Letters to the editor
Remember sacrifices made by members of the military
Recently, the president of the United States spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He told a reporter that the U.S. didn’t need NATO allies during the war in Afghanistan. How does any parent feel who lost a son or daughter in that war with comments made by a president who never served a day in the military?
My father was a World War II veteran, and many times I asked him to write down where he was stationed and his duties. His response was this: “You never want to talk about what you went through or saw.”
Anyone who has served in the military should be given the utmost respect for a duty they have been called upon. This is very disturbing for remarks made about our allies, and we should all be concerned, especially the Congress and Senate who serve under this administration.
Speak up when something is wrong, especially for the lost lives who served so we can have our freedom.
Bonnie J. Rankin
Burgettstown
Beyond words
There is a quiet knowledge we carry from early life, learned before words, that the world will protect what is small.
When we stop seeing a vulnerable child’s need for love and safety, we lose that original trust. As children, each of us knew what it felt like to be vulnerable and to seek safety in the closeness of someone stronger. It happens quietly. Suffering turns abstract, and adult choices fall on the smallest shoulders.
We learn how to justify it to ourselves.
We tell ourselves someone else should have prevented it, so we don’t have to respond now.
It is like hearing a child cry in the next room and telling yourself someone else will answer.
Some adults were never guided to recognize that inner light. Others once recognized it and learned how to look beyond it. Without returning to what responsibility looks like in its purest form, we begin to make excuses. Doing the right thing starts to feel optional.
Most of us remember trusting that when danger appeared, adults would step in. That belief did not come from ideology. It grew from lived experience, from being fed, sheltered, guided, and defended. When children learn that protection is not guaranteed, the damage does not end in the moment. It follows them forward.
Every child, no matter where they live, belongs first to this single earth we share. Before borders are enforced or conflicts inherited, a child understands only connection. Their sentience is the same everywhere. They feel fear when violence erupts, grief when family is taken, confusion when safety disappears, and pain when their bodies or lives are altered by forces beyond their control. These truths do not change because of language, citizenship, or circumstance.
Ignoring a fearful, injured child is not restraint. It is abandonment. These children are not symbols, arguments, or abstractions. They are living human beings already in the world. What happens to them happens because adults decide what is acceptable to ignore. Long after debates fade and justifications are forgotten, what remains is simple and unalterable.
What is done to the smallest among us becomes the story we live with.
Lisa Scherer
Marianna
The chaos must end
The Trump administration may finally have gone too far.
Two citizens have now been killed by untrained, ruthless, vicious masked ICE agents who have been encouraged to act as government thugs as they possess absolute immunity for whatever they do.
They abduct people, they brandish their firearms to intimidate crowds, they smash vehicle windows with their targets inside, they drag people through the streets, they use battering rams to enter homes without a warrant or reasonable suspicion, and they spray non-violent protesters who get under their skin with tear gas and pepper spray. Many have likened the tactics of ICE to those of the Gestapo.
After each killing, the secretary of Homeland Security and the president demonize the dead and justify the actions of ICE agents who are never wrong, in their twisted view. The victims were terrorists, they tell us, they were there to kill the agents: knee-jerk assertions made with no evidence and no valid basis.
In a rarity, and fearing for their members’ re-election chances in the mid-term elections to take place later this year, many Republicans are speaking out against what has taken place, at the very least calling for an independent investigation of the killings which would include Minnesota state officials rather than a farce that would be an administration whitewash.
Should those who are here in violation of immigration law and who have committed a serious crime here be apprehended and deported? Certainly, but that is not what the Trump administration has done. The vast majority of those who have been targeted for removal have been law-abiding since they arrived.
May the chaos that has enveloped and so heavily and pointlessly damaged Minneapolis soon end, and may it not spring up in other blue areas in which the president seeks to impose chaos.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township
Support the Dignity Act
When a parent disappears from a household, children suffer – emotionally, academically, and financially. As a parent, teacher, and community member, I see these challenges in my faith community and in my home of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
We can support law enforcement while also supporting policies that keep law-abiding families stable. An earned, accountable process – paired with strong borders and workplace verification – reduces fear, exploitation, and instability.
I urge our leaders to support balanced reform like the Dignity Act. This is a bipartisan proposal that was introduced in July 2025, but has received very little acknowledgement since its introduction. Take some time to learn about this proposal and share the information with friends, family, and elected officials. We need this kind of thoughtful change now more than ever. We need a community where families can live openly, work legally, and keep investing in our shared future.
Mariaelena Amato
Canonsburg
One question
Donald J. Trump lurches from one daily insult, threat or crisis to the next. He requires enemies for his own existence, launching an endless blitz of lawsuits against individuals and corporations he believes have crossed him, using the courts as his personal arsenal.
He weaponizes tariffs as a routine bludgeon against all countries, friend or foe, saving only Putin’s Russia. His foreign policy blunders from Venezuela to Greenland soil our country’s standing throughout the world.
Trump, the self-described stable genius, states he is only limited by his morality and his mind. His self-glorification is on full view by his rebuilding of the West Wing of the White House, the rebranding of various buildings in his name, monuments in his honor yet to come, his image on a future one dollar coin and his wildly unrealistic claims of success in every conceivable area.
His few positive results are overwhelmed by his draconian statements and policies. His border policy has evolved into one of raids into our cities by an out-of-control ICE campaign of terror and shootings. Trump has cowered the Republican-controlled Congress into submission through the threat and usage of being primaried for daring to separate themselves from his policies.
His use of falsehoods, gaslighting or outright lies are continuous. Who knows which are his delusions, which he truly believes, and which are lies? Which of those in a president would be worse? I see three main reasons that caused a slim majority to vote to elect him: ignorance of the man’s true character, a suspension of morality with regard to Trump, or for personal gain. For them I have but one question: are you sick of him yet?
William Cooper
Amity
Just opposing Trump?
I applaud the Cal Thomas column in the Jan. 28 Observer-Reporter.
I would like to see Democrats and law-enforcement (ICE) obstructionists publicly asked a few simple questions: Why are you so in love with criminal illegal aliens? Why do you support murders, rapists and pedophiles who came here illegally remaining in this country? Or, are you just opposing the enforcement actions because it is a way to oppose Trump?” Hmmmm?
James A. Sanford
Eighty Four