July 21, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Here we are blessed with a world of our own choosing. We are a multigenerational land with a steady inflow of both college students and retirees. We maintain open spaces and the grass is green. When we greet one another, we listen before we talk. Good people make any place good and we have those in spades.
Oh sure, this place could be better. But I’m not anxious to move on. I keep thinking of Louis Armstrong when he sings, “What a Wonderful World!”
Nonetheless, from what I read every week in your letters, more than a few do not agree. Not everyone in paradise is a happy camper. Writers keep bringing up outside politics when the only thing that matters is whether you are comfortable inside your own skin.
May I make a suggestion? Forget Washington (confession: I once worked there.) and lazily float downstream on the Maury. Go ashore on the James and visit Richmond. There you will find a government of sanity and trust. And if it is winter, you may even visit the two houses of the General Assembly as members take their good old Southern time debating all those bills which are not quite a matter of life and death.
Want more good politics? In just seven weeks you can begin to vote early again. When the polls close on Nov. 4, not only will you learn about our commonwealth’s next few years, but the rest of the nation will learn that we are not as divided as everyone claims. As another song goes, “It’s a Small World After All.”
A SVU president once preached the “genius of small.” He said that if you think small you can always learn something big. And if that something big is the world, you will also learn that Mr. Armstrong was right. DAVID REYNOLDS Rockbridge County
Reader Says
Trump
Shows Signs
Of Personality
Disorder
July 20, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Pathological Megalomania is an extreme narcissistic personality disorder characterized by an exaggerated feelings of selfimportance, power, or abilities, often manifesting as delusions of grandeur and having a strong urge to dominate or control others. Megalomaniacs may engage in lying to bolster their grandiose self-image and maintain their distorted perception of reality. They dismiss or ignore facts. They are paranoid. How to detect megalomania: acts without any empathy or consideration for the needs of others, expects lavish treatment from others, need for continual admiration from others, demeaning and belittling others, exploiting people, delusional about power and success, a desire for control, intense jealousy toward others, of being better than others, and of being God-like. Many dictators have been called megalomaniacs – examples are Hitler and Stalin. Sound familiar?
Trump has signed executive orders including: discouraging protesting; targeting colleges and universities; targeting law firms (the rule of law); giving DOGE access to our personal information via Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security records; stripping power from regulating agencies that protect us and keep us healthy; freezing federal grants for public health, education, small businesses and lifesaving medical research; ending birthright citizenship; causing tens of thousands of federal employees to resign or be fired; rollback affordable drug and insulin pricing policies; causing NIH to layoff employees, suspend clinical trials and delay groundbreaking research; dismantle department of education; kneecaps clean energy tax credits for wind and solar; and cuts to small businesses including blacks and woman owned.
Trump is destroying our freedom of speech, the rule of law, our health system, our economy, our privacy, decency, and integrity. For every nickel he saves on ruining people’s lives, it will be eaten up by reduced taxes for millionaires and billionaires and Trump’s impulsive, extravagant expenditures. LINDA BLACK Glasgow
Democrats
Were ‘Silent’
On ‘Open
Border Policy’
July 28, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: During the Biden open border policy, Senators Warner and Kaine and Congressman Spanberger were totally silent on the issue and now they are joining the chorus of Democrats condemning ICE for rounding up criminal illegal migrants. Yet they are totally ignoring any praise for ICE for having rescued over 13,000 of missing children since the Trump administration finally ended the open border policy or apprehension of violent criminals.
An audit showed that between 2019 and 2023, ICE transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency struggled to monitor the whereabouts of many of these children after their release from HHS custody. More than 32,000 children failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings and ICE couldn’t account for their location.
These unaccompanied minors are reported missing, and officials fear many are now in human trafficking for illegal child labor, sex exploitation, and many may have been killed.
When considering your vote in the upcoming governor’s race, ask yourself why Senators Warner and Kaine and Congressman Spanberger were silent as the open border was resulting in increased crime, displacing homeless and wounded veterans to house them, and costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.
Most of all how much blood is on their hands for being silent for the large increase of fentanyl and other drug deaths from increase drug trafficking; deaths of Americans murdered like Laken Riley, and lesser known 54-yearold Virginia grandmother, Melody Waldecker; and the untold misery all of the unaccompanied minors lost during the Biden administration.
Study the issues and vote Earle-Sears, Reid and Miyares. JAN LOWRY Lexington
‘No Place’
For Federal
Government
In Private
Schools
July 24, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: I am a political conservative who is opposed to the Trump administration’s efforts to interfere with private education. If the administration can deny the taxexempt status of Harvard, they can do the same with any other private college or university, such as my alma mater of Washington and Lee. I have similar concerns about federal interference with matters of admissions, hiring and curriculum.
I also have grave concerns about the increasingly left-leaning faculty at many colleges and universities, including W&L. There needs to be greater viewpoint diversity at these schools and less identity politics. Administrations need to re-examine Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, and in some cases eliminate them.
But these are matters for the universities themselves, not only the faculty and administration, but the board, the students, the parents, and the alumni. There is no place for the federal government, whether of a right or left wing persuasion, in private schools. NEELY YOUNG Lexington
‘Stated Reason
For Current
Roundup Of
Immigrants
Is Bogus’
July 28, 2025 Editor, News Gazette: It has become painfully clear that the Trump administration’s roundup of immigrants has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting American communities. While Trump calls immigrants “rapists” (rich, coming from him!) and “drug-dealers.” In fact the latest statistics available reveal that 96.2% of convictions for sexual violence are of U.S. citizens. Likewise, about 90% of fentanyl-related convictions are of U.S. citizens.
Furthermore, the main purview of ICE is not violent crime or gangs or drugs, as the administration suggests; those crimes are handled by the FBI and DEA, both of whose budgets have been cut.
Indeed, the vast majority of those detained by ICE have no criminal conviction. The ICE website states that of the 67,000 immigrants held in custody in the first quarter of 2025, only 38% had ever been charged with a crime of any kind, and only 26% convicted, mostly of nonviolent crimes.
In addition, the locations of ICE arrests - workplaces, courthouses, and churches - do not suggest that ICE is seeking out violent criminals. The most recent DHS statistics estimate the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. at 11.6 million, 79% of whom entered the U.S. before 2010. These are overwhelmingly hardworking, devout, family-oriented people, not violent criminals.
I am not arguing that immigration enforcement is not a necessary function of government — it is. I am merely arguing that the stated reason for the current roundup of immigrants is bogus. And if safety is not the real concern, what is? Alarmingly, Trump himself has said that immigrants are “vermin” who “infest” and “poison the blood of” our country. ANNE HANSEN Rockbridge Baths
Cline ‘Not
A Friend
Of Poor,
Middle Class’
July 28, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: The Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress – in the Big Billionaire’s Bill – cleverly arranged not to implement Medicaid and other cuts until after next year’s Congressional elections.
Are we supposed to forget that our health is at risk, as crucial services including nursing homes and our Rockbridge Area Health Center will almost certainly be impacted? Rural hospitals are already reducing services. In a financial pinch, they could close. And if we think Medicaid doesn’t apply to us, consider that those who live long enough will very likely reside in a nursing home, where already 60 percent of residents are Medicaid patients.
A few brave Republicans voted against the BBB, and some others are already having second thoughts about its extent and implications. Our own Congressman, Ben Cline, was not among the former. Where is he now? Touting the “Hearing Protection Act,” which removes a tax on gun silencers – to, he says, protect hunters’ hearing. Please! There are hunters in my family, but also construction workers, musicians, and mechanics. If hearing is Ben’s main concern, gun silencers are not the place to start.
In the bigger picture, he has supported all of the cuts that preceded and were then part of the BBB. He is not a friend of the poor or the middle class of Rockbridge County.
Who is representing us?
LISA TRACY Rockbridge County
Herbicide
Treatments
Concerns
Reader
July 28, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Your readers may be interested in something that has the potential to affect the health of residents and also that of Woods Creek. The new W&L golf course and athletic facility is going ahead with herbicide treatments over large areas of the course to kill the existing grass cover - to nuke the course in the words of one local wordsmith.
They will be using the glyphosate-containing herbicide Roundup in a course of three applications beginning the end of July.
European regulators have acknowledged the carcinogenic properties of glyphosate herbicides (now banned in many countries), whereas U.S. regulatory agencies have not made similar rulings. A 2019 review paper notes that European studies are more likely to be peer-reviewed and, rather than testing the active ingredient (glyphosate), have tested the actual formulations, which include other ingredients that increase their toxicity. In the U.S., glyphosate and its breakdown products are widespread in soil, surface water, groundwater, our food supply, and also our bodies.
The W&L golf course is surrounded by residences on all sides. Exposure to airborne substances like glyphosate and other chemicals used to maintain turf has been found to be a likely reason for the higher rates of Parkinson’s disease among people living within 1 mile of a golf course. This result was reported in a 2025 study (https://jamanetwork. com/journals/jamanetworkopen/ fullarticle/2833716). Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturer of Roundup by people with non-Hodgkins lymphoma or other cancers they attribute to exposure to these herbicides. Glyphosate spray or dust carried by the wind can cause eye irritation, nausea, dizziness, and headache. Herbicide mixture drift also kills 90% of exposed pollinators, particularly bees.
Alternatives to glyphosate include vinegar and other acidbased treatments or mechanical measures.
Pesticide-related complaints or questions can be referred to the Virginia Office of Pesticide Services (OPS) at (804)786-3798 or [email protected].
DEBORAH WOODCOCK Lexington
