Readers Write: Trump’s first six months in office, sports mascots, Minneapolis City Council

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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President Donald Trump just complimented himself on his first six months in office. He said the economy is better than it was before he took office, that job growth is the best it has ever been and that our standing in the world is great!

Unfortunately, reality paints a far different picture.

The average American is struggling with higher prices due to this administration’s economic policies, we have lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs since the president took office and our standing in the world is at a low point. His tariff policies are causing trade wars, while his on-again, off-again support of democratic principles is causing our allies concerns and his withdrawal from humanitarian agencies is questionable at best.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution grants the president his executive powers. Those powers state that he is the commander in chief, has pardon powers, treaty powers and the ability to fill vacancies and grant commissions. No where does it say he can defund organizations he does not like, insist higher education abide by his “agenda,” deconstruct the history of the U.S. and its institutions, eliminate or decimate safety net agencies that insure American Citizens have clean air to breathe, safe food to eat, clean water to drink, high standards of education and access to scientific based health care. These powers do not include threats to the media, nor do they include rounding up immigrants and depriving them of due process, or threatening to deport American citizens.

These executive powers do not allow him to run up the largest federal debt of any presidency, and, most importantly of all, these powers do not include defying court orders or creating lawsuits to distract from what has been going on in the White House. His “Big Beautiful Bill” tax cut will move wealth from the lower and middle classes, giving it to the wealthiest in this country. It will eliminate heath care and food support for millions of our citizens.

Jan McCarthy, Eden Prairie

Donald Trump has recently suggested that the NFL’s Washington Commanders as well as MLB’s Cleveland Guardians should change back to their original team mascots; respectively being the Redskins and the Indians. Is he aware that these represent slurs to the Native American (American Indian) community, or is Trump too ignorant and disrespectful to other ethnic groups and cultures living in this country to know the difference?

A number of Native groups, such as the American Indian Movement, have been fighting for several years to have these names — as well as others — removed from team logos. The owners of the two teams have been just as adamant that they have no intention of changing their names.

This president has shown his disdain and disrespect in his treatment of the Latin American community with his mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, so this certainly isn’t new for him. Trump has also claimed to be a champion for eliminating antisemitism from our institutions (Harvard University), but fails to admit that his MAGA supporters are often the most virulently antisemitic.

What exactly is going on with this man and can he be reached? Or is this the case of not being able to teach an old dog (old man) new tricks?

Cost shifting government spending from Minnesota to federal taxpayers is a long-standing DFL political strategy. As David Feinwachs points out, the incentives to do so are greatly increased when 90% of Medicaid, which is a nearly $20 billion program in Minnesota, is overseen by managed care providers themselves rather than independently scrutinized. (“Counterpoint | Questions about Medicaid in Minnesota that should be asked and answered,” July 16.) Clearly in Minnesota, the Medicaid fiscal fox is in the chicken coop. Today, Minnesotans who pay state and federal taxes do not have accountability and scrutiny for our growing Medicaid spending.

Lee Beecher, Maple Grove

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Blue Cross Medicare Advantage has worked well for me and my late wife who accumulated nearly $2 million in gross claims over her last seven years of life on earth. We can’t allow a couple of bad actors to spoil a good thing here (“Justice Dept. probes UnitedHealth,” July 25). All the recent discoveries of various costly frauds (food, housing, Medicaid, Medicare, etc) finally uncovered in Minnesota, and likely going on throughout the nation, prove the need for far more effective oversight to root out these criminal activities.

The health care system needs to count on honest medical professionals putting patient best practices over profits and checking the coding of health insurers for accuracy. Patients and caregivers should be required to verify all the details of billings and report to Medicare and Medicaid with any suspicious variances. Inflating severity codes to enhance profits and enrich corporate officers and shareholders is criminally dishonest. Care never received is such an obvious fraud that must end!

In his long defense of the importance of Democratic Socialist ideas deserving ”a seat at the table” (as if it were a question of some debating society), Eric Harris Bernstein strangely, but tellingly, makes no mention of the Minneapolis City Council, where the democratic socialists of America wing is actually in power! (“Democratic socialists deserve a seat at the table,” July 24). One can certainly agree with him about the parlous state of our society, the many unmet needs and the failures of governance, but how have his team performed on the City Council, where they are part of the governing?

The outcomes are grim: unruly, disruptive meetings, obstructing Mayor Jacob Frey and Chief of Police Brian O’Hara at every turn, preferring sloganeering and blaming to actually working collaboratively with all the stakeholders to achieve real results for the city. Their crowning legacy is the failure to resolve the future of George Floyd Square and the third precinct headquarters and making our DFL city a perfect punching bag for MAGA. It’s enough to make one hope that Minneapolis voters will ”throw the bums out” in the next election!

As for mayoral candidate Omar Fateh, his ethical lapses (e.g., defending the Feeding Our Future fraudsters up till their indictment); his position of “defunding the police” while parts of Minneapolis burned, and most recently, his unconscionable fanning the flames of ICE misinformation about the federal drug raid on Lake Street and attacking Chief O’Hara’s decision to intervene to prevent civil disorder (which might have led to President Donald Trump sending in federal troops, as he was doing in Los Angeles) all make him unfit to be mayor. I see no one in the DSA wing remotely capable of filling the shoes of true public servants and leaders like the deeply mourned Melissa Hortman and Kari Dziedzic.

George Muellner, Plymouth

I was alarmed by the rhetoric used by a recent letter writer. He wrote that Omar Fateh’s DFL endorsement over Jacob Frey was a good thing because, “Frey and his allies have run this city for landlords, developers and the police.” (“Readers Write,” July 25).

I’d encourage the letter writer to read about Mao’s Land Reform Campaign and Stalin’s liquidation of the Kulaks. Some might say that these comparisons are hyperbolic, but the ideology that led to these tragedies and the millions of dead landlords, wealthy peasants, and other “class enemies” in China and the Soviet Union is the same ideology guiding the thinking of the letter writer.

If we vilify landlords with resentful rhetoric and harmful policies such as rent control (which has been a disaster everywhere it’s been tried), we will only see the further increase of corporate, large-scale rental companies that don’t have a vested interest in our communities.