Letters to the Editor | Feb. 5, 2026

With the midterm elections about eight months away, President Donald Trump is doing his damnedest to undermine the public’s faith in our electoral process. He used his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to tell the whole world the Big Lie about his winning the 2020 election. And now he is sending the FBI to Atlanta to look for evidence of fraud in the 2020 Georgia election.

But apparently, these tactics are not enough to reassure Trump of a Republican victory in 2026. He wants access to voter rolls in Atlanta and in Minneapolis, where the governor and mayor have refused his bribe: relief from the invasion of armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. We can only speculate on how the personal information contained in voter rolls might be used to manipulate voters.

So what can be done to protect the integrity of our elections? State election officials — Democrats and some Republicans — are taking steps to ensure election security. And we, as citizens, can help by encouraging our friends and neighbors to exercise their right to vote and by reporting to local election officials any interference with voters accessing the polls or casting their ballots.

Susan Reisbord, Philadelphia

I read the article headlined “Philly DA Larry Krasner says ‘don’t be a wimp’” after Gov. Josh Shapiro decried Mr. Krasner’s comparison of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Nazis, and am in agreement with Mr. Krasner. It is indeed appropriate to compare ICE agents to “Nazis.” There is ample historical precedent for this comparison. The protofascist Freikorps that were used by the government to suppress socialists and communists grew into the Sturmabteilung, or SA, which was the paramilitary force initially used by the NSDAP, or Nazi Party, to terrorize Jews, Roma, socialists, and others who opposed the party. What we see now in several largely Democratic cities under siege by ICE is highly reminiscent of what the Freikorps and SA did during the gradual loss of the nascent democracy that was Weimar-era Germany. Our governor and Sen. John Fetterman would do well to consider what my childhood rabbi, Joachim Prinz, stated in 1963, as mentioned in the article: “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.” They should be calling ICE for what it is: a fascist paramilitary force that operates outside the law.

David Toub, Wyncote

When the now-familiar photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being detained by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was published, it immediately brought to mind the iconic image taken in 1943 of a small boy — no more than 7 or 8 years old — with his arms raised in surrender as Nazi soldiers clear the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1943 uprising.

I see no reason to apologize to anyone for drawing that parallel — nor do I understand the outrage that accompanied Larry Krasner’s statement making the same comparison.

Mark Turetsky, Lower Gwynedd

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