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We should all be students of world history — especially if you are the president of the U.S. — in order to prevent repeating previous atrocities. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Ukraine is a rich, fertile land with a beautiful culture, heritage, language, religions, diversity and history. Ukraine has suffered under the hand of oppression, primarily Russian, for far too long.

Matthew St. Onge’s recent letter suggesting that Concord residents should be able to prioritize major spending projects via Ranked Choice Voting is a good idea, since it would give residents more say in which projects are most important to them. New Hampshire towns and cities could also benefit from using RCV for their local elections.

My dad was a World War II veteran in Europe, serving more that four years to ensure that fascist Germany would not succeed in overtaking much of the continent with its White Nationalist values. He knew that two wars had already happened on the same soil, and that it was time for a mechanism to prevent a third war from happening in Europe. NATO was formed and has resulted in 80 years of peace on the continent. He would be appalled to think the U.S. would turn its back on Europe after so much American blood was lost. This is not a game. President Trump is playing with lives we have always considered allies.

As a student, parent and educator, I am not in favor of publicly-funded vouchers. By continuing the voucher program, we are continuing to erode the effectiveness of our public education system. If we have a bipartisan committee reviewing publicly-funded curriculum standards, our public education should suffice for all of our children. That is, with the exception of parents who choose to home-school to protect their student from bullying or harassment. Those protections should be resolved separately from the issue of school funding.

As a nurse, I’m no stranger to the ups and downs of life. Aging wear and tear and illnesses happen despite our best efforts to stay healthy. When they do, New Hampshire seniors deserve to know they have easy access to reliable healthcare options that meet their distinct needs.

Adhesive-based traps, also known as glue traps, are outdated, inhumane and should be banned in New Hampshire. These traps are small pads covered in sticky glue that are used to trap small animals like rodents. When the animal gets caught in the glue, it doesn’t die right away. Instead, their fur gets ripped off, they dehydrate, suffocate and try to get free for many days. These glue traps are inhumane! Another reason why they should be banned is because the glue used is toxic and can hurt pets, like cats and dogs. There are more humane methods to catch unwanted animals like catch-and-release or instant-kill traps. Let’s move in the right direction and not make animals suffer no matter their size! Please support HB152!

I’ve never been to a protest before. As an introvert and a working mom, the idea of marching in the streets felt overwhelming and scary. Where would I park? How many hand warmers would I need? What would my sign say? But on Feb. 17, I showed up. Because I realized something: No one is coming to save us. Watching the news these past few weeks pushed me over the edge. The government’s sweeping overreach and attacks on democracy are alarming. So, I pulled out my craft supplies and made a sign out of corrugated cardboard. I didn’t want it to be about party lines, but I wanted to call out the dangerous rhetoric justifying unchecked power. Inspired by President Trump’s Feb. 15 post, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” I wrote: “Nothing is legal just because Trump says so.” I dug my car out of 18 inches of snow and drove to the state capitol to stand up for fundamental freedoms. I found people from different backgrounds who love this country enough to defend it. It felt right to be there. If I can do it, so can you. This isn’t about left or right. It’s about standing up when democracy is at risk. The checks and balances our nation was founded on are in danger, and silence is compliance. Things change if we show up together. Not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.

The Current Occupant recently replaced artists with loyalists on the Kennedy Center for the Arts governing board and installed himself as chairman. This tracks: Suppression of the arts is a standard anti-democracy move. Lenin and Mao scrubbed “bourgeois” art from public spaces and imprisoned artists. Putin has done the same. Art shows us others’ perspectives and connects us by illuminating our shared human experience. Authoritarians like us uninformed and divided.

The recent My Turn by Millie Lafontaine makes so many important and good points. We must continue to speak out, even if we don’t have the same power that the Republican majority in the State House, Congress and the White House. Government exists for the good of the people. Not just U.S. citizens, but for all. We are the most powerful nation on earth, but this power is being squandered in the name of selfishness and obtaining more money! How much do we need? Are we at a point where our nation, as a whole, not individuals, certainly, must amass more power and money? Is that the aim of the D.O.G.E.? If the rich are set on getting richer, how do those without much think those in power are looking out for them? This imbalance is going to lead to the downfall of the U.S. This prediction has been made for years and is coming to fruition. How do those in power think that “I’ve got mine and the rest of you are on your own” will end? No one makes it on their own and especially not the very rich!

The “America First” Trump campaign touted to my MAGA friends also resonated with me. My personal search for an Executive Order promising to “redirect a very large portion of savings to provide shelter and treatment for homeless American veterans” never turned up. We appreciate the unorthodox DOGE “audit” showing savings. However, any highly preconceived “fraud” is yet to be uncovered, except for the millions recovered by legitimate government functions now jettisoned by this administration. And these “redirected savings” are going where? Obviously not to homeless veterans in a day-one executive order.

On our first tour around Yekaterinburg, Russia, with our Fulbright partner, Natasha, we observed some apparently private individuals cutting down trees in the public semi-circle created by the entrance ramp onto a highway. This was in 2002, barely two years into Vladimir Putin’s regime as president. I asked: “Is it legal to cut down trees on public property?” Natasha thought carefully about the question and finally answered, “If you do it very quickly.” This seems to be the approach President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking to the rights of Americans. They are quickly trampling on the rights of refugees, immigrants, federal employees and recipients of federal grants in their haste to re-write the U.S. constitution. Clearly, they believe “if you do it quickly, you will get away with it.” Republicans in Congress are cheering them on while Democratic leaders shrug their shoulders and complain that they have no power. Only the courts and grass-roots citizens’ groups seem to be trying to slow the demise of the rule of law in America. Let’s hope we don’t follow the path Putin’s Russia took to dictatorship.

To the Department of Education: Diversity is the practice of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, etc. In three decades of teaching, I’ve not had a class where all my students were the same. Differentiated instruction is necessary in education. I must teach all my students, regardless of their myriad differences. I would not be able to do my job as an educator without honoring diversity.

Here we go again! HB675 if passed, will raise the state education tax to be paid for by property taxes. The suggested amount the state pays per student would be raised from a little over 4,000 to a little over 7,000 dollars. The state fund would be increased from a little over 300 million to over 700 million dollars. This increase would all be on the backs of property owners. Depending on the amount of the new tax, it could mean hundreds, if not thousands of dollars added to your property tax bill each year. Our state’s per-student reimbursement to school districts ranks 49th out of 50 states. The only thing that makes us 10th has nothing to do with the help of the state. It is property taxes that allow that ranking. I know that the town I live in did everything they could do and primarily succeeded in keeping down property tax increases after recent assessed values almost doubled. So now, the state wants to come along and thwart all that good work. State government is cheap when it comes to its portion of education funding. This bill should not pass, neither should any other similar bill that will impose a new tax on education that will be an increased burden on property tax owners. Property owners in New Hampshire just can’t keep being asked to pay more and more while the state government does nothing but impose new taxes.

President Trump fashions himself as a successful businessman, a tough negotiator. But looking at his posture towards Ukraine and Russia, I have to wonder. Trump and his emissaries have already conceded just about everything that could be negotiated in a peace deal. Ukraine must forfeit its lost territory. Ukraine will never join NATO. Ukraine is somehow at fault for being invaded. Ukraine doesn’t deserve a seat at the table. Russia shall face no repercussions for its war-mongering or deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure. Indeed, Russia will be welcomed back with open arms! When you’ve already given everything away before negotiations really begin, what’s left to talk about? Trump campaigned saying he would end the war on his first day. He never explained how he would do so. Now it seems his solution is simple: end the war by giving Putin everything he wants while screwing Ukraine and our European allies in the process. Is his adulation of Putin, and Putin’s false flattery, really so disarming? Is Trump’s pathetic grievance against Zelensky so strong he’d abandon an ally? Trump — myopically, childishly — views all interactions as a zero-sum game. I win only if you lose. If I haven’t gotten something from you, I haven’t dominated hard enough. So one really has to wonder what Trump thinks he is gaining here for the United States and who is the sucker in this deal. And after it’s all over, Trump will smugly declare, “Peace for our time!”

Separation of powers that prevented the abuse of power. The rule of law as the executive tramples our Constitution. The spines of Congressional members who stand silent as the executive swallows their power. Freedom of the press, the fourth branch that exposes the corruption of the other three. Leadership in the world. Alliance with our world partners as we make friends of enemies. A belief that our country was above the blatant bribery, corruption and chaos of coups. A hope that we were learning from our past sins and sins of other countries that perpetrated Nazi atrocities and fascist evils against the human rights and humanity of others. Respect, honor and work toward world peace through our support for the sick and hungry. Freedom of religion that disallowed favoritism toward one religion. Right of bodily autonomy and the right to govern our own lives, to be whom we choose to be, not what someone else’s faith or bias dictates. The divine right of places of worship as sacred ground with the right to practice faith in good conscience, to welcome the stranger and give aid to the oppressed;The right of local communities to decide how they will educate their children, not overruled by a misinformed few. Liberty and justice for all as voices for diversity, equity and inclusion are silenced. We have lost so much in such short time. The United States of America: No RIP, no rest, no peace.

How do I hate this administration, let me count the ways. First, I’d prefer a president who was not a convicted felon. One who did not freely admit that becoming president again saved him from many lawsuits and possible jail time. One who did not refer to himself as king, whose administration wasn’t based on hate, divisiveness, bigotry and revenge. In regard to the cabinet, I’d prefer people who have some level of expertise in the department they will be running.

I’ll take a stab at answering letter-writer James Mayotte’s questions. I’m protesting DOGE because there are 19 to 24-year-old programmers that have not been vetted for security and have access to sensitive information. Elon Musk hasn’t been vetted, and we know he is funding candidates in foreign elections. DOGE is sending termination letters not knowing what the government employees do. An example is the Department of Agriculture. Employees tracking Avian Flu and employing methods to stop the spread: terminated. FAA employees inspect, repair and certify airport equipment: eliminated. There’s been no confirmed accounting of the savings that are touted and, when fact checked, turn out to be false. I wonder if Elon’s $8 Billion in contracts with the government will be pared down.

Just a few necessarily short answers to some of letter-writer James Mayotte’s questions. USAID spends less than 1% of the federal budget on health care, food security, disaster relief, etc., all of which help millions of needy people and improve our image abroad. Elon Musk is a private citizen whose companies have billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts — see any conflicts of interest? Dr. Fauci, on the other hand, spent his career as a dedicated public servant with decades of success in improving our health.

Through our history, presidents seeking to enlarge their powers beyond constitutional limits have been checked by Congress. Most often, the Senate has asserted its powers to persuade the president to “stay in his lane.” Past episodes involved discreet areas of presidential power. Nonetheless, Congress has jealously guarded the powers assigned to it by the Constitution. Presidents Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Nixon among others have felt the congressional pushback.

In a social media post, President Trump claimed he was justified in breaking the law to “save” his country. He appears to be claiming what John Locke called emergency prerogative. According to Locke, when the survival of the nation was at stake, the executive could act outside the law and even against it. The best example of the application of this concept occurred during the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln operated outside the law on several occasions, saying, “Was it possible to lose the nation yet preserve the Constitution?”