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To the Editor:
Re “Trump Is Going Too Far in Amassing His Power, Most Voters in Poll Say” (front page, April 26):
The New York Times/Siena College poll on President Trump’s job performance is a powerful testament to his growing unpopularity — a statement of Americans’ overall disapproval of the president’s agenda and his conduct in virtually every category in the survey, notably his high-profile campaign issues regarding the economy, immigration and the structure of the federal government.
In general, voters seem to debunk the administration’s argument that this is what the country voted for.
Crucially, the survey shows the public’s high level of concern with Mr. Trump’s overreach in achieving his goals and, by inference, the threat his presidency poses to democracy.
The Times/Siena poll, which gives Mr. Trump a current low approval of 42 percent at a time in his term when his predecessors uniformly did better, is revealing for what voters now say about the key issues he ran on in the last election — all of which are polling badly for him and constitute a clear warning.
Mr. Trump may well be undaunted by such an across-the-board rebuke of his performance thus far. But his low approval on all high-profile policy issues and voters’ rejection of the extreme and unprecedented lengths he is determined to go to in order to execute them offer a reassuring glimmer of hope for a country craving to get its democracy back.
Roger Hirschberg
South Burlington, Vt.
To the Editor:
A major theme of the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term has been the elimination of waste, fraud, abuse and inefficiency in the federal government.
To accomplish this the president and his minions have wielded a sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel, at great cost to the staff and operations of the government and to the general public.
Americans have discovered that our government, which is not perfect, is also characterized by the traits of usefulness, honesty, care and effectiveness, rather than the Trump mantra.
I continue to be a registered, but embarrassed, Republican.
I keep repeating to myself that “this too shall pass.”
I only pray that these harmful policies and practices of the first 100 days can be corrected before it is too late and irreversible.
This can be done only when the Republican electorate wakes up and communicates to our Republican representatives that Trumpism is not what the Republican Party has ever stood for.
There was no electoral mandate for these wild rides.
William E. Herzog
Chicago
State Dept. Cuts
To the Editor:
Re “State Dept. Faces Plan for Big Cuts” (front page, April 21):
Documents circulating in the State Department include plans to eliminate support for democratization and human rights around the world and to remove embassies and consulates from dozens of sub-Saharan countries.
That would be a shame. Instead of diplomacy, the U.S. would intervene in Africa mainly for antiterrorism and the extraction of natural resources. This treats African people as irrelevant in their own countries and encourages warfare. Where diplomacy dies, force thrives.
Carolyn Martin Shaw
San Francisco
The writer is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was a Fulbright scholar in Zimbabwe, 1983-84.
To the Editor:
Re “Critics Say Foreign Policy Is Demoted in Rubio Plan” (news article, April 24):
It is very interesting to see that the sanctimonious war waged by the Trump administration against universities and other institutions in the name of fighting antisemitism was in fact the oily hypocrisy it appeared to be, for lo and behold, the State Department bureau responsible for combating antisemitism is one of those to be eliminated.
Judith Farris Bowman
Cambridge, Mass.
The End of a Conversation
To the Editor:
Re “All Good Conversations Come to an End,” by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens (The Conversation, April 29):
Dear Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens: We, liberals and conservatives alike, will all miss you both. I have a good friend on the other side of the political fence from me, and the one thing we can both agree on is the value of your conversation.
We both wish you luck with your books and hope that when finished, you can restore comity by resuming your conversation.
David Simpson
Rindge, N.H.
To the Editor:
Thanks to Gail Collins and Bret Stephens for their eight years of The Conversation. Their amiable take on point-counterpoint was a textbook example of disagreement with civility, reasoning without rancor — a paradigm lost in today’s partisan scrums.
Richard Dannay
New York
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