To the Editor:
Re “Schumer Defends Stance on Staving Off Shutdown” (news article, March 15):
Your article highlights the choice faced by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, regarding the stopgap spending bill to head off a government shutdown.
Vote against the continuing resolution and please the majority of your progressive coalition on Capitol Hill, even as Democrats are blamed for a shutdown; vote for it and prevent Donald Trump and Elon Musk from gaining absolute power during a governmental vacuum.
Senator Schumer did the right thing. The consequences of a shutdown would have transcended partisan politics, while the most vulnerable citizens (the ones Democrats profess to speak for) would have suffered the most. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have known better.
Robert Lockwood Mills
Sun City Center, Fla.
To the Editor:
After all his years on Capitol Hill, you would think that Senator Chuck Schumer would understand that you have leverage in a power struggle only if the other side believes you will use it.
The senator and his Democratic leadership abysmally failed that test with the vote on the budget continuing resolution.
President Trump, Elon Musk and the rest of the MAGA crowd now know that when the going gets tough, Mr. Schumer will pack it in.
The government remains open; Democratic influence in public affairs is diminished.
Robert S. Carroll
Staten Island
To the Editor:
Senator Chuck Schumer swallowed the bitter pill for all of us. We lose with the bill, but we lose bigger with a government shutdown.
Peggy Davis
Atlanta
To the Editor:
Senator Chuck Schumer’s action, in a nutshell, is why we Democrats are losing elections. When we don’t stand up against bullying, we really don’t stand for anything.
Gilson Riecken
San Antonio
To the Editor:
Re “Upstart Democrats’ Anger Rises Over Old Guard’s Grip on Party” (front page, March 16):
I sympathize with that anger and agree that we need new blood in Congress and in our state legislatures. We also need new goals.
I don’t want to go back to where we were under Joe Biden or Barack Obama — when we thought the power of billionaires was under some control, when we thought we were confronting climate change, homelessness and the myriad problems now threatening to overwhelm us because so many of our representatives have given up.
Our democracy can be renewed only with a commitment to a more radical agenda that demands decent housing and health care for all, demands clean air and water, and demands an electoral system in which each vote counts and there are no gerrymandered districts. One in which, yes, polluters pay and billionaires too pay their fair share.
Pat Rathbone
Watertown, Mass.
To the Editor:
It’s not just young Democrats who are losing faith in politicians afraid to take risks. I’m 78 years old, and I spent many hours last week spreading the word to my list of political allies (most over 70), urging them to call their senators about the vote on the spending bill.
I’m betting that thousands of us — who have been protesting, gathering signatures, marching and yes, voting, since the ’60s — called Senator Chuck Schumer and demanded that he vote “no.”
And, yes: Despite the reference in your article, we do know what a podcast is. Many of us even create them.
Liza Ketchum
Watertown, Mass.
A Trump Threat to Law Firms
To the Editor:
Re “Out for Revenge, Trump Chills Law Firms and the People They Defend” (news analysis, March 14):
The executive order punishing law firms for representing presidentially disapproved clients threatens a core value of our legal system: assuring the availability of professional service to all.
This is easy to see in the case of highly unpopular clients (the rapist, the serial killer), where conflating client and lawyer can make lawyers reluctant to provide even constitutionally required professional services out of fear that the lawyer’s other clients will take their business elsewhere.
We should treat a lawyer’s choice of clients as we treat a doctor’s choice of patients — as a matter of professional judgment unaffected by the political views of the person being served.
William Andersen
Seattle
The writer is an emeritus professor at the University of Washington Law School.
The Risk of TB
To the Editor:
Re “Amid Trump Freeze, Tuberculosis Is Posing Grave Threat in Africa” (news article, March 13):
This article vividly, accurately and alarmingly outlines the effect that the shortsighted action by the Trump administration will have on the African continent. One sentence needs to be emphasized: “If TB begins to spread unchecked, people throughout the world could become at risk.”
Much has been written about how the decimation of the United States Agency for International Development has tragically affected and will affect the patients and communities dependent on its support for their treatments and cures. But U.S.A.I.D., benevolent as it is (was), also has (had) a self-serving element, which is often forgotten or ignored.
Control of an airborne disease in high-incidence areas controls the airborne disease here at home. This was a tragic lesson from Covid! And it is not unreasonable to fear that the current lows in domestic TB and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis rates are in severe danger of reversing, fed by cases from high-incidence areas around the globe no longer aided by U.S.A.I.D. efforts.
Lee B. Reichman
Maplewood, N.J.
The writer is a retired professor of medicine and the founder and former executive director of the Global Tuberculosis Institute at Rutgers University. He is a co-author of “Timebomb: The Global Epidemic of Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis.”
Theaters in Peril
To the Editor:
I run a small theater company that relies on funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. For decades, the N.E.A. has sustained organizations like mine, ensuring that theater belongs to everyone — not just those with the means to fund it themselves. The N.E.A. has stood for artistic freedom. Today, it is being held hostage.
Under federal directives, the N.E.A. has imposed restrictions. Theaters may no longer have to disavow diversity, equity and inclusion in their mission statements, but their projects still do. Productions focusing on racial justice, transgender narratives or systemic critiques are not eligible.
Small theaters cannot afford to reject N.E.A. funding. But the largest theaters in America can. Institutions with multi-million-dollar budgets and major endowments have the power to take a stand. If even one refuses funding under these restrictions, it would send a powerful message: Public arts funding must serve the whole public.
Major theaters must act before April 7, the N.E.A. deadline for Grants for Arts Projects proposals.
History is watching.
Jeanmarie Simpson
Glendale, Ariz.
The writer is the founding artistic director of Arizona Theater Matters.
