Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Editor, Times-Union:
A recent letter writer seemed to rejoice in the many good things Donald Trump has done for us and for America. I beg to differ with his choices. I hereby present a very different and brief list of what I consider to be Trump’s accomplishments:
— Inflation when Trump took office, Jan. 20, 2024: 2.4%; inflation rate as of June 30, 2026: 3.53%
— Trump’s tax cut was for the wealthiest. Regular taxpayers are paying an extra $2,048 annually due to Trump’s tariffs (groceries, gas, clothing, etc., etc.).
— While the stock market is at an all-time high, ownership of stock “is concentrated among higher-income, higher-educated, and older adults, with the wealthiest 1% holding more equity than the bottom 90% combined.” (The Motley Fool)
— Millions of low-income Americans in at least 25 states have lost supplemental nutrition assistance when SNAP benefits were cut late in 2025.
— Head Start, a federally funded program providing early childhood education, schoolreadiness, health screening, dental care, mental health services, nutrition support and family services and parenting support for low-income families has already faced significant funding and operational cuts with an ultimate goal to completely eliminate the program.
— Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes provisions that would cut about $863.4 billion from Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) ... Increasing the number of uninsured individuals by 7.8 million by 2034, significantly affecting children’s access to healthcare. (Georgetown Univ.)
— Trump’s war of choice with Iran (now going into its sixth month) caused the price of gas to nearly double for American citizens (a majority of which are opposed to the war). On the other hand, profits for oil companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil have gone from $2.49 billion to $12.1 billion and $7.08 billion to $14.5 billion, respectively, in one year!
— More than 700,000 men, women, and children in poverty and disease-ravaged countries have died because the Trump administration cut food and drug aid (already approved and sent by Congress, but left to spoil and rot) to those countries. The future savings: about .3 percent of the total U.S. budget.
— Instead Trump is spending a minimum of $1 billion on his vanity projects: literally making D.C. a golden city; erecting a 250 foot arch to honor himself; destroying the White House with tacky gold-sprayed crap and building a mammoth ballroom that no one asked for; destroying the rose garden, the south lawn, and the East Wing. He wants to spend $17 million to re-vamp Lafayette Park, hundreds of millions on multiple presidential jets, several millions on a botched Reflecting Pool job, ??millions to re-build Dulles airport, re-landscape D.C. parks, and on top of that make himself richer by billions of dollars with his merch, his crypto schemes, and his “grifted” favors.
— Behold all of these “accomplishments” (and so many more) while the tax money we the people send dutifully to the Treasury to provide for Trump’s pleasures — not ours — is being depleted.
Quite the accomplishments!
Jeanne Tuka Schutz
Winona Lake
