September 2, 2025 – Jefferson County Daily Union
For these following current events, one can’t be anything but appalled by the state of affairs in America. It is embarrassing on almost every level of political, cultural & economic discourse. From President Trump cutting all federal funding for PBS and NPR and Congress yielding to these bully tactics, to Trump’s executive order laying off nearly all of Voice of America’s 1,300 journalists who speak to a worldwide audience on the virtues and successes of democracy. We created this exceptional program in 1942.
In Israel, with the United States showing no real pushback, high level discussions are advancing plans to resettle many Palestinians into Sudan (Africa) and not let them return to Gaza, which is their home for 2.1 million. These actions are gross violations of basic human rights. America has a proud history of not allowing this type of behavior, yet Prime Minister Netanyahu is pushing this idea and Trump is silent. These are not animals or property but human beings.
In 1983, President Reagan led an invasion of Granada because of a Soviet takeover of this small island. Within eight days, America and several Caribbean countries defeated this renegade communist party that had taken control. One year later free & fair elections reinstated a democratic form of government again in Grenada.
In contrast, Donald Trump just invited Putin, a serial mass murderer and blatant war criminal onto American soil. Treating Putin like royalty and giving him renewed credibility as a leader is a huge mistake. This is a man that has allowed over 1 million of his own people to die or be injured in pursuit of a sick desire to reclaim land that does not belong to Russia, while causing up to $500 billion in property damages to Ukraine, a sovereign, democratic nation.
On August 1, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a July jobs report revealed a significant slowdown in job growth and revisions to previous reports showing similar declines. Installing a new director for this agency politicizes the duties of this important office, which is not meant to be political but professional, impartial in every way.
We need our federal, state and local governments to each do their jobs, along with our court system enforcing the principle of “rule of law” so that one man and his Republican Party (to a large extent) cannot destroy in four years what took 250 years to create.
KEN BERG,
Watertown
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