To the Editor:
Last week I refuted the claim that illegal voting is a significant problem in our elections with the actual data. Evidence clearly shows noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare.
That false claim is the political version of a magician’s trick: “Look over there.” It’s designed to distract you from what’s really happening right here.
The House passed Trump’s SAVE America Act, requiring proof of citizenship to register and photo identification to vote. A Bipartisan Policy Center analysis found that about 12 percent of registered voters lack ready access to the required documents. Citizens whose current names do not match their birth certificates—including many married women—could need additional documents simply to register. The Senate, fortunately, refused to take it up—which was met with temper tantrums from Trump. The SAVE Act isn’t designed to stop non-citizens from voting. They already don’t. It’s designed to stop citizens.
President Trump directed the Postal Service to deliver federal mail ballots only under a new, hastily created system requiring states to submit each voter’s name, address and ballot barcode. Postmaster General David Steiner testified that USPS would not deliver mail ballots from states that refused to provide the required lists. A federal judge blocked the rule, finding that the president and Postal Service lack authority to rewrite state election procedures. Pay attention to how strongly and how many times Trump appeals the court rulings. That’s how hard he’s fighting to reduce the number of legitimately registered citizens who get ballots and can vote. While he screams about a problem that doesn’t exist.
Meanwhile, state legislatures impose additional barriers. Since January 2025, 19 states enacted 44 laws classified by the Brennan Center as restrictive because they make it harder for eligible citizens to register, remain on the voter rolls, or vote.
Republican lawmakers in several Southern states have pursued mid-decade redistricting to eliminate districts in which Black voters can elect their representatives. A federal court found Alabama’s plan intentionally discriminatory and blocked it. Different method, same result: fewer eligible citizens able to vote for their representatives.
The administration has also sent conflicting messages about ICE at polling places: DHS says no general deployment is planned, but Trump has refused to rule it out.
While we are told to fear the exceedingly rare unlawful vote, we need to pay attention to efforts to stop lawful voters.
This comes down to one single question. Do you believe that all eligible citizens in this country have a right to vote? Trump doesn’t.
Pat Collins,
Fillmore, Ca
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To the Editor:
Of the dozens of presidential subjects worthy of discussion, I’m going to address one that is a little different, but thoroughly emblematic of the character and concerns of the man who now resides in the WH.
Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation” wrote a NYT article about Trump’s “mystery meat” deal with unnamed but clearly South American countries. While most products, including food, appliances, and even clothing, require labels indicating the country of origin, beef and pork do not. In 2015 the Republican Congress, led by then-Speaker John Boehner, abandoned that requirement. One year later, then-retired Boehner became a member of the board of JBS Foods International (more about that later). Last week, Trump ordered a duty-free exception for 600 million pounds of inexpensive beef of unspecified origin to lower prices for American consumers. Because to heck with the ranch farmers (anyway, “they love me!”), and busy moms will be gratefully none the wiser.
The beef, Schlosser reported, is not fresh, prime cuts. They are “trimmings,” or pieces of beef, frozen or fresh, that will be ground into American beef, mostly for fast food hamburgers and some markets. He calls it “generic industrial meat” ground to combine pieces of “tens of thousands of cattle” from multiple unnamed countries whose meatpacking standards are far less stringent than ours. Recall that Trump and HHS (RFK JR) fired over 5000 employees across its agencies, including National Institutes of Health, FDA’s meat inspectors, and CDC. In 2025 there was a 40% increase in tainted food complaints over the prior year.
Last week, the European Union suspended Brazilian beef imports because of antibiotic misuse. Last year, China rejected multiple beef deliveries from Uruguay (anti-parasitic drug residue) and from Argentina (banned antibiotic that may cause “serious blood disorders). In 2017, Brazil was caught in in a massive food-safety scandal. Inspectors and politicians sold rotten meat treated with chemicals to mask contamination, to schools and hospitals, and for export. “Executives at the Brazilian company JBS [Boehner’s company], the largest beef producer in the world, later admitted to bribing inspectors.”
One of the indicted Brazilians indicted was Joesley Batista, whose family controls JBS, and who purchased several American meatpacking companies over strenuous objection from, for one, then-Senator Marco Rubio. A friend of Melania’s, and donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign fund for $5 million, Batista was invited to meet with Trump in the WH last November. The WSJ observed that Trump finally announced the duty-free beef of unknown origin the day after a later meeting with Batista.
Schlosser observed, “it’s remarkable that the livelihood of American ranchers is being shaped in private meetings between the president of the United States and a representative of Brazil’s largest exporter of beef,” and a prodigious campaign donor.
Note: the Cyclospora produce recall, a massive foodborne illness event, was just one during a year of many food safety alerts and outbreaks in the US. Trump’s “Genius with a Chainsaw” ran the country as the DOGE tsar for a couple of months to slash spending, government programs. and federal workforce, without evaluating any of it first for necessity or function. No need for so many food inspectors at HHS. Funding for the Center for Disease Control, or research of childhood diseases and preventive vaccines, or meat inspectors, decimated. Who needs them?
Trump is not now and has not acted in the interests of “the general welfare” of the People. Scholsser’s issue is a perfect example.
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca