Trump’s tariffs

Re “Trump ripping up rules for trade” (April 1):

What a wonderful example of getting to the point in reporting. The sub-headline and first three paragraphs are all one needs to read. “For decades” what we have been doing doesn’t work. It’s a large contributor to our $37 trillion debt. How audacious that there is finally someone in charge that wants to stop this madness. Talk is cheap, action is expensive, sometimes you’ve got to bite the bullet and act.

— Patrick Crawford, Tustin

The Constitution

Congresswoman Friedman’s column March 30 complains about Trump and Musk “ignoring the balance of power that is the bedrock of this nation” by ignoring the Constitution as they try to shut down unnecessary programs or empty them of the bloated messes they contain. She refers to an amendment she has introduced that would make it impossible ever again to do anything to useless government programs, either shut them down, as Trump is doing, or clean out the wasted funding, as Musk is doing. That is a very scary idea. The majority of Americans are thankful for what is being done to simplify our government. Should her amendment ever pass, the government would become bloated again, with nothing to stop it until it would no longer function. Please keep an anxious eye on this suggested amendment and vote “no.”

— Arlline George, Reseda

The Signal chat

Debra Saunders wrote on March 30 “Jeff Goldberg isn’t the problem here” and correctly called out the incompetence and lack of understanding (or willful disregard) of classified information handling displayed by the Trump administration. Thank goodness Mr. Goldberg was looped in because it revealed what I believe is the worst long-term issue: the use of commercial messaging services that leave no records to conduct official government business. This practice is right out of the Project 2025 playbook and if I’m not mistaken, is a violation of federal law. Furthermore, these services are much more subject to hacking than are government servers raising the additional risk of revealing sensitive information to U.S. adversaries. More importantly, Congress needs to fully investigate the use of private networks by the administration with the goal of putting an end to it.

— Glenn Olsen, Riverside