Pres.Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill squeaked through Congress, a purely partisan bill by Republicans pushing their MAGA agenda. This BBB affects every working family and those dependent on assistance in the US. As with any bill this large it contains good and bad aspects. In a devious move the bill gives the working family a 3yr tax cut while billionaires were given a permanent tax break!

A good perk was given by including the RECA Act, an act of compensation for nuclear workers by extending claims and the RECA Trust Fund. This would affect the people of Carlsbad working at the WIPP facility. It also increases the national debt, something we leave for our grandchildren to pay off. Fossil fuels also received, a perk to continue the pollution of our air, water and land, another gift we leave to our grandkids!

This Big Ugly Bill was timed to take affect after the mid term election. With the possibility of Republicans losing the Congress, the bill would be blamed on the new Democratic Congress with it’s draconian cuts to Medicaid, the poor, elderly and infirmed! A crafty move not usually seen by this administration!

Thank you,

Dan Dolt

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Tom Wright

Intelligent design is usually an expression attributed to creation – “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” God, the creator, created with intelligence. In today’s Democratic Party, intelligent design is missing in its platform. Democrats are adrift and divided, still arguing on why they lost the last election. If the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were composed of regular people, they would understand.

Progressives are running the national party and many state parties. They are the intelligent ones and we the people are subjects. If they really were intelligent, they would realize their losses are due to the voters’ reaction to a progressive agenda and the fact the DNC/Biden insiders chose a woman, Kamala Harris, who had never won a single presidential primary vote, never accomplished much as vice president, and ran a joy campaign full of giggles and void of policy. The “intelligent ones” thought they could hoodwink the voters into believing Trump was a fascist dictator. Even Democratic voters knew better.

At large, Democratic voters do not want centralized, micromanaged government, pushed by progressives. People want opportunity to succeed, without government dictates, like those that shackled and shuttered many businesses during the COVID years. Thank , Dr. Fauci and Governor MLG. Now that we survived and the COVID fear is mostly behind us, we still see people wearing masks in public, even driving alone. The COVID dictates may have induced progressive paranoia to some, but this type of control is what the current DNC leadership is unwilling to disown. To progressives, government and power are indistinguishable.

In New Mexico, this same progressive agenda is keeping us behind in child welfare, education, earning ability, and access to medical care. It has created a welfare mentality within the able-bodied population that keeps people underemployed so as to remain on Medicaid. Some workers even refuse to work, unless they are paid cash to keep them below the Medicaid threshold. Our Democratic, progressive politicians are blaming the Trump administration for Medicaid income adjustments for the able-bodied.

The former owner of the Rio Grande Sun recently wrote an editorial for the Albuquerque Journal where he pointed out how the good citizens of Rio Arriba County have continually elected politicians based on family and friendship and not qualifications. A past Rio Arriba patron, Emilio Naranjo, told a friend of mine, who complained about failing schools, “I don’t want educated people in my county.” Intelligent design? Maybe for the politician who wants the power.

What is happening within the New Mexico Democrats? The governor calls a special session on public safety and the Legislature opened and closed the same day, without considering her issues. Were they giving her a spanking for calling the special session? In the last regular session, healthcare reform was a major topic. Think New Mexico presented a well composed bill to lower the limits of liability for settlements to entice more healthcare workers to practice in the state and the Democrat majority let it die. The trial lawyers remain happy and the doctors stay away.

A Wall Street Journal poll showed democrat favorability has plunged to33%, which is a 35-year low. Democrat politicians have lost credibility. Just when you think Andrew Cuomo’s scandal-riddled career was over, he runs in New York City’s Mayoral Democrat primary and took a major beating by the Democrat rising star, Zohran Mamdani, a socialist, who has made antisemitic remarks. Some have even called him a communist, for his beliefs. He wants a $30 minimum wage in NYC, city owned grocery stores, with price controls.

AOC and Mamdani have campaigned together, against the old Democrat machine and they are winning votes. Has the Democrat Party lost its guide star? They seem to be unanchored and adrift toward Socialism, but I don’t believe America is socialist, but it seems to be where the power lies, for Democrats. It is the only agenda, beyond “resist Trump.” That doesn’t sound like intelligent design to me.

Tom Wright is a Santa Fe columnist and El Rito Media investor.

Mary Sanchez

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley couldn’t have known it at the time, but in one quick moment, he faced accusations that would soon echo worldwide. It’s a query that U.S. politicians best get their collective heads around or face dramatic humanitarian and political outcomes.

The world’s disdain has erupted over the starvation of Palestinian children in Gaza. And it’s unlikely to recede.

There’s no turning back from the widely available photos of babies with grotesquely protruding spines, twigs for limbs, being held by their grieving mothers, who are also malnourished.

International relief agencies are discussing when to label the situation a famine or a mass, forced starvation.

Increasingly, leaders like Hawley will be asked to take a stand and to sustain pressure on the Israeli government, which in recent days has begun what it terms a tactical pause to the fighting, allowing more aid into Gaza.

A tactical pause sounds pathetically inadequate.

Here’s what happened to Hawley:

The senator experienced a canary in the coalmine scenario, likely to be repeated. As Hawley sat for an interview, a protester rushed the stage during the July 23 Axios News Shapers forum.

Hawley calmly took a sip of water, ready to wait out the disruption. “Josh Hawley does not possibly care about people and the planet in this country because he is supporting the forced starvation of 2.2 million people,” the woman shouted, before being hustled away by security.

Hawley was then briefly guided off the stage as security teams dealt with that first, then a second protester.

Both protesters were later self-identified as part of CODEPINK, a feminist, grassroots social justice organization that has long demonstrated against the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.

Getting Hawley safely aside was smart protocol, wisely initiated by the Axios reporter who was interviewing him. The event was billed as a discussion on policy and the 2026 midterm elections.

Event planners can’t take chances these days. The near slaying of author Salman Rushdie in 2022 gruesomely taught that lesson. A deranged man had rushed the stage as the author spoke, slashing at Rushdie’s neck with a knife and severely wounding him in the face (Rushdie lost an eye as a result).

After the late July forum, Hawley later belittled the protesters on X, calling them “pro-Hamas CRAZIES and “nutcases.”

“I’m proud as ever to stand for America and our ally Israel,” he posted. He might not like CODEPINK’s tactics, but Hawley’s reply dodged the issue.

Gaza is man-made suffering, calibrated by the inability to find a resolution to the Israeli-Hamas conflict that continues to take Palestinian lives.

Time’s up for politicians and other leaders who have sheepishly opted out, or seemingly remain unbothered by the humanitarian costs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to eliminate Hamas through military force is failing. More than 55,000 Palestinians are dead, and many were civilians, not militants. Exact figures are difficult to verify, with many media relying on the Gaza Health Ministry.

Nearly 900 Israeli soldiers have also died since the retaliation began, after Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, primarily Israeli citizens on Oct 7, 2023.

Knowing right from wrong doesn’t require a nuanced understanding of the far-right influencers surrounding Netanyahu, or his calculations to protect himself in upcoming elections.

Complicity is choosing to remain silent, unmoved by the starvations.

The Israeli government needs to allow more aid to enter – yes, even without securing the release of the last 50 hostages who were taken on Oct. 7. About 20 are believed to be alive, no doubt enduring unimaginable fear and conditions.

Limiting the aid into Gaza has not brought their release. International aid and humanitarian agencies are all coming to the same conclusions.

Hamas has shunned the efforts of the Trump White House to broker a peace deal. Hamas is intent on letting Palestinians die of malnutrition, or to be killed as collateral damage in Israeli military strikes.

Hawley, as well as many members of the GOP, need to be convinced that dodging questions about U.S. military support for Israel is not the same as taking a stand against antisemitism, which has shockingly been rising for decades globally, long before Oct. 7.

Photos and other news coverage of the suffering in Gaza should not be avoided for anyone’s political comfort.

The children and mothers of Gaza are starving. They need the world to speak up, to pay attention, to consistently insist that their suffering ends.

(Readers can reach Mary Sanchez at msanchezcolumn@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @msanchezcolumn.