Letters for Sunday, December 14, 2025 |
Quick action needed to stop Trump abuses
In elementary school social studies, we learned that the United States is a republic with three co-equal branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial. Each is restrained by a system of checks and balances.
Nevertheless, since Jan. 20, the current Executive Branch seems determined to consolidate power within itself – and especially within one person, Donald J. Trump. Its success since January should alarm us all.
Our Legislative Branch has squandered its constitutional powers. It acquiesces with little or no angst. Funds allocated by Congress for specific purposes are withheld by Trump or redistributed at his discretion. There is no consultation before Trump wages a self-declared war.
To their credit, lower federal courts have, at times, upheld legal challenges to Trump’s manifest ignorance or willful disregard for the “rule of law.” However, the Supreme Court has thus far failed to stifle his overreach.
Meanwhile, in his Department of Defense, Trump has chosen to anoint himself judge, jury and executioner in the Gulf of Mexico. The loss of over 80 lives are politely labeled “extrajudicial killings” but more properly are simply murder.
At his direction, tactics used by Homeland Security and ICE contemptuously and violently dismiss dignity toward fellow human beings as optional.
The rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the governmental system designed by the U.S. Constitution are under aggressive,........