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Fix Our Forests offers
logging as fire safety
Re: “Legislation would worsen California wildfire threat” (Page A8, Dec. 28).
The Fix Our Forests Act isn’t about environmental safety; rather, it is a blatant attempt at expanding the logging industry under the cover of wildfire prevention. Congress is rushing to pass a bill that dramatically expands backcountry logging while weakening environmental review and public input, allowing projects up to 15 square miles to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act.
Decades of research shows that logging can actually increase fire severity by leaving behind flammable debris and drying forest microclimates. Meanwhile, the bill ignores the strategies proven to save lives — home hardening, defensible space and evacuation planning — in favor of remote timber projects far from communities.
Worse, it reduces scientific and judicial oversight at a moment when accountability matters most, while risking harm to watersheds, wildlife habitat and recreation. Congress should stop branding logging as wildfire protection and invest in tried-and-tested solutions that actually keep communities safe.
Michael Wilkinson
San Carlos
Reducing forest fuel
mitigates fire behavior
Re: “Legislation would worsen California wildfire threat” (Page A8, Dec. 28).
Chad Hanson suggests that implementing the federal Fix Our Forests Act will increase the threat of wildfire to communities.
In reality, this act will reduce wildfire threat to communities by facilitating forest thinning and strategic deployment of prescribed fire. Over a century of successful fire suppression across the landscape has allowed far too much vegetation (trees, brush) to accumulate. These overcrowded conditions represent an extreme wildfire threat. The act seeks to accelerate the treatment of unnaturally dense forests. To suggest that the act will increase forest thinning, thus exacerbating wildfire threat conditions, does not track with what foresters and wildland firefighters are experiencing in the field.
Reducing excess vegetation significantly mitigates wildfire behavior. In order to help protect communities, the U.S. Senate should pass the Fix Our Forests Act.
Tad Mason
Carmel
Administration’s harm to
businesses unchecked
President Trump is promising $12 billion in aid to U.S. farmers, who have lost sales due to tariffs and international ill will inspired by administration policies and rhetoric.
In the Bay Area, meanwhile, our son has lost the job he’d had for 13 years at a small business that shut its doors in the fall, after fluctuating tariffs disrupted their supply chain and our government’s treatment of foreign visitors triggered a precipitous drop-off in international tourism, cutting sharply into their potential customer base.
Is anyone in the administration trying to mitigate, or even to track, the impact of this year’s financial chaos on small businesses?
Sue Luttner
Palo Alto
The world can’t afford
an unreliable U.S.
In 1994, Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for “security assurances” from the United States, Britain and Russia. The promise: respect Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty. The result: Crimea was seized, the United States and Great Britain did nothing, Ukraine was invaded, and now U.S. support is openly wobbling — with the president taking Russia’s side.
If nations cannot trust security promises, disarmament becomes a risk rather than a path to peace. This precedent complicates global nonproliferation and undermines confidence in diplomatic guarantees. In future peace negotiations, what country will trust us when we can’t keep our word?
Our allies and partners must be able to rely on consistent, dependable commitments; without that, global stability is imperiled.
Andrew Ratermann
Santa Clara
Trump’s ‘windfall’ comes
at consumers’ expense
Re: “H-1B visa fight hits court of appeals” (Page C7, Dec. 30).
Howard Lutnick and Donald Trump don’t seem to understand how the U.S. economy works. Trump has bragged that his tariffs are bringing in $800 billion in tax revenue. He doesn’t get that tariffs are paid by the importer and ultimately the consumer. He went on to say that companies should temper the price increase by taking lower profits.
In this article, Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, says that the new H-1B fees would be a $100 billion windfall to the U.S. Treasury. He makes it sound like a $100 billion additional tax on American companies is good for the economy. Would he be as enthused about the additional tax if the fees were being paid by his company?
Dave Riggs
Aptos
Reeling Trump poses
existential threat to U.S.
Re: “Trump weakens as resistance strengthens” (Page A7, Dec. 30).
In describing “Donald Trump’s kakistocracy,” Michelle Goldberg notes that as Trump has been thwarted in his fascist efforts to exert control and seek revenge, he “feel(s) increasingly cornered and aggrieved.”
As we end 2025, it is a “cornered and aggrieved” Trump that is most worrisome. Surrounded by cowed sycophants, Trump is the loose cannon who can destroy America both internally and on the world stage. While his tariffs and Big Beautiful Bill Act frustrate business, slow the economy, and increase poverty for millions, his America First policy produces Arrogant America, Bully America and ultimately America Alone, a pariah nation that others gradually learn to placate as necessary and work around as best they can.
2026 will be a sad 250th birthday for the USA, one in which we must realize that the American Experiment is in great jeopardy and wonder how many more birthdays there will be.
Kirch DeMartini
Saratoga
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