If you wonder why the rest of the world is reacting with revulsion to our recent news, consider:

¯ According to reliable sources, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of two men holding on to their burning boat, which is either a war crime or murder or both.

¯ They were in the water because our forces had sunk their boat, claiming that they were drug smugglers and part of an attack on the U.S. But we do not have a war underway that would justify military intervention, and these possibly fishermen had no due process or opportunity to surrender before being attacked and killed.

¯ Trump has suggested that Israel pardon prime minister Netanyahu at the same time that new footage shows Israeli Defense Forces executing surrendering Hamas captives, another war crime.

¯ On Dec. 2, Donald Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former President of Honduras who was convicted in 2024 of conspiring to import large quantities of cocaine into the United States.

¯ In related news, Trump is publicly supporting the successor Honduran candidate for President who also has the support of the billionaire “tech bros” who are underwriting Prspera, a controversial special economic zone on the island of Roatn. Prspera will feature and promote crypto currencies that have made the Trump family rich.

¯ Trump recently held a lavish state dinner for Mohammad Bin Salman, the man who our government says ordered the murder and dismemberment of U.S. reporter Jamal Khashoggi.

¯ While Trump is pardoning and commuting the sentences of drug kingpins and distributers, like Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the black web’s Silk Road, his administration is arresting and deporting immigrants who he calls the “worst of the worst.” But about 72% of individuals detained by ICE had no criminal convictions. And independent reporting found that of the over 120,000 deportations in 2025 roughly two-thirds of those deported had no criminal convictions and less than 7% had a “violent” conviction.

¯ The U.S. delegation negotiating a Ukrainian surrender to Russia in the guise of a cease-fire have demonstrated a clear Russian bias, even letting Russia draft the initial so-called peace plan with no inputs from the courageous Ukrainians or other Europeans.

¯ Trump claims that prices are down and the economy is growing when the opposite is true. Job growth has stalled and those out of work are finding new jobs scarce. The booming stock market resembles the 2000 bubble, as it is being propped up by the 10 largest, mostly AI, companies with huge capital expenses and so far very little revenue.

¯ The new tariffs now have been shown to raise pieces but also hurt small retailers most since they cannot manage supply chains and pricing, as can the bigger chains.

¯ The White House is now one wing smaller but will soon add a huge and garish ballroom, without Congressional approval or funding. The White House is a historic property under U.S. historic-preservation law and internal preservation governance, but Trump ignored both precedent and aesthetics to get his gilded dance hall.

¯ DOGE is now gone but so are the privacy guarantees that protect personal information. It is still unclear and unreported how much of that data is now available for use by, for example, ICE.

¯ If there is not a smoking gun in the Jeffrey Epstein documents that the administration is suppressing it certainly make it look like there is, and that Donald Trump is implicated. Why else would they be going to such lengths to keep the public from seeing the evidence?

¯ The Trump administration is repetitively defying court orders, and eliminating the legal experts charged with protecting us, like the Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) for the major defense services and eighteen independent inspectors general (IGs) that try to keep federal departments honest.

¯ On Dec. 2, the Trump administration fired eight immigration judges in New York City, apparently because they treated immigrants “too leniently.” And the administration has halted all decisions for asylum applications. The (intentional?) result has been to terrorize every immigrant and end the much-needed flow of foreign students and workers.

¯ Boston University estimated that there are already 412,000 child deaths and 198,000 adult deaths due to the elimination of USAID support. The cuts that were supposedly to save money accounted for only 0.3% of all 2024 federal spending, and in addition to saving lives represented U.S. “soft power” in parts of the world where out influence could do more than save innocent lives.

¯ The administration’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill is actually pretty ugly. It gifted trillions of dollars to the people who need it least at the expense of those who need it most. It further bloats our national debt making us increasingly vulnerable to financial cycles and interest costs.

¯ The reserve troops now in a number of our cities are not the “jackbooted thugs” that some claim, they are our neighbors who signed up to defend our country. But they are not trained for and should not be doing police work which is neither needed nor legal.

There is much more, but aren’t these enough to convince you that we need a regime change in the U.S.? We need a Congress that actually represents the will of the people and that provides the checks and balances that the founders intended. 2026 is coming up fast when we will elect a new House of Representatives and a third of the Senate.

If your representative or senator is not standing up to some or all of the abuses I listed you need a new representative or senator. So, the most important thing that each of us can do is vote and get our friends and family to vote as well.

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Lee Keet is a resident of Saranac Lake.