerous federal judges attempting to remind the president that the rule of law still prevails, however threatened it might be.

The Venezuelan migrants the administration accused of “invading” the U.S. remain confined to a detention center near the Rio Grande Valley town of Raymondville. They may or may not even be gang members. Rodriguez, adhering to the law, did not say they have to be released immediately. He did not say they couldn’t, at some point, be deported. But he did side with the migrants on something fundamentally American: their constitutional right to “due process.”

“Due process.” Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment shorthand for justice, equality and fairness under the law, the phrase is fast becoming a mantra during these early months of Trump’s second term because of his willingness to circumvent laws and procedures. Whether it’s his effort to peremptorily end birthright citizenship or fire government employees without cause or cyclone through federal agencies, leaving wreckage and hardship in his wake, he’s likely violating the law and then daring judges to stop him. More and more are taking the dare on behalf of the American people.

Rodriguez’s order applies only to Venezuelan migrants held in the Southern District of Texas — which includes Houston — although judges in other jurisdictions where migrants are being held are likely to reach the same conclusion. Nor is Rodriguez’s order the final word. The government is likely to seek relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, whose ultra-conservative judges could very well reverse Rodriguez. The case is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s due process at work.

Earlier, facetiously, we mentioned the Civil Air Patrol. But it’s worth noting that during World War II, members of the venerable organization were credited with spotting 173 Nazi subs off the Atlantic coast and officially sinking two. 

Today, we too are volunteers on guard — not against Nazi invaders or Venezuelan gangs, but against a White House willing to subvert the Constitution.

Using our voices and our votes, working in alliance with honorable jurists like Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., we’re in a fight for the future of our constitutional republic.

Hope in American again inspired by Pope Leo XIV during his introduction to the world

Pope Leo's election is a call for Americans to be great again | Opinion By Los Angeles Times* published in the Houston Chronicle:

Pope Leo XIV says God called on him to lead the Church "in order that she may be ever more fully a city set on a hill, an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world."

"May peace be with you."

That was the first sentence uttered by Pope Leo XIV after he was introduced Thursday as the new leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. From the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the first American pontiff then reminded the audience that those were also the first words Jesus spoke after His resurrection.

"This is the peace of the risen Christ," the man born Robert Francis Prevost continued, "an unarmed and disarming peace, humble and persevering."

My eyes and heart welled with pride as I listened to his short speech — as a Catholic, yes, but especially as an American.

Next month will mark a decade since Donald Trump descended down a golden escalator at his namesake Manhattan tower to announce his 2016 presidential campaign and offer his own version of spiritual renewal. Trump's MAGA gospel wasn't based on the words of Jesus, but rather American exceptionalism at its worst: isolationism, jingoism, grievance, xenophobia and the idea that you should take care of yourself and screw everyone else.

Instead of finding salvation, Americans are more paranoid and divided than ever. We seek deliverance from our national malaise from anywhere and everywhere, to little avail. 

Thankfully, in Pope Leo, we now have an American leader who can remind us and the world what the United States represents at its best.

His ancestry is multicultural — French, Italian, Black, Hispanic — and his maternal grandparents moved from New Orleans to Chicago. He went to school and church in Chicago's blue-collar South Side, then attended Villanova University. The young Robert Prevost became a missionary in Peru for the Augustinians before going to Rome to head the religious order, which focuses on helping the marginalized of society.

He applied that life experience to his last role before becoming pope: helping the late Pope Francis find candidates for bishop around the globe, beyond the Church's traditional recruiting areas of Europe and the Americas. Yet he never shied away from his roots, frequently returning to Chicago to meet with friends, eat at favorite spots and root for the White Sox (talk about a man who sympathizes with the wretched of the earth!).

Above all, the arc of Pope Leo's career is a testament to how true strength and success come through service for others — something that Americans have long felt was important to a healthy democracy but that hasn't been emphasized lately by the powers that be. The new pope told the faithful as much in his inaugural speech, urging that they be "a Church that walks, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close especially to those who suffer."

Such language is heresy for too many Trump supporters, some of whom are already trashing Pope Leo as anti-American. They've strayed far from what the United States is at its best, the country that I love. (Trump, for his part, congratulated Pope Leo on social media, describing his election as "a Great Honor for our Country.")

In my America, like Pope Leo's, speaking multiple tongues and being a citizen of multiple countries is normal, not treasonous — Leo is a dual Peruvian U.S. citizen who speaks five languages. My America is one not of fear but of embrace, a worldview Pope Leo echoed when he called on us to accept others with "open arms," especially "all those who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love."

Contrary to what Trump insists, we remain the greatest country on Earth. This is why our nation has drawn so many immigrants since its founding and continues to do so. People come here to be part of our grand experiment, predicated on the ideal of equality and prosperity, that anything is possible if you put in the work for yourself and others.

The selection of Pope Leo by the College of Cardinals to a position once thought impossible for a son of Uncle Sam to occupy is not just a rebuke to Trump's vision for an imperial United States. It's a challenge to Americans to lean on the side of us that's known for being charitable, not whatever Trump is trying to turn us into.

We Americans should also take note of Leo XIV's choice for his papal name. He has yet to offer a reason, but many Vatican observers have speculated that he's honoring the last pontiff who went by it.

Pope Leo XIII was a fierce advocate for workers and the downtrodden during the latter part of the 19th century, an era also fraught with technological and political upheaval. In an 1899 encyclical, he warned American Catholics not to stray from the Church's teachings in the name of following "the spirit of the age," arguing there was more to the good life than the pursuit of money and individualism.

When I read that now, I think of the well-funded push by conservative American Catholics to undercut Pope Francis and sow internal doubt and dissent, all because he always reminded us to live by Jesus' admonition to help "the least of these." Pope Leo praised his predecessor for his "courageous voice," leaving little mystery about where he stood on the Francis question.

We are a perpetually unsatisfied people, so I'm not sure how many of us — Catholic or not — will heed Pope Leo's invitation to embrace peace and reflect on what we can do to better us all. But he seemed to have Americans on his mind in his first homily as pope.

The Gospel's message of charity and faith is sometimes dismissed as "meant for the weak and unintelligent" in a world where "other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure," Leo told the cardinals before him.

Invoking imagery used by American presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, he said that God has called on him to lead the Church "in order that she may be ever more fully a city set on a hill, an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world."

Those words have long reminded Americans of our obligation to be great. May the example of Pope Leo XIV, not the bloviations (i.e., inflated slogans) of Trump, spark that in us again.

*Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Protecting democracy and Social Security against the Donald Trump MAGA cult destruction of government

Echo opinion letter published in the Seattle Times, Washington.

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NewYork, Crown Heights) is correct in saying Americans are worried about losing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and about the “reckless and extreme budget” put forward by MAGA cult Republicans. He is wrong to say there is nothing more urgent than stopping those budget proposals.

Many of us are simultaneously worried about the U.S. democratic government falling into autocracy. 

Were it not for the president’s attempts to consolidate all power in his presidency, we would not be having discussions about such extreme budget proposals. Republicans in Congress would feel more accountable to the voters who elected them than beholden to President Donald Trump.

I receive surveys asking how important various issues are to me. Not one asks: How worried are you about a possible dictatorship in the U.S.❓ How important is upholding the Constitution to you❓How important is it that the government abides by duly adjudicated court rulings?

Kitchen-table issues are important to voters. Democracy must survive for us to even have those debates. It would be helpful if political leaders would point out that necessity if we want to save other things that matter to us and have a say in how we are governed.

From Christa Quackenbush, in Shoreline, Washington State

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans enable an environment of anxiety, fear and uncertainty

Echo Letter to the editor: Anxiety, uncertainty and fear due to Donald Trump published in the Wareham Weekly newspaper in Wareham, Massachusetts. 

I have never felt so much anxiety, uncertainty, worry, stress and fear due to one man Donald J. Trump. 

It is unimaginable and unacceptable how he and his entire administration is handling this country that I love.

All of this keeps me up at night not knowing whether I will continue to receive my Social Security benefits, still have health insurance, a roof over my head and food on my table! It’s a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach all this uncertainty and an awful way to live life plus the stress caused by Donald Trump and his horrible policies and cuts are not good at all for my physical and mental health.

I am scared to death of losing everything I have and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone feeling this way! It’s very important that our voices be heard and that’s why I’m writing this letter❗❗❗

From Susan Grebber in Wareham Massachussets 

MAGA cult Republicans enabling the moral decay of America by supporting indecent vengeful Donald Trump

Letter to the editor: Why do decent folk back Trump?

May 15, 2025 opinion by Alec Lyall published in Addison County Independent in Middlebury, Vermont.

Donald Trump Has Started The Destruction of America

Decent individuals with personal stories (nevertheless, wrongmindedly❗) support an indecent, vulgar, vengeful, self-serving president. How that has happened is a challenge to the pundits that struggle to answer.

An inflated (egomaniacal) ego, motivated by personal gain, is not something to admire. Expecting an honest advocate from a deranged psychopath, the label applied by Mary Trump, his psychologist niece, is wishful thinking at best. Aside from the loss of essential services and world stability, children will learn by example to disrespect the law, social norms, the public good and their parents.

Again, why would decent individuals support an autocrat with behavioral issues, and the inability to read or process information?

From Alec Lyall in Middlebury, Vermont

Donald Trump reign of deceit and cruelty against innocent migrants

 One man’s deportation highlights deceit and cruelty of the Trump administration (The Republican newspaper Editorials in Springfield, Massachusetts)

A single – and singularly shocking – immigration case best illustrates three core traits of the Trump administration in full operation: (a) indifference to the law, (b) lying about basic facts and (c) lethal cruelty for its own sake.

On March 12, Kilmar Abego Garcia was driving home from work at a construction job site in Maryland. He had just picked up his 5-year-old autistic son from his mother’s house. He then got pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A native of El Salvador, he had won a U.S. court case in 2019 that protected him from being deported back to El Salvador.

That ruling was based on the fact that gangs in El Salvador had issued death threats to Garcia and his family if they refused to pay extortion money (“rent”) from the income earned by the family’s stuffed tortilla business. Eventually, Garcia fled to the U.S. and won the court victory protecting him from being sent back to El Salvador.

Today he is locked up in the notorious supermax prison in El Salvador because on March 15, ICE flew him off to El Salvador in spite of the 2019, court ruling that protected him from just such a fate.

That prison is something close to hell on earth, according to detailed reports from Human Rights Watch. The U.S. government is paying El Salvador to detain Mr. Garcia and others in that facility.

In court papers filed March 31, ICE admitted it was aware of the 2019, court ruling when it abducted Garcia from the U.S. on March 15.

But the Trump administration, in those same court papers filed March 31, argues that because Garcia is now outside the U.S. and in custody in El Salvador, the court can’t do anything to remedy the situation.

This heinous set of facts is now before U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland. Lawyers representing Garcia filed a motion asking the judge to tell the U.S. government to seek his return from the prison. Lawyers for the government have said to the court, in effect, we won’t do anything to remedy the miscarriage of justice because “we don’t have custody or control” of Garcia, which is a perversion of the first order, since ICE illegally removed him in the first instance.

From her podium at the White House, Trump’s press secretary (aka "3D Printer Barbie")- Karoline Leavitt on April 1 lied about Garcia by spuriously accusing him of ties to human trafficking and “vicious” gang violence. This is standard Trump operating procedure when confronted with inconvenient facts: deny, disparage and lie.

For her part, the woman in charge of ICE, Homeland Security (Halloween constumed) Secretary Kristi Noem, went to the supermax prison on March 28, for a hedious op in front of caged prisoners and praised El Salvador’s cooperation. Displaying a total indifference to the law, however, she did nothing to rescue the man – Garcia – that her agency illegally abducted from the U.S. on March 15.

For the sake of Garcia and his family, including his disabled son, and for the sake of the preservation of an independent court system to uphold the rule of law (including the 2019, court victory that Garcia obtained by playing by the rules and submitting his case to a neutral judge), we look forward to this man’s prompt and safe return to the U.S. 

A judge hearing the case in Maryland federal court instructed the U.S. government to bring Garcia back to the U.S. no later than Monday. In response, the Trump administration immediately filed a notice of appeal to fight the judge’s order.

So far, as of May 15, 2025,

 the Trumpzi administration has illegally ignored all court orders.

Donald Trump and Republicans are systematically destroying our nation's democracy right before our eyes

Echo opinion letter published in the Daily Journal news, in Indiana.

It is past time that residents of the state of Indiana and our country wake up to the fact that we are nearing a period when our democracy is at risk if Republicans in Washington don’t stand up to Donald Trump (and strongly oppose Trumpziism). #ImpeachTrumpNow

Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” is a dangerous slogan. Trump tells Republicans and independent Americans that only he can make America great again. 

However, American is and always has been a great country❗ The only way Trump can make it better is to resign. Every day he stays is a bad day for our country, a bad day for our allies and a bad day for freedom lovers of our world.

Of course, I recognize that Indiana and Johnson County in Indiana are Republican strongholds, but our neighbors must surely recognize Trump’s disregard of our country’s constitution and the figurative middle finger he holds up to the courts when called to task for it.

Most parents would punish their child if that child waved the middle finger at them. So, as the parents, how can local Republicans support our wayward governmental leaders when they wave their middle finger at our laws, the constitution, human rights and courts?

As most of you know, our country’s shameful mishandling and deportation of Abrego Garcia, plus 200 others like him, to the Terrorism Confinement Center (a gulag), a notorious prison in El Salvador is a despicable act, lacking due process. 

Despite having no proof of any wrongdoing or of Garcia having any criminal record of being charged with a crime, the Trump administration continues to sling lies about him.

The Trump administration’s lies about the innocent must stop. The administration’s lies in our daily government operations must also stop. Indiana is a good place to stop lies and push for truth in the workings, publication and broadcasts of our federal government. Each one of us must encourage truth in government.

Our democracy depends on it.

From Richard DeTorre in Greenwood, Indiana

Maine Writer Post Script-  Senator Susan Collins alert❗ ⚠️

French Legion of Honor: Medical professional former assistant Surgeon General and Northeastern Provost honored by the French government

Félicitations😀😊💙😍❗

Northeastern University in Boston Provost’s distinguished professor at Northeastern honored with France’s highest civilian distinction

Published in Northeastern Global News by David Nordman

Retired Rear Adm. Susan Blumenthal, M.D., a provost’s distinguished professor at Northeastern, was honored by French Ambassador Laurent Bili. Photos Courtesy of the Embassy of France

Retired Rear Adm. Susan Blumenthal, M.D., was reconized for her contributions to public health, global health diplomacy and women’s health equity.

Retired Rear Adm. Susan Blumenthal, M.D., a provost’s distinguished professor at Northeastern University in Boston and former U.S. assistant surgeon general, has been awarded the Insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour), France’s highest civilian honor.

The ceremony, held at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C., recognized Blumenthal’s contributions to public health, global health diplomacy and women’s health equity.

French Ambassador Laurent Bili praised Blumenthal’s decades-long leadership in U.S. public health, highlighting her work across four presidential administrations and her unrelenting advocacy for mental health, chronic disease prevention, pandemic response and the fight against cancer.

“You have served at the highest level of the U.S. government … with signature integrity and humanity,” Bili said. “You co-chair the presidential initiative on breast cancer and have led groundbreaking efforts to improve detection, including the founding of the ‘Missiles to Mammograms’ initiative.”

Blumenthal also spearheaded the creation of the National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health and the National Women’s Health Information Center, helping to integrate technology into public health through award-winning digital platforms.