To the editor:
Where are the keepers of the law? Judges rule; rules are unenforced. The checks and balances set forth in the Constitution—gone. The Cabinet is filled with unqualified Trump sycophants who mostly are disbanding their departments. The House of Representatives has abrogated its power of the purse. A mentally ill, adjudicated criminal sits in the White House openly defying his oath of office, destroying the world order, fighting an illegal war, killing innocent immigrants, ignoring murders committed by his paid ICE goons, spending billions that have not been allocated as required by law, spreading racism and antisemitism, tearing down the people’s property and lying, lying, lying as he grifts, grifts, grifts.
According to the polls, he is a failure. But who is going to stop him? Our ships are still blockading the Strait of Hormuz after more than 60 days, without Congressional approval as required by law, after they were illegally moored there. 13 American service members died, and over 400 were wounded in what is now referred to as the Iranian War. Immigrants are being rounded up, placed in hellhole prisons without due process or shipped to countries that are not their own. Including small children! They are dying in those places. [Read U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s report of her legal, spontaneous visit to Alligator Alcatraz.]
This morning, his ballroom is rising despite the fact that Judge Richard Leon has repeatedly ordered a halt to above-ground construction. The reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial is being painted a bilious blue. There is a new fence around the site of a future gold-statue-topped arch. Does nobody care that the ballroom was going to be paid for—$400 million from generous donors—but now the taxpayers will pay $ 1 billion instead? We, the taxpayers, are paying for all of this illegal public work. The national debt is now greater than the U.S. GDP. Dozens of companies are gone, victims of the current hard cost of doing business. Now he is bankrupting our country. There is no oversight, no approval process, no budget for the expenses. The dismantling and desecration of our national monuments is almost complete. Soon, the gilded National Mall will look like an expensive whore house.
For all of us, the cost of everything has skyrocketed. Everything—our food, our fuel, all of our daily necessities—costs more, a lot more. He promised when he ran there would be no war, prices would be lower, illegal immigrants deported. Lies. All of this turned out to be lies. He has fired thousands of public employees and reduced budgeted federal funds for agencies including the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Transporation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, National Park Service, Energy, and Homeland Security. Our schools are failing our children, whose public academic score ranks 31st globally. We are being poisoned—literally—as Trump removes us from international environmental alliances, overturns protections for our endangered species, decimates the EPA, stops renewable energy source construction, and approves removal of regulations from protected lands in favor of drilling and coal mining to enrich his friends and big donors. Children are dying of measles because our secretary of Health and Human Services is an anti-vaxxer. Women are dying as more and more states ban access to abortion.
I Googled the Oslo Accords. The top of the page reads “Milestones in the History of the U.S. Foreign Relations has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.” Our history has been erased. Trump’s attacks against journalism are threatening our access to current affairs. This week, Stephen Colbert, a staunch satirist of Trump’s atrocities, will leave national television. There is fear of Trump. Why else would national networks fire people whom he considers his enemies and pay him millions of dollars to appease him because they accurately made critical mention of him? Overnight this week, Trump took to his X account to spew 55 posts filled with lies and fury. He is deranged; he is ill. He is the president. Why don’t we know the results of his visits to Walter Reed and the reasons for his concealed hands?
Everyone knows that everything is very wrong. Where are the rest of the Epstein papers? Is it too far a leap of thought to consider that the war, the building, his lies, his disregard of law are to deflect us from demanding to see all of the papers with only the names of the victims redacted? The victims are courageously speaking out. There are pictures of him with Epstein; there are substantiated stories. There are prominent people whose lies about their relationships with Epstein are coming out. Some sources are now suggesting that the three assassination attempts were staged to deflect attention from ongoing Epstein hearings. He certainly did not react to the shots outside the ballroom. Hmmmm. What doesn’t he want to come out? What is our recourse?
Elections. In six months we will exercise our right to vote. Will our votes matter? The “redrawing-voting-maps wars” are in full force. Gerrymandering, blessed in favor of the Republicans by the politicized Supreme Court, will make it difficult for the Democrats to regain what was an expected landslide election for the House. The Constitution requires redrawing after the census every 10 years. Doing so more often is not legally forbidden but has happened very rarely, most recently in 2011 in Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and Georgia in 2005 and Texas in 2003.
So, what exactly can we do? Our laws provide that if Trump defies court orders, a severe constitutional crisis that tests the balance of power could be triggered. Courts can file civil/criminal contempt, fines, or sanctions. Congress could respond with impeachment. But here is the scariest part: enforcement depends on the executive branch. Trump is empowered with the power to enforce judicial ruling—against himself!
I am remembering the 2024 election during which candidates, talking heads, editorials reminded the public of the fragility of our Constitution. At an enormous cost, we have ignored that cautionary warning. We, the exceptional international beacon of democracy, have lost our way of life and law by taking it for granted. Here is the cost: We are living in an autocracy. How is it, I have always asked, that he has always gotten away with all of his illegal activities? His failures? The newspaper of record this week writes that President Xi Jinping of China “may see an opening with a U.S. president weakened by the war in Iran.” The crazy, self-designated King Donald (see his photoshopped pictures of himself and King Charles in matching crowns) of the United States promised when he ran that his people would never have to vote again if he won. What are we going to do for the next six months to stop him from being crowned?
Louise Yohalem
Mill River
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