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Trump isn’t capable ofcalling our better angels
Re: “As recovery efforts continue, military expert is baffled while Trump baselessly blames DEI” (Page A1, Jan. 31).
Minutes after calling for a moment of silence after the Washington air crash tragedy, President Trump launched into a parade of grievances and invective, blaming former Presidents Obama and Biden and DEI for the crash. It would seem that in Trump’s mind, women and people of color are not qualified for challenging safety tasks. All this while responders were pulling bodies out of the Potomac River a few miles away — “heartbreaking work,” according to the D.C. fire chief.
I am old enough to remember President Reagan’s words after the Challenger disaster. He brought solace and meaning in a time of national trauma.
We all knew in November that Donald Trump is incapable of calling forth the better angels of our nature. We have a very long four years ahead of us.
Jim CervantesLafayette
USAID pause threatensU.S. national security
Re: “Halting foreign aid hurts U.S. as well as world” (Page A6, Jan. 29).
Thanks for publishing Susan Wright’s, Sue Oehser’s, and Ricardo Narvaez’s letters regarding supporting reversing President’s Trump’s foreign aid actions. Dr. Atul Gawande, former assistant administrator for Global Health at USAID, recently said pausing the work of USAID is like “pausing” an airplane in flight. Despite assurances to exempt life-saving programs, the administration’s ignorance, ineptitude, and refusal to follow law and honor agreements and contracts has already caused loss of life.
National security is sometimes likened to a stool supported by these three legs: defense, diplomacy and development. The administration’s pause of previously ongoing programs around the world is destroying U.S. development expertise, credibility, respect and trust. If the Republican-led federal legislative and judicial branches don’t exert their independence and check the Trump administration’s destruction of our national security stool’s leg of development, the fault is on us citizens for allowing that destruction.
Jim DriggersConcord
Musk’s team should beregulating drug prices
Re: “Elon Musk’s team gains access to the Treasury Department’s payments system” (Page A5, Feb. 2).
Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk could make Medicare less costly by regulating (not deregulating) the prices of prescription drugs, thus preventing big pharmaceutical companies from enriching themselves on the backs of the working class and gouging the American taxpayer.
One wonders if Musk and his team of billionaires own Big Pharma stocks, clearly a conflict of interests.
Jeanne KinkellaSan Leandro
Cowardice in Congresshasn’t changed much
Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1969, made the following observation: “It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their prestige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs?”
Maybe we haven’t come so far after all.
Richard AckermanCastro Valley
In the wake of tragedy,Trump seeks to divide
Americans have traditionally come together to support each other in times of disaster.
Unfortunately, President Trump and his administration are taking a different path.
In the face of the catastrophic Los Angeles fires, Trump erroneously blamed California’s Bay-Delta water policies and has threatened to make Federal disaster aid contingent on political concessions from California.
Following the horrific mid-air collision over the Potomac, Trump and his newly installed Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, made the specious claim that DEI initiatives were somehow linked to the accident, justifying their recent orders banning such programs.
This pattern of spreading disinformation and lies to exploit tragedies for political leverage is contemptible.
As Americans, we need to reject such divisive politics.
Douglas MedlinSan Ramon