Letters to the Editor | Aug. 17, 2025

While the term gerrymandering was coined in 1812 — it first appeared in a political cartoon in the Boston Gazette — its practice of manipulating voting districts to secure political power predates its namesake, Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

When Black men secured the right to vote after the Civil War, gerrymandering resulted in “long, stringy” representation maps in order to concentrate as many Black voters as possible into one area so that the remaining districts in a state would maintain a white majority.

This underhanded political trickery has reached a new low in the Republican-dominated Texas legislature. While poll taxes, voter literacy tests, and threats of lynchings have been banned by law, gerrymandering remains very much in play as an effective means of safeguarding disproportionate power for white, rural, nonimmigrant Republican elites.

Given the ease with which artificial intelligence can now be used strategically to create district maps that benefit one’s political party, real reform is needed. Will the federal courts intervene? Will the blue states’ Democratic-dominated legislatures respond in kind with their own redrawn voting districts? If neither the courts nor the Democrats confront the Texas Republicans, then we will see elected officials picking their voters rather than voters picking their elected officials.

James L. DeBoy, Lancaster

Humanitarian assistance programs providing nutritional support were “paused” so that the administration could uncover purported waste. Ultimately, 83% of programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development were terminated, without the administration demonstrating any evidence of waste. The act of “pausing” those programs created waste since work on building schools, drilling wells for water, or planting crops had to cease. All efforts invested in these projects are wasted since restarting them is unlikely.

Last month, the federal government destroyed 500 metric tons of food sitting in warehouses overseas that had been purchased from American farmers with taxpayer dollars to provide nutrition support. Likewise, nutritional supplements sitting in warehouses in the U.S. are being destroyed because they weren’t shipped to the people needing them, and they have expired.

When announcing the destruction of the food, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce implied that this was an insignificant amount of food. Ask the parent of a starving child if this food was insignificant.

While Secretary Marco Rubio claims no one has died from this lack of food, the facts show otherwise.

Carol Olivieri, Pennington

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