Reader’s Letters

To the editor,

While pandemics have receded from public discourse, their potential threat very much remains. Animal agriculture in general, and factory farming in particular, drastically increases the risk of zoonotic viruses making the jump to humans. Politicians interested in advancing public health should support government funding for cultivated-meat research. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without raising and slaughtering animals.

The new protein is identical to slaughtered meat at a cellular level, however the need for sick livestock to come in contact with human workers is eliminated. Widespread adoption of cultivated meat would significantly reduce the threat of pandemics. While there are technological hurdles to mass production, these can be overcome with public investment in cellular-agriculture development. Government leaders should back this effort to create a safer, healthier world.

Jon Hochschartner 

Granby, CT 06035

To the Editor:

On the evening of June 6th, Congressman Mike Lawler had the temerity to attend a fundraiser for People to People, the biggest volunteer food pantry in Rockland serving thousands who don’t have enough to EAT.

After he played a few arcade games by himself, I approached, identified myself, and said I was saddened and upset about the damage he and Trump are doing to our community and our nation. He asked what specifically concerned me. I started listing: abandoning science and medical research, slashing Medicaid and Medicare, education attacks, defunding SNAP – which People to People and every community in America count on to feed hungry children.

Lawler’s answer to everything was his work on taxes – SALT, standard deduction – and reducing the federal deficit (he said CBO projection was overblown). I told him I don’t mind paying taxes as long as they go to the needs of our people, not into the pockets of the wealthy. 

As he walked away, Lawler said he was elected as a Republican and is carrying out the president’s program. Not a word about the hungry in Rockland.

Gina Ironside

Tappan

To the Editor, 

At a Senate hearing recently, the Secretary of Homeland Security acted more like an office secretary than head of a massive federal agency. When asked to define “habeas corpus,” Kristi Noem answered, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

In fact, that is the exact opposite of its actual meaning. It is the right of an individual to avoid being removed from the country or treated in any other way unlawfully without due process. It is a constitutionally guaranteed right to get out of jail and appear before a court.  It means “produce the body” or “get out of jail free” so a judge can figure out if you are in there lawfully and protect you from unlawful imprisonment. Habeas corpus is not a “kick you out of the country free” card for an autocrat to play whenever he chooses. In fact, it is only the Congress that can suspend habeas corpus and only in a time of military invasion. Habeas corpus requires due process rather than suspends it.

Kristi Noem is teaching a civics class to Congress and the American people, but she has no idea what she is talking about. Either that, or she is deliberately and viciously attempting to bend the Constitution to her own will and signaling to Trump loyalists in the Congress that this is the new definition of this age-old legal principle.

No wonder our people don’t know which way is up any longer, when we have instructors like this. Noem apparently figures that her womanly good looks and her powerful position will be more appealing to the American people than any knowledge and wisdom they got in school or college. Not good enough for a major national cabinet position, folks.

In addition, State department secretary Marco Rubio said, in another act of either ignorance or evil intent, “There is a division in our government between the federal branch and the judicial branch. No judge, and the judicial branch, cannot tell me or the president how to conduct foreign policy.” Rubio also said, “No judge can tell how I have to outreach to a foreign partner or what I need to say to them. And if do reach to that foreign partner and talk to them, I am under no obligation to share that with the judiciary branch.”  (“Marco Rubio Says No Judge Has Authority Over Him in Alarming Testimony, 5-20-25, New Republic)

First of all, Rubio completely gets the branches of government wrong, as there are three of them, not two. Rubio seems to have positioned the Congress as a subset of the executive branch, which tells us how he is thinking today.

But perhaps even more troubling, Rubio essentially has declared that he does not believe in the Constitution’s governmental checks and balances. Each branch has manifest powers to check and balance out the powers of the other two. That is clear to anyone who has ever read the Constitution, which apparently Rubio has not. For example, Rubio does have a clear obligation to share the results of treaty agreements with Congress, so the Senate can give or deny its consent before a treaty can become law.

Rubio also gifted the country with a stupendous lie regarding the administration’s shutting down of the USAID agency. He said, “No one has died.” The only question about the consequences of this action is whether hundreds have died, or thousands have died in Africa. And Democrats overwhelmingly voted to confirm this Trump choice for Secretary of State!

Rubio’s comments about the “division” between our two branches of government betray what seems to be the Trump administration’s actual beliefs about the U.S. government: that the presidency is now more like an absolute monarchy that isn’t subject to congressional or judicial oversight. The conservative-controlled Supreme Court seems to have inspired that belief last year in its ruling on presidential immunity. Now, as President Trump deports immigrants without evidence or due process, we are seeing the actions of an official who believes he is above the law, far above the other two branches of government who have no influence over him at all, and immune from all consequences for his actions.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah 84087