Jennifer Kiggans

White House UFC fight

This is the best that we can come up with as a country to celebrate our 250th birthday? A UFC fight at the White House with a weigh-in at the Lincoln Memorial? Apparently all of the security concerns President Donald Trump has about needing a ballroom are being tossed to the wind with this type of outdoor event.

The need to be the center of attention for his 80th birthday has nothing to do with celebrating the nation’s birthday. And, by the way, are we not still at war with Iran — or whatever we are calling this debacle to satisfy the president’s need to be macho and drop bombs somewhere?

One of these days we will have people in power who can bring a return to common sense, a desire to preserve our democracy, and attention to the business of being a nation to promote the common good. That will warrant a real celebration.

Rosemarie S. Hughes, Ph.D., Virginia Beach

Big government

In late March, the U.S. Senate passed its bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security excluding ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. In a March 28 news release, U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans stated that this Senate DHS bill would be a return to failed border security policies which she could not support. At that point, I contacted Kiggans’ office regarding her months of talk about ending the DHS shutdown while not supporting the bill that all 100 senators voted in favor of. A month later I finally got a response. This response indicated that the congresswoman was looking forward to voting for the Senate bill that would completely fund DHS.

On April 30, the U.S House passed the Senate bill, with Kiggans’ support, that did not include funding for ICE and CBP. This is where things stand today. I don’t know what is more disturbing, that Kiggans apparently did not know what was in the Senate bill or that it took her more than a month to ultimately support this bipartisan bill.

Kiggans claims to be a small-government conservative but she sponsored the 287(g) Cooperation Bill, which is a clear intrusion by the federal government into an area of states’ rights and may not be consistent with the needs and resources of local communities. Kiggans continues to vote for additional government spending as the national debt now exceeds the nation’s GDP and continues to grow unabated. Virginia’s 2nd District deserves better.

Thomas Banford, Chesapeake

First Amendment

President Donald Trump has claimed that merely reporting on his health — an accepted mainstay of presidential coverage — is “treasonous,” a judgment he has also delivered against any number of reporters and elected officials who have disagreed with or criticized his views, statements or positions.

Thus anyone who criticizes the president, the administration or the state would be considered a traitor.

This is not simply authoritarian, but totalitarian — an attempt to prevent citizens from speaking or even thinking anything contrary to the state’s approved narrative and dogma. This is the photo-negative opposite of the First Amendment freedoms of speech and expression that have defined America for the past two and a half centuries, and which we have always claimed have been the foundation of what makes this nation great.

Yet many of the president’s supporters, who are absolutists on the Second Amendment — constantly repeating “shall not be infringed” whenever any new gun legislation is proposed — are far less so on the First. Some of them seem not to care whether it exists at all.

When the president openly threatens to treat the exercise of the First Amendment as treason and sedition, his supporters are gung-ho for his doing exactly that. How many other amendments would they shrug off?

John M. Aguiar, Virginia Beach