
Letters: Trump is right — America is not always great. What if we give him a chance to fix it?
Yes, President Donald Trump (and others) are asking for changes, some of them needed, others that may seem odd. I do wish the Trump administration would focus immigration raids on deporting criminals.
Not everything in our country has gone right in the past 50 years.
We have grown complacent about giving our money to anyone who asks or appears to think they need something. I think accountability is a good thing; we need to know where our money is going and how it's going to be spent.
Not every research project at every college is worth researching — many are absurd and unnecessary. And I think funding institutions that are biased is wrong.
It would be nice if people saved their hatred and biases against the Trump administration until we see the results. I think most people will find that many or most of these changes are not bad and probably needed.
Kathleen McGrath Crabbe, San Francisco
Not based on facts
Regarding 'California's resistance to Trump: This could be our finest hour' (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, July 6): Joe Mathews describes President Donald Trump as a dictator, like Vladimir Putin. The irony must have escaped Mathews because he felt free to write a hypercritical column of Trump without fear of repercussions and the 'secret police.'
Somehow, millions showed up recently to protest at No Kings rallies and without Trump trying to intervene. Can anyone imagine Putin putting up with those protests?
Mathews further claims that Trump 'lawlessly seized control of our California National Guard,' yet there is a link to a story about a federal appeals court ruling saying the president acted legally.
Another wild claim is that Trump is out to 'destroy our economy,' however, the linked story says nothing about specifically targeting California.
If Mathews believes resistance to Trump is a necessary noble cause for Californians, utilizing facts would work better than hyperbole.
Michael Singer, Santa Rosa
Universities fuel U.S.
Amidst the chaos of America, the Fourth of July was a difficult holiday this year. As a nation, we are moving away from shared values and the slow, but steady progress that have been pillars in my 37-year lifetime.
A glimmer of solace over the weekend was the American flags hanging from the cranes that are building UCSF's expanded Parnassus campus. Signs that, despite the darkness and the baseless attacks on American higher education, here in San Francisco and California, we recognize the power and opportunity of world-class research universities and medical innovation.
Our universities play a distinct role in generating economic growth, making future-altering discoveries and training the next generation of America's workforce and health care providers.
Brendan O'Callaghan, San Francisco
Deadly consequences
The death toll from flooding on the Guadalupe River in Texas is rising, and many girls are still missing from a Christian summer camp.
The linkages between greenhouse gas emissions, climate warming and extreme rainfall and flooding are well-established in the scientific literature.
Yet President Donald Trump has called climate change a 'hoax' and is dismantling former President Joe Biden's program to reduce emissions and has taken an axe to the agencies — the National Weather Service and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration — charged with tracking and modeling extreme weather events.
It is a bitter and tragic irony that many of the parents of those poor girls swept away in the flood are most likely ardent supporters of President Trump.
Robert Coats, Berkeley
Criticism is right
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Washington Post
9 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Democrats demand U.S. investigation of American's death in West Bank
Nearly 30 Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration to investigate the recent death of an American citizen in the West Bank. In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, the senators criticized what they labeled a 'culture of impunity when it comes to incidents where civilians have been killed in the West Bank, including Americans.' Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, 20, of Tampa, was killed July 11 while visiting family in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian health authorities and Musallet's family have said Israeli settlers are responsible for his death. Shortly after Musallet was killed, the Israel Defense Forces said it was examining reports of a death during a confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians in the area. Spokespeople for the Israeli embassy in Washington and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The State Department declined to comment. The senators' letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was signed by 29 lawmakers, accounting for more than half of the chamber's Democrats. No Republicans have joined the effort. Three other Palestinian Americans have died in the West Bank since the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023. Democratic members of Congress have objected to the wave of settler violence, arguing that American citizens are falling victim. The U.S. government 'has failed in its responsibility to protect American citizens overseas and demand justice for their deaths,' the letter states. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the letter's lead author, has called for similar investigations in the past. He has emerged as a vocal critic of settler violence and the Israeli government's response to it. His office shared responses to similar requests made of the Biden administration, which show officials offered little further information about the deaths but committed to speaking with Israel's government about them. At a Senate hearing earlier this month to evaluate President Donald Trump's nomination of Michael Waltz, the former White House national security adviser, to become ambassador to the United Nations, Van Hollen criticized the Trump administration's decision to revoke sanctions imposed by the Biden administration targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank whom the U.S. government at the time deemed extremists. 'When you withdrew that executive order, you sent a very bad signal,' Van Hollen said then. An April analysis by the Washington Institute, a think tank, found that Israeli settler violence has surged in the last year, rising 30 percent in the first part of the year, compared with the same period the year before. Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorism in the same area has sharply declined, the analysis found. 'The increase in settler violence at a time when Palestinian terrorism is decreasing lends credence to the assessment that settler attacks are not simply a response to terrorism, as some have claimed,' the study's author, Neomi Neumann, wrote. The Trump administration has taken a complicated approach to Israel since entering office in January. At times, it has shown frustration with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu for the inability to reach a peace deal in Gaza, which has been afflicted by violence and famine nearly two years into the war. Notwithstanding, top Israeli officials have visited Washington multiple times in the last six months, and Trump authorized the U.S. military to join Israeli forces in an attack on Iran's nuclear program in mid-June, fulfilling one of Netanyahu's core priorities. Heidi Levine, Miriam Berger and Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.


Chicago Tribune
10 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Donald Trump's onetime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is well-known — and also documented in records
WASHINGTON — The revelation that Attorney General Pam Bondi told President Donald Trump that his name was in the Jeffrey Epstein files has focused fresh attention on the president's relationship with the wealthy financier and the Justice Department's announcement this month that it would not be releasing any additional documents from the case. But at least some of the information in the briefing to Trump, which The Wall Street Journal said took place in May, should not have been a surprise. The president's association with Epstein is well-established and his name was included in records that his own Justice Department released back in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone's name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise. Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent friends in political and celebrity circles besides Trump. It should have been no shock to Trump that his name would be found in records related to Epstein. The February document dump from the Justice Department included references to Trump in Epstein's phone book and his name was also mentioned in flight logs for Epstein's private plane. Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests. In January 2024, a court unsealed the final batch of a trove of documents that had been collected as evidence in a lawsuit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. Records made public also include 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted spending several hours with Epstein at Trump's Atlantic City casino but didn't say if she actually met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Trump has also said that he once thought Epstein was a 'terrific guy,' but that they later had a falling out. 'I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,' Trump said in 2019 when video footage unearthed by NBC News following Epstein's federal indictment showed the two chatting at a party at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in 1992, when the now president was newly divorced. 'He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling-out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years.' The Justice Department stunned conspiracy theorists, online sleuths and elements of Trump's base this month when it released a two-page letter saying that a so-called Epstein 'client list' that Bondi had once intimated was on her desk did not exist and that officials did not plan to release any additional documents from its investigation despite an earlier commitment to provide transparency. Justice Department will meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's imprisoned girlfriendWhether Bondi's briefing to Trump in May influenced that decision is unclear. The Justice Department did not comment directly on her meeting with Trump but Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a joint statement that a review of the Epstein files showed that there was nothing warranting further investigation or prosecution. 'As part of our routine briefing,' the statement said, 'we made the President aware of our findings.'


The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
Graham, Cornyn call for special counsel in Obama case
A pair of top Senate Republicans on Thursday called for a special counsel to be appointed to probe whether former President Obama aided an effort to undermine President Trump's 2016 White House bid. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) pressed for the appointment, saying they want answers about how Obama and his administration 'manipulated' matters in the hopes of a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 'For the good of the country, Senator @JohnCornyn and I urge Attorney General Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the U.S. national security apparatus for a political outcome,' Graham posted on his X feed. The call came a day after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a new document casting doubts on Russian President Vladimir Putin's desire to aid Trump in the contest, though it backed up the argument that Russia wanted to interfere in the election writ large. The document was part of a House Intelligence Committee report stemming from when Republicans controlled the chamber and was classified until Gabbard released it. Although it does not dispute that Moscow interfered in the election, it sheds light on the Obama administration's handling of Russia's activity at the time. It was the second recent disclosure by Gabbard seeking to discredit the Obama administration. Last week, she released a report alleging Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence related to Russian interference in the 2016 election and accused former officials of engaging in a 'treasonous conspiracy.' A number of intelligence reviews determined that the Russians sought to influence the 2016 contest and that Putin wanted Trump to emerge victorious. 'As we have supported in the past, appointing an independent special counsel would do the country a tremendous service in this case,' Cornyn said in a statement. 'With every piece of information that gets released, it becomes more evident that the entire Russia collusion hoax was created by the Obama Administration to subvert the will of the American people.' 'Democrats and the liberal media have been out to get President Trump since 2016,' he continued. 'There must be an immediate investigation of what we believe to be an unprecedented and clear abuse of power by a U.S. presidential administration.' An Obama spokesperson issued a rare rebuke of Trump's claim that the ex-president committed 'treason,' and noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 backed that the Russians attempted to sway votes but were not successful. The committee at the time also backed up the work of the intelligence community during that stretch. That panel was chaired by then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who now leads the State Department. 'Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,' said Patrick Rodenbush, an Obama spokesperson. 'These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.' The administration has released the documents as it tries to pivot away from Jeffrey Epstein while lawmakers issue subpoenas in search of answers on the case.