Letters to the Editor | Aug. 15, 2025

Defending a people’s freedom against an evil invader is why we sent young Americans to fight in two world wars as a way to make the entire planet safe for democracy. That we are not defending Ukraine with the full force of our weapons is a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in those conflicts. Our weapons are not built in China. They are built in America. The money spent by our government defending Ukraine is spent in America. Making deals with a dictator and rewarding his aggression is against everything our nation stands for.

Thomas Taft, Chalfont

The United States is sending an empty suit to negotiate with Vladimir Putin at the Alaska summit. The dictionary defines empty suit as “a slang term for an ineffective, incompetent, or superficial person in a position of authority, who lacks the substance, skills, or genuine leadership qualities to perform their role effectively.” That is Donald Trump.

Trump will be negotiating with a crafty, manipulative, and shrewd Putin, who knows Trump cold, who knows which buttons to push, and who could outmaneuver our president in his sleep.

Putin will convince Trump to pressure Ukraine to accept the unacceptable. When Ukraine refuses, Putin will then convince Trump to actually blame Ukraine for refusing to accept Putin’s “generous offer.”

Trump will then pull any aid whatsoever from Ukraine (instead of dramatically increasing aid, which would put more pressure on Putin) — proving that our president is indeed out of his depth, and lacks any sense of the magnitude of the stakes involved. Trump will have no clue he has been completely humiliated (because none of his aides have the courage to tell him that directly to his face). And the suffering, bloodshed, and death in Ukraine will continue.

Avi Winokur, Haddonfield

When Vladimir Putin shows up for the Alaska summit on Friday, why can’t he be served with the outstanding warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court? Are we, as a nation with a commitment to pursuing justice, not obligated to have this warrant served when he lands?

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023, alleging that he and another Russian official are responsible for unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Putin has not been tried or found guilty of international crimes, but the allegations here are so serious that he must be brought before the court to answer them.

Martin Mikelberg, Warminster

I remember Kent State in 1970, when four protesters were killed by National Guard members and nine other people were wounded. Colleges across the country were experiencing large teach-ins and protests of the war in Vietnam. On my campus in South Carolina, the National Guard was quickly called in, and students were no longer allowed to cross the campus in groups larger than six. There were evening curfews. We learned how quickly our freedoms of speech and assembly could be ripped away. Today, as many groups are planning large-scale protests in Washington, we see the preemptive response of our president. How quickly we forget.

John Kovach, Wallingford

Last month, I had the opportunity to go to Washington and lobby with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in support of reinstating refugee resettlement infrastructure. With all the news coming out of D.C. right now, it’s easy for stories to get lost, but readers of The Inquirer should remember that, on his first day in office, President Donald Trump put a complete stop to the admission of refugees into the United States, leaving people around the world stranded in airports and damaging our credibility globally.

I met with the offices of Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, and while Fetterman is taking this issue seriously, McCormick’s office does not seem interested in pressing the White House on this matter. Pennsylvania has a long history of providing a safe harbor for those who have nowhere else to go. From our founding by Quakers escaping religious persecution to our recent welcoming of Ukrainians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s aggression, people seeking refuge have always been a part of the commonwealth’s story. I hope Sen. McCormick will listen to his constituents and work with Sen. Fetterman to pressure the White House to end the cruel and un-American stance taken by the Trump administration toward refugees.

Lilly Austin, Philadelphia

President Donald Trump’s efforts to call out blue cities like Los Angeles and Washington for having high crime rates ring hollow when the facts show something different. The place with the highest murder rate per 100,000 people is actually St. Louis in deeply red Missouri. The rate in St. Louis (69 murders per 100,000 people) is roughly four times higher than in D.C. (about 17 murders per 100,000 people). It’s clear Trump is just trying to belittle Democrats as “soft” on crime and embarrass them with his own fantasy statistics.

PM Procacci, West Palm Beach, Fla.

Former Vice Adm. Joe Sestak, commenting on American leadership standing by while Israel starves the people of Gaza, says, “This failure on our part has serious national security implications for our future.”

Remember after the Bush administration failed to keep the nation safe on 9/11, and the politicians told us that terrorists “hate us for our freedoms”? It was a lie. What happened on 9/11 was the result of blowback from the American government’s policies toward the Middle East at the time.

Sestak is intimating future blowback when he says, “This failure on our part has serious national security implications for our future.”

President Donald Trump, on his golf outing in Scotland last month, said, “Nobody’s done anything great over there [the Gaza failure]. The whole place is a mess … I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.” This is what Vice Adm. Sestak means when he says, “Our most precious international coinage has been lost: Trust that we have the will to act to uphold our values.”

One other note: I recently watched the CNN series on the “Live Aid” concerts in Philadelphia and London in 1985, where musicians refused to stand idly by while starvation ravaged parts of Africa. I was saddened to realize that — faced with a similar crisis 40 years later — U.S. presidential leadership simply refuses to act.

Roy Lehman, Woolwich Township

Many members of the League of Women Voters serve as poll workers throughout Delaware County. They are cheering the efforts of the Delco Board of Elections to save taxpayer money while providing access to fair and secure voting. Having comparably sized precincts results in greater equity for all voters, who will find polls neither with long lines nor with workers twiddling their thumbs.

It’s high time we moved to have fair districts within our municipalities. These lines form the baselines for state and national redistricting. All politics is local, and precincts are the ideal places to help make democracy work.

Roberta Winters, president, League of Women Voters of Delaware County

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