To the editor,

The Trump administration is busy on multiple fronts undoing legislation that has kept Americans safer and healthier for the last half-century. The mainstream media has largely failed to put the pieces together to give us a comprehensive picture of the changes now underway.  Citizens need to see the bigger picture of what our government is doing.

The administration’s attacks on public health and safety are dizzyingly numerous. Consider these:

—Freezing funding for research on cancer and other deadly diseases. Thanks to well-funded medical research, cancer mortality rates have dropped by a third in the past 34 years. This life-saving research has been rightly supported by both parties. Why would we want to turn back now from the progress we’ve made?

—Withdrawing funding from a national 988 suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ kids. Since its inception in 2022, this hotline has served over 1.3 million callers. Last February alone 2,100 youth in crisis used the hotline per day. What cruel disregard motivates yanking away such a vital lifeline?

—Among the most revolting displays of governmental callousness is the recent decision to incinerate 500 metric tons of food earmarked for children through the US Agency for International Development. This food, purchased from American farmers for around $800,000, will cost taxpayers an additional $130,000 to burn. These high-nutrition biscuits warehoused in Dubai could feed starving children in war-ravaged places like Gaza. Instead our leaders choose to wantonly destroy enough food to feed 1.5 million undernourished children for a week.

These and many other recent actions add up to a government indifferent to human life and well-being, intent only on its own enrichment and power. The ancient Chinese sage Sun Tzu observed, “An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.”

Is that where we are now?  I hope that some global organization is tracking the probable deaths resulting from the present administration’s anti-life policies, because if Trump and his sick-souled enablers have their way, the numbers will likely be of holocaust proportions.

Thomas R. Smith

River Falls