Letters to the Editor | April 11, 2025

As a former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employee, I am appalled by the arbitrary firing of 27,950 dedicated federal employees nationwide. As reported in The Inquirer, HHS announced “that 10,000 of its 84,000 employees will be terminated.” They are being fired illegally, without cause, by unelected, billionaire “copresident” Elon Musk. Reducing fraud and waste in government are creditable objectives, but must be achieved legally.

Donald Trump rails about fraud and waste in government, but personally ignores it. He banned work from home for federal employees, and accused them of “playing golf during working hours.” However, Trump played golf 16 out of his first 31 days in office. After becoming president, he attended the Super Bowl. Thereafter, he took Air Force One to attend the Daytona 500 auto race. On March 22, Trump and Musk attended the NCAA Wrestling Championships in Philadelphia — all trips at taxpayer expense. For example, the trip to the Super Bowl cost taxpayers close to $1 million. There is essential travel the president must accomplish. Making the rounds at a football game, an automobile race, and a wrestling event at taxpayer expense is wasteful.

Ed Vreeswyk, retired, regional program manager, HHS Region 3, Philadelphia

The NFL plays games in snow, rain, sleet, extreme cold, and heat, and some players do get hurt under those conditions. But football hasn’t stopped. The NFL prides itself on how tough and smart its players are. Through hard work, the Eagles have perfected a play that is legal, but the Green Bay Packers are trying to ban it because they can’t stop it. The Eagles have a very big offensive line, do the Packers want to ban that? Jalen Hurts lifts weights for his strength, do the Packers want to ban that? The real problem of the play is the defensive linemen — they encroach every time the Eagles run the play. That’s what should be banned. It’s a regular football “quarterback sneak,” but the defenses make it look like a rugby play, not the Eagles. The Packers demonstrate weakness and incompetence because they don’t have a smart answer. It’s sad and not funny. Go Birds!

Ken Forman, King of Prussia

Yes, remember youths lost to gun violence, but not with balloon releases, which harm wildlife and the environment. There’s a gentler way. Bubbles rise gently and disappear without harm — like souls carried on the wind to heaven. These young people once laughed as little kids chasing bubbles, their joy pure and free. What better way to remember them? Let’s mourn them in a way that also cares for the world they left behind too soon. Let’s choose bubbles over balloons.

Rosamond Kay, Philadelphia, yakr47@aol.com

Donald Trump’s latest attack on lawyers and judges is proof he is intent on dismantling the checks and balances of the Constitution. After the capitulation of Congress, the only branch standing in his way is the judiciary. His method of destruction is to flood the system with illegal or unconstitutional executive orders that will overwhelm the courts. It is unconstitutional to cancel funding that has been authorized by Congress or to deny citizenship to people born in the United States. It is illegal to deport people without due process. He is planning on moving all of these cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he is counting on a sympathetic majority to give him what he wants. Then he will go after the remaining pockets of resistance: the press and protesters. If he can deport people without having to prove they have committed a crime, he can do the same thing to critics in the press or protesters on the streets. There is historical precedent for all of this. It will be repeated if we are afraid or too apathetic to speak up.

George Baughan, Chadds Ford

As someone who was raised in Montreal, it breaks my heart to hear Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney say his nation’s special relationship with America is “over” due largely to the unprovoked and punitive nature of the tariffs imposed by the current occupant of the Oval Office. Both anglophone and francophone Canadians cherish the tight bond between our nations, a relationship steeped in a common worldview and shared democratic traditions, multiethnic societies, geography, and, of course, hockey.

What nation will stand with us, whether through conflict or peace, when we abandon our closest neighbor and vital ally? How do we justify destroying our deep economic relationship that has fueled robust growth in both countries for generations? Will America and Canada continue decades of successful cooperation with security or migration issues affecting our shared border? What impact will retaliatory Canadian tariffs have on the American consumer? Severing these ties makes us more vulnerable and is deeply misguided. The president should reverse course, stop bullying Canada, and rethink the vital importance of this strategic relationship and others around the globe.

Anthony Arnaud, Laguna Niguel, Calif.

The Inquirer interview of art critic and author Blake Gopnik shows his lack of understanding of Albert Barnes, let alone any respect for private property. I did a great deal of research on Barnes before filing the case against his collection’s move and came to very different conclusions. For example, calling Barnes “incredibly stupid”? Barnes was self-made, given his important invention of Argyrol, an antibiotic compound widely used for infants at birth. Clearly, Barnes was eccentric. But who wouldn’t be, given Walter Annenberg’s jealously driven and persistent onslaught against him and his collection?

Barnes had a justifiable dislike for the local art establishment as being effete, snobbish, and uninterested in the vital core of art. As a reaction, he ceded control to Lincoln University, which ultimately proved to be his undoing, given Gov. Ed Rendell’s and Attorney General Mike Fisher’s ability to break the trust in return for an increase in state funding to Lincoln. As I said in the film Art of the Steal, the moral of the story is not to allow your art collection within 1,000 feet of a politician.

Gopnik said Barnes and Violette de Mazia are “everywhere in the sense that the presentation of the work is virtually unchanged.” However, much more was involved than how paintings were hung on a wall. The Barnes was legally constituted as an educational enterprise, not as a “museum,” as Gopnik calls it. Barnes and de Mazia’s first passion was education. Finally, Gopnik is quoted as saying, “I’m not a fan of paying too much attention to what very dead rich people want to do with their art.” However, stratospheric auction prices demonstrate that art is indeed coveted private property, which our laws are supposed to protect. In breaking the terms of the trust and allowing the move, Montgomery County Judge Stanley Ott legitimized an art heist of the greatest proportions.

Mark D. Schwartz is a Bryn Mawr-based lawyer who fought the Barnes Foundation move.

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