U.S. cannot survive three more years of this

“These are the times that try men's souls........” wrote Thomas Paine in December 1776, during the darkest days of the nascent American Revolution. We are faced with a similar dark time today. The Founders did not envision that the other two co-equal branches of the government, Congress and the Supreme Court, would totally abdicate their constitutional responsibility to check the unlawful and unconstitutional excesses of a rogue executive.

Trump has trampled on the law and the Constitution in his second term in office. He has turned ICE into the Gestapo and unleashed it on mostly Democrat-led cities and states in a fallacious attempt to apprehend the “worst of the worst.” He has called the free press “the enemy of the people.” He denied he lost the 2020 election. He instigated an insurrection against the Congress meeting to certify Joe Biden's election. Then he pardoned the insurgents who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has unleased the Department of Justice on his political opponents and those that had prosecuted him in the past.

He eliminated the U.S. Aid for International Development under the hollow excuse of attacking “fraud, waste, and abuse.” This has led to the deaths of approximately 600,000 people, mostly children, worldwide. He has illegally imposed tariffs on our trusted trading partners. He has threatened to annex Greenland by force, thereby seriously compromising if not actually destroying the NATO alliance, under the pretext that Greenland is required for “national security.” Only in his fevered brain has that pretext any merit. The litany of his “crimes and misdemeanors” could fill this newspaper.

The Democrats must regain the House and the Senate in November, immediately begin impeachment proceedings and remove Trump from office. The republic will not survive another three years of this deranged despot.

Conrad Bertz

Palatine