To the Editor:

In last week’s Enterprise, I was quoted as saying “a combination of anger and terror” motivated me to join the demonstrators at the corner of Main and Maple on Thursday, April 24. I’m writing to give some examples of the things that make me angry and terrified.

I am infuriated at the heartlessness of the drastic cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, which has provided international humanitarian assistance for 60 years. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully announced that he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”

That agency, funded with less than 1 percent of the federal budget, provided vital food and medical aid for people in underdeveloped countries. Cutting off that food and medical assistance to millions of people in Africa will result in appalling numbers of preventable deaths, including the deaths of thousands of children from starvation.

I am angry that the United States Department of Agriculture funds to buy food from local farmers to supply food banks and school lunch programs have been cut, presumably so there will be money available for tax cuts for wealthy people.

As someone old enough to remember what things were like before the overwhelming bipartisan passage of environmental regulations and founding of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon administration, I am irate about this administration’s program of deregulating pollution controls of all kinds as the planet keeps getting hotter.

One does not have to be concerned about global warming to be concerned about the harmful effects of air pollution. Fine particles, particularly the ones small enough to get into human lungs, increase the rates of premature death in people with heart and lung disease, cause increased emergency-room visits for asthma attacks and nonfatal heart attacks, decrease lung function, and cause respiratory symptoms including coughing and difficulty breathing.

Nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide cause acid rain that makes lakes and groundwater acidic and can be fatal to fish, frogs, and salamanders as well as many trees and plants. Acid rain can cause damage to buildings and monuments and cause loss of detail on statues and tombstones.

I am dismayed by the drastic cuts in funding for scientific research and widespread layoffs across science funding agencies. These cuts will set back research in all fields of science, including studies on prevention and treatment of devastating diseases ranging from childhood cancer to Alzheimer’s.

The United States has long been a world leader in the areas of science and technology, but that leadership is going to be lost with these funding cuts. Many universities have had to stop accepting graduate students in the sciences and lay off faculty members since they do not have the funding to support them. Some American scientists are now looking for jobs elsewhere and are being welcomed in Europe and China.

I’m angry that President Trump could casually remark that Americans could feel “some pain,” from his tariffs. I’m sure he, his family, and his wealthy donors will not feel any pain.

I am both angry and frightened that our president is uncertain and unenthusiastic about rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on May 4, President Trump said that he didn’t know if citizens and non-citizens have the right to due process.

After being reminded that the Fifth Amendment says that all persons have the right to due process of law, he said, “It might say that.” When asked whether, as president, he needed to uphold the Constitution of the United States, he said, “I don’t know,” although he had solemnly sworn to do that when he took the Oath of Office at his inauguration on Jan. 20.

I am frightened by having a president who would rather be a king. In February, he posted a photo of himself dressed as a king on the White House X site. In his first 100 days, he signed 142 executive orders and only five bills passed by Congress, showing a strong preference for ruling by decree rather than following the procedure for passing laws that is set by the Constitution.

I am terrified that, besides dismantling many government agencies, Elon Musk’s DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] team has also gathered an enormous amount of personal information on residents of this country from dozens of federal databases and merged it, which is probably a violation of the Federal Privacy Act of 1974.

Kevin Bankston, a notable civil rights lawyer said, “This is what we have always been scared of. The infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism is there for an administration willing to break the law.” This personal information will make it easy for the government to find and arrest anyone who has offended the president.

I am terrified that people like Rumeysa Ozturk, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., are surrounded on the street by plainclothes immigration agents, taken away in unmarked vehicles, and transported to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention centers far from their homes without being charged with any crimes.

Ms. Ozturk's case is not unique. While President Trump said his massive deportation of undocumented immigrants would start by getting dangerous criminals out of the country, he has sent over 200 men with no criminal records to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without any due process or charges against them. He has also told the president of El Salvador that he’d like to send “homegrowns” there too, which would be a clearly unconstitutional act.

I could list many more issues that anger and terrify me, but I think I’ve made my concerns clear. All of the issues I’ve listed are covered in print journalism as well as radio and television news.

Last, but worst of all, I’m afraid that writing this letter could cause me to be taken off the street by masked agents and carried off to a detention center a thousand miles from my home with my family having no idea where I am.

Edna Litten

Altamont