Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., is running for the United States Senate. We support his positions on domestic issues. However, Chris Pappas must give more than lip service to humanitarian aid for Gaza. In his support of Netanyahu and the Israeli government, he has voted to pass the Israel Supplemental Appropriations Act multiple times. This amounts to billions of our tax dollars. Weapons from the US account for 75% of those being used by Israel.
In Gaza, more than 50,000 civilians have been killed. Over 90% of Gazans are displaced from their homes. People are starving and have no access to basic survival and medical needs. According to the Concord Monitor (Jan. 2025) the largest group of child amputees in modern history are now to be found there. And yet the Israeli attacks continue.
We cannot be complicit with these acts. Chris Pappas, as our elected leader, we look to you to do what’s right. Now is the time for you to stand up, stop US funding and hold Israel accountable.
Briane Pinkson, Ilsa Pinkson-Burke, Regina Barker, Susan Russo
Cornish and Plainfield
What are they afraid of?
“Be afraid, be very afraid.” This, from the 1970s movie “The Fly,” is what our GOP legislators have become — afraid to oppose any of Trump’s egregious assaults on our country’s common good.
Consider his retribution campaign, or slashing Medicaid from the vulnerable, or installing unqualified people to high positions. Imagine firing government workers who won’t do his bidding, or even dismantling entire departments, e.g. Education, in order to bring in more Trump yes-people who will do what he says. I mean, who supports these acts?
Lucky for us, Democrats oppose Trump’s onslaught, but our GOP legislators are too afraid of Trump’s power to step up. Let’s hope that former voters for Trump will now recognize what his promised wrecking ball is doing to us and our democracy, and vote these Republican legislators out ASAP, in 2026 or special elections before then.
Michael Whitman
Lyme
A real Republican
I appeal to Republicans to use Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (Republican from Maine) as a model of leadership. On June 1, 1950, Smith stood up in the Senate to make a short speech in response to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s denunciations and fear-mongering about the Communist threat.
In this context, Margaret Chase Smith stated that “I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” She continued, by presenting a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing principles of Americanism she hoped her party would adopt: The right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, and the right of independent thought. She ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques — techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
Republican Party leaders maintain that the federal government needs to be slashed, and their current determination is to obstruct rather than to negotiate, and to placate Trump to stay in power. We are witnessing this through cutting Medicaid $890 billion over next 10 years, SNAP by $230 billion, tax credit cuts for wind and solar power. Immigrants are blamed for “poisoning the blood of our country,” with Trump calling migrants “animals.” The increased funding for ICE, and the addition of 10,000 more ICE agents makes it the largest federal law enforcement agency in our history.
With these actions and Trump’s authoritarianism, we are closer to establishing a police state. My worry and fear is that our tendency to accept any “new normal” may turn out, ironically, to make us vulnerable as a species.
Bob Scobie
West Lebanon