Letters to the Editor | Jan. 10, 2025

Donald Trump Jr. said on Fox News Tuesday that we give a lot of money to countries that hate our guts and hate our values. I am sure there are a lot of Canadians, Greenlanders, Danes, and Panamanians who hate our country and our values after President Donald Trump stated he would use economic force to make Canada a 51st state, and when questioned at a news conference, did not rule out using military force to take over Greenland (a territory of Denmark) or against Panama to take control of the Panama Canal. This is what Russian President Vladimir Putin would say. This is what Russia would do. This type of rhetoric, serious or not, turns allies into foes. This makes foreigners hate America. This turns allies toward Russia and China. This is not who we are as Americans.

Gerald Koren, Exton

Republicans, Democrats, independents, all, please look in the mirror, please ask yourself: Is this what I voted for? Is this how I envision the future of our country? Do we need to go to war with Canada, Denmark, Panama? Is it possible that an alliance between these entities could be formed that would benefit all while destroying nothing? We have far more to lose by sitting by and letting President Donald Trump trample our democracy only for his personal desire for power and wealth. We must find a restraining solution within our Constitution, within the bounds of our existing government, bounds that allow us to constrain the ability of this one man to take our country down some rabbit hole to darkness both literally and figuratively. Else we will be looking at a world that we neither voted for nor wanted. Please, listen, read, and most of all, think.

Philip A. Tegtmeier Sr., Honey Brook

The recent Inquirer story about LGBTQ people buying guns to protect themselves against possible attacks by MAGA adherents runs the risk of re-stigmatizing already ostracized minorities. Undoubtedly, some LGBTQ people are so fearful of personal attacks that they have taken up arms. But that’s a tiny piece of the story. The larger picture is that many people in these communities are traumatized by the rise of MAGA, and they are responding in different ways.

Some hope guns will protect them. Others are organizing to challenge public policy and rein in discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Some are fleeing conservative states to find freedom elsewhere. Young people who are considering coming out or transitioning may be reconsidering.

A story focused on this larger picture would have been a public service. Such a story would also have provided the opportunity to examine exactly what the threats are to sexual minorities and to explore to what extent they pose an actual danger. Do gays in 2025 America, no matter how conservative its politics, really have to worry about concentration camps? Despite its limited focus, the story fails to make its case even on the narrow topic of gun purchases. There is no hard data to support a statistically significant rise in gun ownership among LGBTQ people as compared with other groups in society. Instead, the story relies on casual estimates by groups that promote gun ownership among sexual minorities.

In short, there are better, less sensational ways The Inquirer might have shone a light on the very real fears confronting non-conforming sexual minorities as right-wing zealots take control of the presidency, various state legislatures, and some school boards.

Huntly Collins, Philadelphia

The writer is a former Inquirer staff writer.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the promise of independent nonprofit higher education in Pennsylvania in 2025. The state is on an upswing and benefiting from a stellar reputation as a magnet for talent — Pennsylvania is the second most popular destination in the nation for out-of-state freshmen college students, and two of three of those students move here to attend one of the state’s 85 independent nonprofit institutions of high learning, who are part of a group that I lead, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Pennsylvania.

Why are students choosing Pennsylvania over alternatives like Florida or California? The Wall Street Journal found that Pennsylvania is home to the third largest number of “best colleges” in the country according to “how well each college sets graduates up for financial success,” considering factors like salary after graduation and social mobility. That translates to a “brain gain” and “win-win” for all Pennsylvanians that adds to our talent pool, boosting industry and innovation.

While we’re told that college “costs keep going up,” the average net cost of a degree at one of Pennsylvania’s independent nonprofit schools has remained flat for a decade. Despite repeated claims that “college isn’t worth it,” a college education will be increasingly necessary in an AI-driven tomorrow. Roughly 72% of jobs in 2031 will require postsecondary education. And more low-income students in Pennsylvania are earning their degree at an independent nonprofit school than any public alternative — and they’re doing that with better chances of graduating on time, with overall less debt, and lower rates of default. Colleges serve as an anchor and engine to their community, and their education and training help Pennsylvania remain competitive in a changing world.

Thomas P. Foley, president, Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Pennsylvania

Columnist Will Bunch goes right to the heart of the American mythology that fuels our ongoing nightmare of violence. My generation grew up on World War II dramas and cowboy movies that sanitized battlefield heroism and the mid-street showdown, ignoring what used to be called shell shock and building a mythology of redemption behind a spray of bullets. The noisy carnage in our current entertainment steadily intensifies and clouds our understanding of the real violence perpetrated in our streets by both the bad guys and the good guys. When Trump blames the border and migrants, he means the boundary around the fantasy America he is selling and conjures villains whose black hats are foreign names. It is because of this simplistic, exploitative poison, and our ongoing embrace of our own fairy tales, that we voted him back into office. In the words of Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Joe Jones, Mount Holly

There is so much to comment about The Inquirer’s one-sided reporting on the war between Hamas (Gaza’s governing body) and Israel, but this reader will simply state that impartial reporting would require that all articles describing the devastation in Gaza begin with the following statements of fact: Had Hamas terrorists not attacked Israel and taken 250 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, there would not have been one Gazan citizen killed or one building destroyed in the territory of Gaza because of the war. Had Hamas returned the remaining hostages to Israel and surrendered at any time during the last 15 months, the war would be over.

I think these statements would be an appropriate insertion, given The Inquirer includes in its daily articles the casualty tallies reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. In a recent report, Andrew Fox, a fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a U.K.-based think tank, found widespread inaccuracies and distortions in the ministry’s data collection process, including “artificially increasing the numbers of women and children reported killed.”

Ed Grossman, Blue Bell

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