Letters to the Editor: May 2, 2025

Skills and commitment

Based on my 23 years of experience working for the McMinnville School District, including 10 years as an elementary school principal, and now as an active volunteer, I want to encourage you to vote for Christine Bader in the May 20 school board election.

Christine was appointed unanimously to fill an open seat and began serving this past September. She is on the ballot to continue on the board.

Christine is a mom with kids in our middle school.

She has extensive business experience managing policies, budgets and projects. She currently teaches business at Linfield University, and coaches girls rugby at the high school.

McMinnville has a long-time history of school success. Christine has the skills and commitment it takes to achieve this again.

I appreciate her willingness to do the difficult work of supporting our students. Please join me in voting for Christine Bader in the upcoming McMinnville School Board election.

Deborah Weiner

McMinnville

100 down, 1,260 to go

Under President Trump, the United States is beginning to look like a police state.

- Masked federal agents snatched a university student off the street and put her in prison pending deportation. Her crime? An opinion piece she wrote for a student newspaper.

- U.S. citizens are being deported without due process.

- Federal judges are being ignored.

- A county judge was arrested in her court while it was in session.

- The DOJ has authorized ICE to bust into houses without a warrant to arrest suspected illegal aliens.

- A wide-ranging attempt is being mounted to control what we read and think. Books are being removed from libraries, and schools with DEI content in their curriculum are being denied federal funds.

If it took only 100 days under Trump 2.0 to devolve from a constitutional democracy into a police state, I am fearful for the next 1,260 days.

Robert Mason

McMinnville

Art of the con

Con men lie for a living.

It’s an essential part of the job description. They prey on a mark’s weaknesses and predispositions to get him to believe what he sees with his own eyes is not actually happening and what he hears with his own ears is only true when it supports the con.

That’s the “art of the con,” and our president is exceptionally good at it. His core adherents believe every word he says with religious certainty, even when he contradicts himself or his assertions are easily disproven via video or the historical record.

The object of the current con is to discredit and disable our institutions, wreck our economy and sow enough chaos and confusion to enable a breathtaking transfer of wealth and power from ordinary citizens to the billionaire elites. As a result, government systems that protect ordinary citizens from predation are in the process of being defunded, depopulated and/or terminated to provide tax relief to billionaires who are already under-taxed.

People who understand this are — and rightly so — horrified by the damage it will cause to them, their families and society as a whole.

As institutions like the Veterans Administration and Social Security are shut down or privatized, their services will dwindle and costs for ordinary citizens will skyrocket as new profits flow to the usual suspects. As regulations are “relaxed,” our predators will have a field day with our environment, our financial systems, our markets, our schools, our labor laws, and our elections.

We need to keep our focus on elections. The mid-term may be our only chance to save ourselves, and the con man knows that.

He lost more than 60 court cases asserting fraud in the 2020 election, as voter fraud is part of the con. If we let him pick the voters in 2026, we are done for.

Bill Johnson

McMinnville