To the Editor:

Martin, after reading last week’s Editorial, I have concluded that it would be best, in the future, that I avoid your
statements about religion. However, I want to clarify one point.

I often use Catholicism as a religious exemplar because it is the source of my entire education, except law school, and
is my religious ancestral home. True, I have relocated since childhood, but I still revere “home” in the message of Christ.
I offered my view of what any religion, at a minimum, should have as its mission. When a religion fails to promote benign,
if not charitable, treatment of others as fellow human beings or as God’s children, I’m not sure what purpose it serves.

The last couple of editions found you blind-vaulting over substantial political issues – which you’ll recall were the
objective of our discourse from the beginning. There is so much happening in this country and the world that will shape our
lives and succeeding generations, so I am surprised and a little disheartened.

A couple of things that deserve attention: The UN and other organizations report Gaza is starving to death. Children and
babies are dying, their parents too weak to tend to them. There is no clean water, no medicines, and very little food.
Israel and their partners in this genocide, including the US, are, in Netanyahu’s recent words, obliged “to allow the entry
of minimal humanitarian supplies” (emph. mine). Trump sniffed that, “we didn’t even get a ‘thank you’ for our contribution”
for those inadequate supplies. That is what he values. This has happened before in history, but this time it’s ours.

Meanwhile, food destined for aid distribution was destroyed at the docks last week, rather than being distributed before
expiration, because poor countries could not buy it from us for even thirty pieces of silver, on Trump’s orders. What
resides in a person’s heart and soul that they would do such a thing? And it was done in our names.

Nearly 60,000 men, women, and children are now detained by ICE in the US, El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries where
there’s little or no control over their conditions. Those detainees who are not citizens may have entered the country
illegally, but the vast majority are not “the worst of the worst” as Trump promised. Whatever their immigration status,
detainees are human beings, and this immigration terror plan is devoid of any consideration of their humanity. This is not
“God’s Will.” We alone own this.

Our President is once again crooning his Greatest Hits on Epstein, including “fake news,” “somebody framed me,” “witch
hunt,” “hoax,” and “I don’t know that guy” or sexually- assaulted woman, or lewd sketch. Having demanded revelation of the
Files during the 2024 election, now it’s apparently in Trump’s interest to protect the perpetrators, pardon at least one if
she coughs up what he wants to hear and ignore the victimized girls and women. If we are still by any chance a Nation of
Laws, the perpetrators, whoever they are, will face identification and prosecution.

Trump delivered a lecture to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in a bizarre stream-of-
consciousness and childish self-congratulatory monologue. This is how America presents to the world. (YouTube.com, then
choose duckduckgo.com, “Trump meets with president of European Commission”).

Kelly Scoles,

Fillmore, Ca