To the editor:
This morning, Heather Cox Richardson reported in Letters from an American that the Trump thieves in the night dropped the National Security Strategy (NSS) which lays out our international policy. Each time the Orange Dictator has done something outrageous, we cannot imagine it getting worse. Today, the worst has arrived. The president of the United States is removing us from our traditional alliances, aligning with Russia and taking unto himself the right to wage war anywhere he thinks there might be drug traffic. He gives himself control of trade and threatens to “take” Mexico and, maybe, Canada. And he will impose taxes on trading partners who do not obey him.
Russell Vought’s Project 2025 has been implemented in less than a year. I am afraid that birthright will be gone, public education dismantled, and, as has already begun, only people with financial resources will be able to afford healthcare. This week, voting rights have been stolen by a Supreme Court that ignores the Constitution and judicial precedent. His chosen “justices” are part of his plan. Since his return to the presidency, they have repeatedly overturned the rulings of lower courts and keep expanding the role of the president, undoing the balance of power embedded in the Constitution.
Millions of people have left the U.S. willingly as well as through illegal deportation. An alcoholic without any leadership or military knowledge or service is leading our armed forces and has set up a complicit general to normalize his breach of international maritime law. Illegally, he has closed the Department of Defense to journalists and will allow only his chosen “journalists” to print what he says they may.
The secretary of Health and Human Services, a man with no medical experience, has undone crucial medical policies. His reversal of inoculation regulations has resulted in three infants dying in Kentucky and two in Texas from measles because neither they nor their mothers were inoculated. The next cause of infant death will be whooping cough. Many children born now and uninoculated will suffer from hepatitis B.
The head of the FBI has turned his agency into a private jet taxi service for his girlfriend and her drunk friends and told FBI agents to follow her instructions. “The People’s House” has lost one wing of its building without any governmental intervention. Geographical sites and public buildings are being renamed so that soon we won’t even have a physical or institutional memory.
Every day, the so-called leader of the greatest country in the world breaks its laws and tears down another constitutional law. He is focusing mobilization of ICE on blue states and cities where immigrants are being abducted. Many are here legally, and almost none are criminals. These neighbors and friends make it possible for our way of life by doing low-wage work that Americans do not want. Defying the ruling of lower courts, without having warrants or identifying themselves, ICE agents fly them off to countries that are not even their historical homes.
The man in the White House is only president of his MAGA followers, as proved by his fourth grade vocabulary denigrating anyone who does not adore him. His oath to serve all of the people in this country is a joke. Under his “leadership,” there is no consequential congressional lawmaking; instead, he uses the various departments and arms of government for retribution against his perceived enemies. We are led by a felon who has been found guilty of sexual assault, tax evasion, and multiple bankruptcies and who is a compulsive liar, systematically taking apart our country. Scores of small businesses disappeared after working on his failed projects.
Negotiation as a norm of governance is no longer practiced. The liar-in-chief sat in his office without making any effort to end Congress’ month-long “hiatus” so that the Epstein papers would not be released. Leaked information has revealed that his name appears 500 times, and no one has yet answered the question of what he was doing when he was left alone for several hours with an underage girl.
He is ill, mentally and physically in a state of decline that renders him unable to even stay awake during cabinet meetings and public appearances. He invites enemies of our country to meetings in his garish, gold-smeared office and enriches himself and his family by accepting gifts, selling cryptocurrency and other Trump products, and enabling his family to conduct business across the Far and Middle East. They have reaped billions. There have been numerous articles from reliable sources that Stephen Miller, architect of the anti-immigrant movement, is running the government—or what is left of it after Elon Musk’s DOGE goons went on a firing rampage through the halls of federal offices.
In three weeks, the cost of healthcare will rise as the Affordable Care Act expires. Small, rural hospitals are already closing; more will follow. Poor people, low- and middle-income people will no longer be able to afford insurance. Many people will die. When, if ever, will we return to essential medical and environmental research and to funding medical care?
As weather patterns worsen and species die, he has overturned the laws, regulations, and international partnerships that are committed to environmental protection. We now live through deadly cycles of forest fires, destructive rain flooding, rampaging lethal waterways. Yet he continues to lie that there is no global warming. The benefit of his policies is China, which leads in addressing increasing environmental catastrophe and is developing technologies to protect against the destruction caused by human ignorance. Our leader continues to mine fossil fuels and to open lands and resources that are essential to maintaining all life on Earth to further destruction.
We have not seen his tax returns or his medical reports; MRIs do not substantiate verbal acuity. At least one member of the Supreme Court lied under oath during his incomplete conformation process. Another one’s wife tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election. Some of them act in violation of the emoluments clause, accepting free rides on private planes and elaborate vacations.
He is restoring memorials to leaders of the South in the Civil War, erasing our history of slavery, encouraging antisemitism, and denying the poverty that still exists in too many American places. His “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” rewards the rich with more tax cuts and punishes the poor and elderly with higher costs for the essentials for living—groceries and medical care. He has used the federal economic power of the purse to coerce prestigious law firms and colleges to abet him through multi-million-dollar fines that fund the end of U.S. democracy, at the same time agreeing to his demands for ending DEI and specific courses of study. The question is why, since these entities have enough money to sustain themselves and serve as a bulwark against leadership’s mendacity and lies.
With his appointees heading all government agencies, there is no longer a way to stop the havoc in which we are living. We are losing, or have already lost, our ability to protect our personal lives and the laws of our land.
How much is enough? How much money and power do the Republicans need? When will they find their consciences, dethrone the madman in charge, and vote to remove all of these human instruments of our national destruction through the impeachment process? We are now living in a fascist dictatorship. The GOP controls all three branches of government; Congress and the Supreme Court have failed in their duties to provide checks and balances as the Constitution specifies and as they swore in their oaths of office. This has become MAGA America.
He always tells what he will do. He told his followers that they would never have to vote again. He coyly denies that he will seek a third term. With the current rampage of racial gerrymandering approved by the Supreme Court, there is every chance the GOP will win in 2026 and by 2028, as he promised, there will not be an election. It will not matter if 20 million people take to the streets to demonstrate against him; the damage will have been done.
We must not rest on the success of the recent elections. As we were warned by the Democrats in the 2024 campaign, our democracy is at risk. By now, we have enough evidence to understand that this may be our last chance to return to normalcy. We must keep using our voices, make a plan for how we will work in the next election, support our candidates and not give up hope.
Louise Yohalem
Mill River
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