To the Editor:
When we talk about national defense, most people think of weapons systems or border security. But the greatest threat to America’s strength comes from within—our own health.
A nation can’t defend itself if its people are sick, stressed, or bankrupted by medical bills. We spend more per capita on health care than any country in the world, yet rank far below others in life expectancy and infant survival—even with some of the best hospitals and researchers on Earth.
Universal health care isn’t radical; it’s a defense strategy. It ensures every American—soldier, teacher, farmer, truck driver—can stay healthy enough to serve, work, and care for their family. It strengthens the workforce that keeps our supply chains moving and our communities stable.
The pandemic showed how quickly our fragmented system can fail. When people skip care because of cost, we all become more vulnerable—to disease, economic collapse, and disinformation that feeds on fear.
Health care should be treated as critical infrastructure, like roads or power grids. A healthy population is our first line of defense. Universal coverage is not just humane—it’s patriotic.
Trump, Johnson, and their allies have already done the damage—shutting down government operations, furloughing federal workers, and stalling programs they label “liberal,” no matter the harm to the states or the people they represent. All to block modest assistance that would help Americans pay their dramatically rising health insurance premiums. It’s hard to prevail against people who don’t care how much pain they inflict.
Meanwhile, the wealthiest keep their tax cuts. The rest of us pay the price--and take on the tax burden the wealthy shirk—and the debt incurred.
Trump has promised something “much better than Obamacare” for ten years. What have we gotten? Bupkis. The wealthy have their tax breaks. Argentinian cattle ranchers have our beef market. Trump’s got his vanity ballroom. Where does that leave us? Flattened like the East Wing.
How is this America First?
Pat Collins,
Fillmore, CA
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To the Editor:
Sorry, but after January 20, 2025, by Trump’s design, it is impossible to pick only one or two alarming topics. Hungarian despot Erdogan’s playbook, which now-OMB Director Russ Douthat morphed into Project 2025, enabled Trump’s blitzkrieg for the disassembly of our government, neutered the Republican Congress, cowed SCOTUS, and militarized the streets against states’ rights and the will of elected governors and mayors. Joe Biden, whatever his faults, did not try to create a police state or dismantle our republic.
Flash-alert. The Epstein Matter is not going away. Unlike you, many Americans of both Parties are deeply troubled that many young women were seduced, victimized, passed around, and emotionally brutalized by powerful, wealthy men (one convicted woman sex offender), and that Trump, who campaigned vigorously on the necessity of transparency for the scandal, has ordered the DOJ to bury it. You preach that “men must protect women,” but you really mean from themselves, and only for reproduction. The Epstein victims can pound sand.
What reason can there be for a self-proclaimed, staunch advocate of Judaeo-Christian morality to urge a vanishing act for the Epstein criminal perpetrators’ identities and accountability? You are adamantly retributive about sins of the flesh, for instance, Hunter Biden’s pathetic drug-addled stripper follies, but want to tippy-toe past multiple crimes of rape, pedophilia, and human trafficking. It appears that your principles are in service to your politics.
Trump is demanding that his former legal defense lawyers, now DOJ appointees, award him $230 million in restitution for costs of defense of his fraud conviction, and the Mar-a-Lago search under warrant, after repeated FBI requests for documents and Trump’s refusals. Trump has announced that HE will make the ultimate decision on the award of our tax dollars to soothe his hurty feelings. OK with you?
Somehow, you are not concerned about a president who doesn’t recognize the revelation of lack of judgment in the publication of a 10-year-old boy’s fevered dream of having “hilarious” explosive diarrhea on First Amendment protestors. Imbibing beach-cleanup volunteers project more adult sensibility. And this guy has the nuclear codes.
In the Shutdown, the Democrats are proposing restoration of benefits only for those lawfully present in the US. It is illegal to provide federal health care benefits for undocumented persons. Trump and Johnson, et al., are lying, hoping to mislead the public. Again.
In retaliation, Trump disbanded the DOE’s Department of Special Education (a “Democrat-favored program”) and threatened SNAP assistance, to force many American citizens to choose between family health care insurance and food assistance. No negotiation. At some point, most constituents will understandably choose food for their hungry kids over health care, but they will know that they were extorted by Trump and the Republican Congress, who used their children as hostages.
Last Friday, Trump ordered the ninth fatal attack on non-military vessels from Venezuela or Colombia in international waters. The 49 bodies are starting to wash up. The justification, for which Trump has produced no evidence, is that the US attacks were responses to an undeclared “narco-terrorist” war, because vessels were carrying fentanyl to the US. But fentanyl is not produced in South America, but in labs in Mexico and China, and is most likely to be smuggled over the land border.
Trump has labeled the dead “terrorists,” so that he can treat them as enemy combatants in an undeclared, non-existent “war,” just as he is doing on the streets of selected American cities against “domestic terrorists.” So he can exercise power in “war” or “crime,” and call it “peacekeeping.”
Looking forward, in February Hegseth fired JAGs to prevent, “roadblocks to anything that happens.” Inadequate, if any, military legal assessment was done for these attacks. Deliberately.
How do we Americans justify false wars against inferior powers, crazy-8 economic policies, attempts to seduce despots, our government inciting protestors to declare insurrection and invade states under false pretenses, retaliations by threatening to take food from families, but build a grotesquely excessive ballroom for Dinners for Donors and Dances for Dollars?
Do we imagine we will recover unscathed from all this and more, our Constitutional Republic intact?
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, CA