To the Editor:

Unfortunately, there is no sunlight between President Trump’s foreign and national actions. They all arise from his gilded view of Himself in His World.

The Republican Legislature is at his command. Any judge issuing an order against Trump’s actions means that the judge is “corrupt”, incompetent, and can be defied or replaced. For Trump, there is no “separation of powers”; all powers reside in him as the Unitary Executive (per P2025).

The WH issued a statement Sunday, conceding that Trump invoked wartime powers, and ignored a US District Judge’s order that two planes in the air with illegally deported alleged criminal immigrants be “turned around” and brought back, the excuse being that the planes were over “international waters”, and the order therefore did not apply. We are going to be a country of laws, or not. Trump chose “not.”

Last week, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt (with no legal background or, apparently, an American History class in her past), haughtily insisted that, “for anybody who has a basic understanding of the law, you cannot have a low-level district court judge filing [ordering] an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States.” The president, with his executive authority, is still subject to the law, though Trump has asserted that he and the AG will inform the Judiciary what the law is if/when it challenges presidential acts. It’s an unconstitutional claim.

Consistent with Trump’s determination to destroy the Christian concepts of DEI, the National Arlington Cemetery has removed key information from its website about prominent Black, Hispanic, and female service members, including Army Maj. Gen. CC Rogers, a Black Medal of Honor winner (the site now refers to his as a “DEI Medal”), as well as historical topics like the Civil War. Recall that Trump has called war dead “suckers and losers.”

Thousands of American scientists and researchers have been fired and solicited by other countries as “the best science brains in the business.” Demolishing USAID while anti-tuberculosis vaccines sit on docks in Africa, withdrawing from WHO and CDC, increase the chances of the widespread advance of diseases on a small but populous planet. Your 401k’s not going to help you if you are drowning in your own blood with untreatable TB.

Trump’s DOGE fired significant numbers of USDA employees who worked in food inspection. NSA staff has been severely reduced, as has the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But, who needs them when the president has a stack of black Sharpies?

“Trump just closed Voice of America (VoA). Autocrats worldwide are rejoicing.” “VoA and [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty] were the beacons of hope…they gave people hope to persist and eventually bring down the communist regimes that many thought would last forever.” Trump deems VoA inessential to the free world’s future. I haven’t even mentioned the economy.
How “American” are we if we will voluntarily succumb to unprecedented exercises of mutant, manic presidential power?

Kelly Scoles

Fillmore, Ca.