See, I am learning

Since the Trump administration seems unconcerned with national boundaries, I think this might be a good time to consider Minnesota becoming Canada’s 11th province. The State of Hockey joins the land of hockey. Similar accents and climate. I have long felt an affinity for our northern cousins.

Most of the oil and gas from Alberta transverses Minnesota by pipeline. If the U.S. objects we could just cut off the crude. Or maybe just cut it off, then demand secession. (See, I am learning.)

Canada is a better values fit for Minnesota anyway. They welcome immigrants. They don’t seem interested in persecuting trans people. Heck, they even have universal health.

Maybe we could be, “Minnetoba.”

— John Vaughn, Stillwater

After paying in all these years, yes, we are entitled

Rather than saying “Social Security” some government and quasi-government individuals tend refer to “entitlement programs” in an effort to obfuscate or misdirect public attention from precisely what it is, and what they are planning to change, gut or otherwise eviscerate.

But it needs to be rigidly understood, that indeed, those of us who have spent a lifetime of employment, paying through direct and employer contributions, roughly 15% of our income, into a trust fund, are truly entitled to these Social Security benefits.

It is not a Ponzi scheme. In fact, according to internet research, there is clever little “sleight of hand” by our government, since 1983, that allows the Treasury to “borrow” from the Social Security trust fund. So far $1.7 trillion dollars has been “borrowed” and replaced with what I assume is a substantial stack of IOUs.

You know in days of old when a profligate king found he had over-borrowed, it was far easier for him to get rid of the creditor than to satisfy his debt. Just so, I suspect today that this so-called cost cutting is an attempt to somehow avoid honoring those IOUs. Social Security is an ENTITLEMENT. Don’t mess with it.

— Bob Emery, Mendota Heights

Stand up for rule of law

Before 2010, when Cititzens United struck down caps on “independent” campaign contributions, I knew how to teach campaign finance to high school students. There were limits on campaign contributions. Those limits meant candidates built broad coalitions to get elected. Those limits protected against corruption. I retired in 2012.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) went after the Department of Education the first week in March. While not a surprise, this assault goes beyond schemes to use tax dollars for private and religious education. Funding for the Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences comes from Congress. The House of Representatives has constitutional authority for appropriations. Not an unelected billionaire.

The second week in March, DOGE targeted Social Security. Field offices, the workforce, and telephone services that 40% of elderly beneficiaries rely on came under attack. When Elon Musk failed to show up to testify, at a Ways and Means committee hearing, Connecticut Rep. John Larson was enraged. His righteous anger was for all Americans. For constituents who expect elected officials to do the work of the people, to honor the Constitution, and to abide by the rule of law. Stunned committee members sat silent as Larson lambasted the effort to gut Social Security as a precursor to privatization. Social Security is an entitlement duly authorized by the legislative branch. It is not the province of a predatory, unelected billionaire to put an end to an Act of Congress.

On March 16th, President Trump defied a court order to recall two planes bound for Venezuela with migrants being deported illegally. Joyce Vance wrote for The Contrarian, “We are inevitably headed to a confrontation between a president who has rejected the rule of law and a judge sworn to enforce it. We are in an exceedingly dangerous moment for democracy.”

My concern for public education and Social Security pales next to my concern for the rule of law. We must stand up to treasonous overreach and disregard for the rule of law.

— Nance Purcell, Stillwater The writer is a retired civics teacher.

Lessor of three evils

Ukraine should cut their losses and make a deal now. They have courageously fought against a more powerful nation, but they will not win a much-prolonged conflict. NATO is not willing to put troops on the ground, and NATO cannot fund an ongoing war indefinitely. The U.S. provides most of the NATO support, and Trump has promised to prevent forever wars. Without U.S. support, Russia would eventually take all of Ukraine.

Russia had previously taken Crimea and Georgia without much resistance from the West. It is unrealistic for Ukraine to take those areas back, and Russia now occupies land between these two areas. Ukraine will probably need to cede those areas to save the rest of their country by making a deal. Accepting the minerals deal with the U.S. would provide some security for Ukraine due to the joint venture.

It is difficult to cede anything to Russia, but without profound military action by NATO, Ukraine is left with few options. Continuing the war will cost more lives and put Ukraine in an even worse bargaining position.

So, America has three options: fund an ongoing war indefinitely, put U.S. troops on the ground to push Russia back to original borders, or broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine to end the war now. The deal is the lesser of three evils.

— Dennis A. Helander, White Bear Lake

Appeasement

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those are the famous words of George Santayana, a renowned Spanish philosopher. After the spectacle that we witnessed in the Oval Office this month between President Trump and President Zelensky those words take on a greater importance than ever.

It appears obvious that President Trump and most of the Republican Party either can’t remember or maybe never took the time to study history. When Hitler and the Nazis began to swallow up Europe the response from Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, was one of appeasement. The Munich Agreement of 1938, signed by Chamberlain, gave Germany permission to take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in an attempt to appease Hitler. Today President Trump’s appeasement plan gives Russia permission to take Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and other Ukrainian provinces in an attempt to appease Putin. Chamberlain’s appeasement led to WW II. Let’s hope Trump’s appeasement doesn’t lead to WW III.

— Dennis Fendt, Oakdale

Call me deranged, but …

Ah, thank you GOP for getting down to serious legislation by putting forth your recent bill about Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

As one who is afflicted with the syndrome, I’ll accept your definition, and here is the cause…

Watching people you know and love fall continually for a chronic liar, huckster, cheater, and grievance filled narcissist in the name of God and country … it really tests one’s mental acuity. Call me deranged but when a politician displays cruelty, callousness, revenge and arrogance, I really have a hard time acting “normal.”

I personally would tweak the definition of TDS to be “the acute onset of zealotry and adherence (of otherwise normal people) to the grievances and whims of Donald J. Trump. This creates an inability to distinguish between one’s own moral principles and those of a President whose petty impulses must be interpreted as serious policies to his ever subservient followers”

— Jeff Zupfer, St. Paul

No shortage after all?

I read the Minnesota Republicans in our state legislative body want to add TDS to definitions of types of mental illness. I thought we had a shortage of mental health caregivers, but apparently Republicans are physicians as well. Run for the hills folks, they drank the Kool-Aid.

— Martha Ruff, St. Paul

Give Trump a chance

As I read the Letters to the Editor from Sunday’s paper, I was surprised at how much hate there is in our community. Maybe the PP only published the negative letters to the editor, or maybe only “haters” sent in letters. I guess I can understand folks are upset with Donald Trump, Elon Musk and most all of government, but calm down. Give Trump the same time you gave Joe Biden, then let’s see where you’re at.

What I can’t understand though, is how tough everyone wants to be on teaching Russia a lesson. Rather than giving the Trump Administration a chance to find an acceptable resolution, people seem to accept a forceful resolution to Russia’s migration of parts of Ukraine, claiming Russia will not stop at Ukraine. That brings the question, whose children are you willing to risk life and limb to show Putin how to act? How many American lives are you willing to give?

I don’t want my grandkids over there fighting. And do you really think Putin will accept multiple nations sending their kids to fight? Do you believe, that if Putin is as terrible as you describe, and thousands of Russian soldiers are killed, will Ukraine be safe from a nuclear attack? Will he go even further? Give me a number of acceptable deaths you will be comfortable with that will be needed to teach Putin that lesson. Maybe you want to ruin Russia’s economy, will that make the Ukrainians safer?

Give Trump a chance.

Instead, focus on our homeland and pretend America is Ukraine, and other continents invaded our territory with 14 million migrants.

— Mike Miller, St. Paul

Short-handed

This administration has gutted its DOJ so badly that it can no longer effectively press nor defend against the hundreds of lawsuits flying back and forth. Listen to this beauty of an exchange: Judge Theodore Chuang (District of Maryland): “Why do we get a declaration, but there’s really no documentation of anything there?” Gardner (DOJ attorney): “We have about half the number of staff we had in November …” Chuang: “You’re saying that the Justice Department isn’t taking this case seriously?” Gardner: “It’s the opposite. I haven’t had a day off since January 20. We’re working day and night.”

— Regina Purins, St. Paul

Doing what the party wants

Tim Walz has been Minnesota governor since 2019. He has been elected twice with just over 50% of the vote. In the time as governor he certainly has been in the news often.

The George Floyd riots in the spring of 2020 gave the governor a chance to show strong leadership for Minnesota; many think it was his absence from leadership that extended the riots that brought him into the news cycle.

Covid — what a tough time to make decisions but the governor was present in most news coverage.

Take the 2023 legislative session where the Democrats held the governorship and both houses of the Legislature — the trifecta as it was called. In that session Minnesota had an $18 billion surplus and the governor and his Legislature spent it all and raised the biennial budget from $52 billion to $72 billion (a 38% increase). The governor said on the news that he was very proud of this session and its productivity.

Fraud in state government the past five years during the Walz administration has been in the news often with the Feeding our Future scandal leading the way, along with others, totaling almost a half billion dollars. The governor has come out in the press to say this has to be addressed. Kind of like close the barn door after the horse is out.

In 2024 the governor pursued nomination to run as VP; he got it and was in the national news constantly and absent from Minnesota for four months.

In 2025 the Minnesota legislative session was called to order and for the first three-plus weeks only the Republicans showed in the House of Representatives; thought the governor might show up to try to resolve the dispute that kept his party away from the Capitol, but I thought wrong.

Seems the governor is now taking his direction from new national Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, leaving the state and touring other states and visiting congressional districts where the seat is held by a Republican and promoting his party’s agenda.

I guess this is just the way politics is, once you are elected you do what the party wants and not pay much attention to the needs of people (all people) in your state or district.

I hope we elect a person governor who shows they are a leader focusing on Minnesota issues and not what their political party leaders dictate.

— Tom Troskey, St. Paul

I guess I am safe?

I read with horror that Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, Donald Trump or their proxies are removing Pentagon references to D.E.I. because they don’t believe in their importance. I was somehow drawn back to memories of the Taliban blowing up World Heritage Sites because some of those sites represented beliefs disparate from their own. But then I considered that, well, Hegseth and the others were not actually blowing things up but only “removing” images.

And of course they also are not prosecuting or “removing” me from my family, they are only threatening other persons with prosecution who have challenged their beliefs. So I guess I am safe?

— Kenneth Gilmore, Oakdale

‘Declaration of Conscience’

We need another Margaret Chase Smith. In the late 1940s to the mid 1950s there was a period referred to as the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism. During this time, Republican Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy rose to power. He presented himself as the only salvation against Communist infiltration and used the tactic of fear to maintain power. His M.O. was a rapid fire of accusations that a person was a Communist without evidence while shielding himself against reprisals due to Senate immunity.

The first person to take a stand against Sen. McCarthy was Maine Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith. On June 1, 1950, Sen. Smith took to the well of the Senate floor and gave a speech, “Declaration of Conscience.” Sen. McCarthy’s name was never used and was implied. Sen. Smith expressed her concern about a psychologically divided country, witch hunts that allowed multiple innocent people to be smeared, that we allowed ourselves to be tools of totalitarianism techniques of confuse, divide and conquer and the prevalence of fear, ignorance, bigotry, and sensationalism as innocent people were attacked and recipients of trial by accusation with no recourse.

Sen. Chase made a plea to recapture our unity and to promote the stalwarts of democracy: the right to protest, to hold unpopular beliefs, to criticize and right of independent thought. This speech was signed and concurred with by six other Republicans. Sen. Smith for four more years continued to speak up against McCarthy at great political risk. Finally in1954 the Senate censured Sen. McCarthy for improper conduct and he lost power and faded away.

Who will be our next Margaret Chase Smith?

— Geri Minton, Roseville

For the long haul

Thanks to the Prairie Island Indian Community for being a stalwart friend of Grey Cloud Island. They are guided by such noble values and are fully committed to the preservation of cultural treasures and natural spaces. Their wisdom and spirit of generosity inspire us. The Prairie Island Indian Community has never hesitated to help Grey Cloud Island, the smallest township in Minnesota, in our battle against Holcim, a multi-billion-dollar international company always seeking ways to extract more rock (a.k.a. blow the island to smithereens). Again and again, Holcim has tried to change our mining setbacks and blast closer to homes, despite the grave concern of residents.

Through it all, Prairie Island has been a voice of reason, contributing an historical perspective that far surpasses Holcim, who will one day complete their extractions, pack up and never return, leaving behind irreversible damage: a giant hole in our island. Our friendship with Prairie Island has been a lifeline. Specifically, we owe a debt of gratitude to Shelley Buck and Barry Hand for their kindness and camaraderie. We also applaud Tribal Council President Grant Johnson for his leadership.

Grey Cloud Island is a sacred site for the Prairie Island Indian Community. It is home to the largest concentration of burial mounds in Washington County. Prairie Island has been an invaluable resource as we strive to preserve these artifacts. They are our teachers and our friends.

— Ted Ries, Grey Cloud Island resident