In Response

Dear Editor:

I am writing this in response to Kathleen Stokes’ Letter to the Editor in the February 20 issues. Ms. Stokes, Republicans are not cutting off funding from children who are dying of hunger. Like any responsible person, we are looking through our finances with a fine-tooth comb and making sure we are funding what is absolutely necessary to our survival. USAID, like so many organizations run by the U.S. government, has become the unfortunate victim of bureaucratic corruption. To name a few of these ridiculous expenditures: $60 million to migrants in New York, over 1 billion on DEI initiatives around the world and here at home, and even funding a sesame street show for the Middle East. Does this all sound like reasonable spending to you? This money should be going to starving children, to humanitarian causes, but where is your outrage over that?

Republicans, namely Donald Trump, pardoned people who were mostly convicted of minor trespassing charges (misdemeanor offenses). Calling them all “convicted felons” and saying that these 1,600 unarmed individuals (many with families themselves) somehow make highly trained and armed FBI agents/Capitol Police afraid for their lives doesn’t really add up. While I do agree that it should not have been a blanket pardon (about 100 were convicted on violent felony offenses), labeling everyone who was there with the same pejorative is not constructive to the debate (it’s actually a common propaganda tactic known as name-calling or stereotyping). I have not seen these J6ers threaten retaliation either, so where does this claim stem from?

The only institutions being dismantled are the ones driving up the debt and doing no real good for any of us, Democrat or Republican alike. If funding a transgender opera in a foreign country is “necessary” to America, or even funding a queer comic book in Guatemala, then I don’t believe you are taking this matter seriously. We also do not have an obligation to the world, especially when it comes at the price of neglecting our own citizens in the process. Republicans are not solely responsible for the chaos in our country and around the world. Democrats also had a hand in creating it, but it is also the Democrats who are ignoring it. The American people have more faith in Republicans currently because they, as a party, are at least willing to address issues the American people see as vital and try to fix them.

More Americans, especially Republicans in NY, came out to vote than ever before. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “More than 155 million Americans voted in 2024…That’s the second largest voter turnout in U.S. history.” Eighty-nine million people did not cast a vote because, since this is a free country, they are not obligated to choose between either candidate or even vote at all. Voting is a privilege, and you can be a Democrat, Independent, Republican, etc., but at least have common sense when you vote! To say your party is the only compassionate one while you begrudge other people for who they are tells me that compassion does not lie within the Democratic Party. Democrats are not more united than ever as, according to Gallup,

they are split between the 45% who want the party to be more moderate and the 51% who want the party to stay on course/become more liberal. That does not sound unified to me.

Katie Larkin