To the Editor:

Martin, Due Process protects everyone in this country, innocent and guilty. Suspicion, innuendo, or cultural differences, are not adequate to punish. The individuals “grabbed” off the street to an infamously cruel El Salvador prison, were selected because they had tattoos and looked Hispanic or Middle Eastern. One guy had “Autism Awareness,” in Spanish in honor of his brother, but was deported anyway, because “quotas.” The Trump administration defied a court order to return the illegally deported men and provide Probable Cause for arrests, and Due Process before punishment. Trump has refused, claiming he answers to no one, not even the Courts.

How is it, Martin, that you vilify Trump for his international offences, but you think some completely different president is making decisions at home? The guy who is betraying Ukraine, slow dancing with Putin, and insulting our international allies, is the very same guy plotting against every agency of the federal government upon which Americans rely, excepting the military, and defying the Judiciary. We went from 250 years of “Beacon of Freedom” to “Slipping into Totalitarianism” in 70 days.

Martin, you are apparently unaware that Trump is following Viktor Orban’s plan for his despotic takeover of Hungary, upon which the Heritage Foundation admittedly modeled Project 2025. Google it. It is a blueprint of how a despot builds his power base to supplant a democracy, and you “admire” it?

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board recently observed that Trump’s rollercoaster handling of tariffs will have, ironically, the most brutal effect on red states that most strongly supported his reelection. “Tariffs are taxes….Mr. Trump’s tariff spree is the triumph of ideology over, well, common sense. Let’s hope the President soon comes to his senses.” It only took two months to drive Japan and India to band together with China against the Trump tariffs.

The Hegseth “Signalgate” debacle is appalling dangerous. Beyond the security breach, the Commander-in-Chief “didn’t know” about the “Yemen chat”, yet he and Hegseth vigorously asserted that the reporting was a “hoax,” the innocent, mistakenly-included journalist deemed “scum,” and the lies just keep coming. AG Bondi refuses to investigate. One particularly notable thing about Hegseth is that he has brought his wife to security meetings and his little brother travels with him as a Pentagon employee, like chaperones. Presumably, his mother is unavailable.

Our Constitution’s ”balance of powers” is under siege from within, international alliances are crumbling, our economy is trembling with uncertainty, and world stability is threatened (as you noted) because of one elected guy who idolizes money and despots, disdains ordinary people, and admits that he is already, less than 90 days in, discussing an unconstitutional third term (“there are methods”). He free-reined a hatchet man-child who thinks he purchased America in the last election for a quarter-billion dollars, and he may well have. Trump and Musk: “Made it Ma! To the Top of the World!” (Apropos. James Cagney, “White Heat”, 1949).

Kelly Scoles,

Fillmore, Ca.