The Bangor Daily News on how a country that burns food for starving children is not great:

A country that is great does not burn food destined to starving people. It does not allow a president to unilaterally undo spending decisions made by Congress even as that Congress works on new budgets, that could also be disregarded. Its Supreme Court would not greenlight troubling presidential actions like shutting departments created and funded by Congress and the firing of thousands of federal employees without cause.

In a country that is great, the Department of Justice would not be demanding that states give it access to voter information and election systems, while the president and Republican Party continue to spread claims of voter fraud and stolen elections despite numerous investigations and court cases debunking such claims.

These events, pulled from recent headlines, would sure seem to indicate that the United States, once a beacon of freedom and democracy, has lost its way under President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative judges, three of them appointed by Trump.

Start with the burning of food. When the Trump administration ordered the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development — an agency that has helped save lives and spread democratic ideals around the world for a relatively small amount of U.S. money — millions of tons of food destined to places around the globe where people are literally starving was caught in limbo.

Rather than do the humane — and dare we say, Christian — thing and help the food reach needy recipients, the U.S. government has ordered the destruction of 500 metric tons of food destined for Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s enough food to feed 1.5 million children for a week, The Atlantic reported. The ... food, in the form of high-energy biscuits, was ordered by the Biden administration and had been stored in Dubai.

Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the House Appropriations Committee that the food would be distributed, a memo was instead sent to incinerate it, The Atlantic reported.

It will cost U.S. taxpayers $130,000 to destroy the biscuits. This is not only asinine, it is cruel. The Trump administration is wasting money rather than helping starving children, apparently to make a political point.

While already paid-for food aid is destroyed, Republican members of Congress this week gave the Trump administration permission to essentially unilaterally veto spending decisions that were made by Congress long ago, including cancelation of funding for public broadcasting, which will harm local emergency alert systems.

Weirdly, this rescission package — and a package of tax cuts, spending cuts and big spending increases on immigration enforcement and detentions that was passed earlier this month — was approved as lawmakers in the House and Senate are going through the motions of marking up budgets for the many federal agencies for the next year. Will those budgets also be disregarded by Trump? Will more Republican lawmakers care? ...

A White House that deliberately makes people suffer, that bullies and steamrolls Congress — no matter what the law and Constitution says — and a Supreme Court that enables such actions are sure signs that America has lost its way. We have lost our bearings as a country built on the ideals of freedom and equality and become a country beholden to the whims and power of one man, even if it means burning food destined for starving people.