Letters to the Editor | Sept. 1, 2026
Inquirer readers on renaming an aircraft carrier after Donald Trump, ICE arrests break records, and remembering Barack Obama on the mall.
Hero betrayed
Doris Miller was a sailor serving aboard the battleship USS West Virginia in World War II. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, his ship was bombed and strafed with enemy gunfire. He disregarded his own safety and carried his mortally wounded captain to a safer location. Returning to his ship, although untrained, he operated a .50 caliber Browning anti-aircraft gun. Miller successfully shot down several enemy planes until he ran out of ammunition and was ordered to abandon ship.
Fast-forward to today. We have a U.S. president who avoided any type of service in our military due to bone spurs. This commander in chief wants to take the naming of an aircraft carrier away from Miller, a bona fide war hero, and put his own name on the ship. Outrageous, despicable, and scandalous! Every combat veteran, everyone who served in the military, and every American should be sickened by the very thought. Let me ask you, in a moment of extreme distress, who would you want to have your back: Doris Miller or Donald Trump?
William D. Markert Jr., Vietnam veteran, Warminster
Mission creep
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is back in the news with its record-breaking July arrest total of nearly 50,000. Most arrests were made in Texas and Florida, largely due to financial incentives offered to cooperating local police departments. An arrest of a Haitian immigrant in Key West, Fla., who was seeking asylum due to death threats in his country of origin is particularly concerning. According to The Inquirer, the restaurant owner, who employed the Haitian as a cook and supervisor, claimed: “He was an excellent worker, he learned very fast, he never had any problem with the law …. He was a nice kid; he was a family man.” I wonder if any ICE agents who responded to the ad that ICE would rid our nation of the “worst of the worst” are getting second thoughts about their mission?
John Groch, West Chester
Memorable footnote
As Donald Trump attempts to whitewash history by rewriting the story of George Washington’s house on Independence Mall, a significant footnote has been widely overlooked. On Friday evening, April 18, 2008, five days before the Pennsylvania primary, a presidential candidate rose to speak from almost the exact site where enslaved people lived and served the nation’s first president. The young senator addressed an overflow crowd of more than 35,000. Barack Obama lost the primary five days later, but would go on to become the country’s 44th — and first Black — president.
Martha Jablow, Philadelphia
Grid collapse
Cuba’s national power grid has collapsed several times this year. Not a neighborhood, not a province — the whole island, all at once, over and over. Hospitals are rationing care. Ventilators are going quiet. Water pumps have stopped. In parts of the country, the outages exceed 20 hours at a stretch. This isn’t a natural disaster. It’s an oil blockade the Trump administration has enforced since January, letting a grand total of one tanker reach Cuban shores in seven months. Congress can end it. There is a privileged resolution sitting in the House right now, H.Con.Res.106, that would force a vote to stop these unauthorized hostilities. House Democratic leadership just has to schedule it. Will you tell your member of Congress to call for the vote?
Andrew Mills, Lower Gwynedd
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