Dear Editor,

Prior presidents have all proclaimed that they governed for ALL THE PEOPLE. Our current president openly acts to harm states that didn’t vote for him. The withholding of Medicaid funding from the blue states California and Minnesota demonstrates this animus.

Heather Cox Richardson discusses another. “Tony Romm and Brad Plumer of the New York Times  reported this afternoon that the Trump administration’s claim last October that it was cutting programs in order to protect taxpayers against waste was, in fact, a lie. In court filings, federal officials admitted that the $7.5 billion in cuts from clean energy projects begun under former president Joe Biden were ‘based solely’ on whether states had voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election... Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced the cuts saying, ‘Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.’” In fact, a government lawyer told the court that none of the cancellations were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

Note the terms “Green New SCAM funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” As if climate change is a left-wing scam. Climate change is real and accelerating. No one can deny the laws of physics. NPR reported this week that 10,000 had died from heat related causes in Europe in June alone. We see it in the steady ratcheting up of temperatures globally, certainly in our region where we are in a 20-year drought and heat domes are more frequent.

Other parts of the country experience flooding on a massive scale. The Colorado School of Mines released a study that concluded that our current drought was made 14 times more likely because of the climate change that Trump claims is a “hoax.”  

Richardson continues, “The admission (that the decision to impound is political) calls into question the administration’s claim that it is making cuts to combat waste, fraud, and abuse.” Vought is author of the Project 2025, the blueprint for restructuring government, and believes that many civil servants are part of a “deep state” that thwarts Trump’s agenda.  

The impoundment of $10 million that was allotted to Northern Minnesota for fuels reduction is another example.  The Washington Post on July 25 published the article, “We were shovel ready, a Minnesota forest hit by DOGE cuts is now ablaze.” 

One quote from the Post article states, “In 2024, as part of a $100 million initiative to tackle the nation’s wildfires, the Biden administration awarded the Superior National Forest — where about two dozen lightning-sparked fires have been burning since early July — $10 million for projects that would have removed decades of dead trees and undergrowth, creating breaks in potential fire fuel around critical corridors and remote homes. The funding would have also paid for fire prevention efforts along a key 36-mile gravel road known as the Echo Trail — months before the ongoing Sioux Fire jumped it, threatening residences.

But at the beginning of 2025, the U.S. DOGE Service paused or canceled federal grants and spending to review whether they were connected to diversity or climate initiatives.” Of course they were connected to climate initiatives. Biden’s heart was in the right place. Trump’s rationale for impounding? Malevolent retaliation.  

Rep. Angie Craig (MN), the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee stated, “Yet again, the Trump administration’s short-sighted cuts to federal programs have put Minnesotans in danger…Firefighters have died and Minnesota kids have been put in harm’s way — all because this administration decided to roll back critical wildfire prevention efforts. This is not a game. These are real lives.”  

The Post article states that while DOGE “was supposed to save money, the federal government and the state will be spending a lot more money to do the same work.  Fire crews are now thinning areas, specifically along the Echo Trail, to create defensible space and fire breaks, but they are doing it under emergency conditions … and that is the most expensive way to do this work imaginable.” 

This harms communities that rely on federal assistance for major projects they could otherwise not pull off themselves, which is what government is for. 

If you think Trump’s agenda is wrong, be sure to vote this November. I am not saying that Democrats are perfect, but they are guided by what is good for all Americans. All parties are addicted to money since the Roberts’ court overturned McCain/Feingold Campaign finance reform, Citizens United, and recently a new ruling giving more freedom for political action committees.

The full cost of the presidential election in 2000 was $1 billion.  In 2024 it cost $10 billion.  That’s the game, and all parties have to play. We need to get money out of politics, but in the meantime, we need to vote in November for the people who will govern for all Americans. 

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin County