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Trump’s Bill of Rights
attacks are dangerous
President Trump said that certain criticisms and negative coverage of him should be illegal. He also stated that press criticism of judges influences their decisions and should be criminalized.
Trump wants to outlaw political dissent and criticism he considers misleading or challenges his claims to power. He has said that reporters should be prosecuted for not divulging confidential sources and that media companies should lose their licenses for unfavorable coverage of him.
These statements and intents violate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They cannot be normalized, disregarded or ignored. They are the most dangerous comments made by any sitting president. It is a greater threat than even war with a foreign country.
Mark Grzan
Morgan Hill
Details missing from
Mahan’s homeless plan
Re: “Homeless have responsibility to the wider community, too” (Page A8, March 9).
I understand Mayor Mahan’s goal of moving all unhoused people into housing. The plan is to have interim housing with robust on-site amenities including case management, laundry, internet and three meals a day. On the surface, this is an admirable goal.
However, this is only part of the project. The other part is the end game. How will this project end? Will this project end? We never hear about the overall project and what the future holds. What exactly is our responsibility to our unhoused neighbors? Will San Jose permanently house them if they can’t become self-sufficient? Where does the county fit in with those who can’t become self-sufficient?
We, the taxpayers, need the mayor to be specific. We deserve to know his vision for how this project ends (or doesn’t) and how he intends to finance this project if it doesn’t end.
Robert MacFarlane
San Jose
Trump’s slash and burn
is bad for everyone
Re: “How federally funded research saved my son” (Page A9, March 16).
This article is a humanly relatable example of the importance of federally funded research. There are many more federal research programs that help not one but masses of U.S. citizens: for example, infectious diseases and cancers and their potential cures funded by NIH; food safety and crop improvement by USDA; weather prediction for farmers, sailors, airlines and more by NOAA; environmental, human and wildlife health by the EPA and National Centers for Environmental Information. The list goes on.
Yet the Trump administration is removing the databases of these departments and more. This is nothing less than the 21st-century, digital-age equivalent of book burning. These resources, with their long records of critical data, are essential for scientists to assess potential solutions to future problems threatening the health, prosperity and survival of us, our children and future generations.
Stop the slash and burn; make America sane again.
Campbell Scott
Los Gatos
Is there any way to slow
emboldened Trump?
Re: “ACLU asks judge to force Trump to explain violation” (Page A4, March 18).
The picture and article in the Mercury News of Venezuelans being sent to El Salvador brought me to tears. Is this what we have become? Invoking a 1798 wartime law to remove aliens in handcuffs and hoods while deporting indiscriminately, claiming them as terrorists or potential terrorists?
This is beyond insane, allowing an administration to defy the law and repeat the mistakes of the Japanese relocation camps and the McCarthy era with unsubstantiated accusations to impose punishment and banishment. It is time to consider impeachment, but how can we impeach the whole Congress that is allowing this to happen? Is there no way to stop this moral outrage?
I fear there is not as Trump and his minions feel too powerful to be challenged as they continue to destroy the American values of justice and equality for all.
Claudia Parker
San Jose
‘Human kindness’ in
short supply at OMB
Re: “CFPB inching back to life” (Page A5, March 16).
I read a description of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in Sunday’s Mercury News, and it made me think of Templeton, the rat in “Charlotte’s Web,” the classic book by E.B. White.
The journalist reports Vought “wanted to shut down agencies and leave their employees ‘traumatically affected.’” Templeton has qualities that appear similar to Vought’s: He is unsympathetic, clever, cunning and feared by others. He has no higher feeling. The most fitting description of Templeton that calls to mind Vought is that he has no conscience, no morals, no milk of rodent kindness. The familiar quote is “milk of human kindness,” but “rodent kindness” fits someone who wishes to leave employees “traumatically affected.”
I believe we should begin referring to Vought by the adjectives that describe someone who wants to leave employees “traumatically affected.” No milk of rodent kindness for Vought, the administration’s Templeton.
Jean Ricket
Saratoga