Growing food insecurity
Re: “Food banks fear politics will empty pantries,” Monday Opinion.
This was equally alarming and informative. Wilonsky reports that the North Texas Food Bank counts more than 1.3 million Dallas-Fort Worth residents who don’t know where their next meal will come from, increasing by 140,000 from 2024.
The crisis will worsen due to the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture’s cutting $1 billion worth of federal programs that allowed food banks and schools to buy from local farmers and ranchers. On top of that, $186 billion will be eliminated from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over the next decade, which Feeding America equates to 6 billion meals across the country.
The federal burden now will get pushed to states, many of which cannot or will not cover the deficit. Locally, the North Texas Food Bank lost $9 million due to the $1 billion directive. The elimination of another USDA program that allowed food banks to buy directly from the government will cost it $2 million more.
Almost daily we unearth the repercussions of decisions made by this administration — due process erosion, public service cuts, environmental rollbacks, and state and local government burdens.
I may be confused, but I wish someone in our current administration could clarify how these directives qualify as solutions to making America great again.
Paul Dreimiller, Plano
Government giveaways
Have government giveaway programs taken the pride away from men and women?
Seeing able-bodied men riffling through supplies at a food pantry is an embarrassment and may not be what the Good Book says about feeding the poor. Can this possibly be good for anybody?
Arriving early, smelling like a rose and taking any job may be more humane and biblical than what the government offers.
Don Skaggs, Garland
Simplest way to limit terms
Re: “Term limits would work,” by Henry Lessner, Monday Letters.
Our country already has a mechanism for replacing elected representatives. It’s called elections. While 154 million registered voters voted in the 2024 elections, 20 million registered voters decided not to vote. In addition, 64 million people who were otherwise eligible to vote did not bother to even register. We don’t need another excuse for these 84 million people to abdicate their responsibility to choose the type of government they want to live under.
If you want a responsive government, elect candidates who will end partisan gerrymandering and all nongovernmental funding of political campaigns. This is your country. Take some personal responsibility for it.
Edson Schaus, Harlingen
The two-thirds problem
Like Henry Lessner, I, too, decry how Congress doesn’t do its duty for all Americans. I think he is correct in that term limits could help resolve the issue.
It would take an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to enact term limits, and that requires a two-thirds majority in Congress to approve an amendment and send it to the states for ratification, also by a two-thirds majority. I doubt any member of Congress would vote to do away with their job.
The other way to amend the Constitution is by two-thirds of the states convening a constitutional convention and voting on an amendment. However, that would take a tremendous amount of effort, and given the red-state, blue-state division in America today, it’s doubtful that could happen.
The Founding Fathers would have done us all a service if they had put term limits into the Constitution in the first place. I doubt they even considered career politicians back then. I’m convinced they thought people would be what I call citizen politicians, meaning someone would go to Congress one time to take care of the country’s business, then go back home. Someone else would go the next time and do the same thing, then go back home. Sadly, once someone gets elected to Congress, it seems they have a job for life, until they decide to retire. As we all know, lifetime tenure can breed complacency and laziness, not action and achievement.
Mike Kelley, Parrish, Fla.
Court went out of its way
Re: “Gloves came off, but justices were right — Court puts brakes on universal injunctions hitched to birthright citizenship,“ by Talmage Boston and George Chapman, Sunday Opinion.
There is a broad consensus in the legal community that President Donald Trump’s executive order denying the existence of birthright citizenship blatantly violates the plain language of the Constitution. The Supreme Court did not have to condone the use of nationwide injunctions to protect the country from the economic, administrative and social havoc that this executive order will cause.
The Trump administration brought this matter to the Supreme Court seeking emergency relief, openly urging the court not to reach the ultimate issue of whether Trump’s order violates the Constitution. The court could have simply declined this request on the basis that the government cannot seek emergency relief without addressing the issue of whether a constitutional violation was demonstrated.
Or it could have denied emergency relief on the grounds that the administration made no credible showing that it would suffer irreparable harm from having to challenge the injunction through the normal appeals process.
Instead, the court went out of its way to bar the use of nationwide injunctions to restrict even the most obviously unconstitutional and harmful executive actions. The criticism of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson for their dissents is cynical and undeserved.
Brent Rosenthal, Dallas/Lakewood
Do-it-yourself funding
Re: “From crisis to comeback,” July 13 news story.
Good for this youth theater program in Fort Worth. When forced to stop getting taxpayer money, Maroon 9 Community Enrichment Organization made the effort to ask the community and the world for help. Deserving programs will survive without taxpayer money.
Doug Caldwell, Plano