Readers Write: Trump’s first 100 days

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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In the last 100 days, President Donald Trump has launched a full-frontal assault on the constitutional order. He has impounded funds appropriated by Congress, bypassed the judiciary by defying court orders and conducting summary renditions to foreign prisons and most recently appears to have deported several U.S. citizens. Taken as a whole, the Republican administration appears to be usurping the powers granted to the coequal branches and consolidating those powers within the executive, in contravention of not only the text of the Constitution but also the “small-r” republican values for which the party gets its namesake.

Trump is a line-crosser. This quality is partly what endears him to his base. As such, I harbor no illusions that the deportation of U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants is a red line for his core supporters. For many, such outcomes are seen as unfortunate but necessary collateral in fulfilling Trump’s promises of mass deportation.

But I urge every Trump supporter to ask: What is your red line? Is it the deportation of white, U.S.-born citizens whose ancestors immigrated centuries in the past? The use of militarized force against peaceful protesters? Economic hardship that no longer feels “temporary”?

Whatever it is, write it down. Revisit it. Hold yourself to it. And when the time comes — as it almost certainly will — be ready for the fact that those in power will not tell you when they’ve crossed your red line. Instead, they’ll distract, minimize, justify — they will insist that your red line hasn’t actually been crossed, or that crossing it was necessary for the good of the country.

That will be your test: not whether the administration admits it has gone too far, but whether you can still recognize that it has.

Marcus Peterson, Minneapolis

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Preya Samsundar’s little visit to fantasyland published the other day on Trump’s first 100 days (“Bumpy, but moving in the right direction,” Strib Voices, April 30) makes for amusing reading à la Jonathan Swift (“A Modest Proposal,” 1729). Marie Antoinette supposedly offered cake to the starving residents of France. We are offered “liberation” from a growing economy, world economic leadership, stability, security and competent leadership. Which direction is this, exactly?

George Hutchinson, Minneapolis

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Samsundar’s summary of Trump’s first 100 days taught us little. There were vacuous observations (Trump and Vice President JD Vance are happy with themselves); wishful thinking (maybe Trump’s tariffs will work somehow, someday); selective omissions (DOGE? Signalgate? Meme-coin grifts? Mistaken deportations?); and more.

Most absurd, perhaps: Samsundar’s claim that Trump voters all along expected short-term pain for long-term gain. Did Samsundar forget, or simply discount, Trump’s electioneering promises of lower prices, Ukraine peace and universal prosperity on Day 1?

Samsundar’s summary strikes me as exactly what one would expect from a “GOP consultant,” whatever that is. I would rather read a Republican-flavored view from one of Minnesota’s elected GOP representatives. Their silence is deafening.

Paul Zorn, Northfield, Minn.

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Always trying to get a balanced view on our current political world, I read Samsundar’s commentary hoping for another perspective. But alas, it was just the same thinly veiled regurgitation of the GOP party line with lots of misinformation and no proof of any of the accomplishments that the GOP claims have actually occurred. The saddest and most disturbing omission from her proclamations of “moving in the right direction” is the fact that her party’s “progress” includes a horrifying amount of cruelty against immigrants (adults and children), against foreigners here legally, against U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. Totally misplaced actions fueled by the basest behaviors of retribution, unchecked power and ignorance that are making our country a sniveling, crass and evil collection of humans — certainly not making us great! I suspect that Samsundar’s parents and grandparents, like mine, immigrated to this country. The arguments used centuries later to support the onerous actions and the legislation specifically targeted to my ancestors have not changed, but one would have hoped that we as a people and a country would have matured. Well, obviously not the current Republican Party.

L. Mauro, St. Paul

It’s been a long 100 days. Yesterday the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services news release on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days came out. Full disclosure: I have been an immigration lawyer with a nonprofit for several decades and according to the new leaders of USCIS, the only thing worse than attorneys and nonprofits are immigrants. Sorry — aliens. Because they aren’t really people — are they? They certainly not the workers that until recently powered our economy and rejuvenated our small towns. Not the refugees who, grateful for our sanctuary, became citizens and neighbors and friends. Not the fools for love who gave up their own lives to make new lives with their new spouses here.

Until 100 days ago, USCIS was the department that gave legal status and other benefits to people as required by law. It is staffed by people who take that duty very seriously. I know. They have annoyed me more than once with their attention to detail. But I have thousands of former clients who are ultimately grateful to them for their work.

The 100-day news release was full of “othering” and fearmongering and bragged about enforcement and arrests. That word “alien” was very liberally sprinkled about. I thought I had stumbled onto the Immigration and Customs Enforcement web page. There wasn’t a single nod to service part of their mission in the entire anti-immigrant diatribe. How are my hardworking colleagues and I at nonprofits around the state supposed to convince our clients that it is safe to reach out to that agency and offer up their most personal information? Of course it made me angry, but it saddened me as well, because I can put too many faces to the people they were villainizing.

Lenore Millibergity, Minneapolis

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The founders of our country believed that it was better to have a criminal loose on the streets than to have an innocent person in jail. That is why they crafted a judicial system that assumes innocence, puts the burden of proof on the prosecution, allows people to plead the fifth and a host of other provisions that tries to minimize the possibility of innocent people being jailed. The founders wanted guardrails (checks and balances?) in place to prevent passions or tyranny from making preventable errors. Is that principle a thing of the past?

Today you might be arrested and deported if your name is the same as someone on a watch list. A law firm can be destroyed if it represented a perceived enemy of the administration. A judge can be targeted for upholding the Constitution. A news organization can be punished for not changing a name on a map. An ally can have military aid frozen because it doesn’t hold the right cards. And a neighboring country can be threatened with annexation for no reason whatsoever.

Even people who support the stated goals of this administration should be appalled by its tactics.

Rolf Bolstad, Minneapolis

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Trump has often used the phrase “witch hunt” to try to undermine the reality of legal actions and moral outcries taken against him in the past, claiming gross unfairness and victimization. Now he and his administration are labeling deportees mostly as criminals and sexual predators without evidence and without due process. Isn’t this exactly what a witch hunt is? Exactly like the Salem, Massachusetts, witch hunt of history? Or should we eliminate that piece of history because it doesn’t align with presidential ideology?

Bruce Hermansen, Apple Valley