Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Sept. 12

The New York Times says Trump's policies are damaging your health

President Trump has turned Make America Healthy Again into one of his administration’s signature promises. It is a laudable goal, too. By several measures, the United States is the world’s least healthy high-income country.

As is so often the case with Mr. Trump, however, he has both identified a real problem and enacted a set of policies that will worsen that problem. With public health, the damage could be vast. His administration is rejecting basic medical knowledge and turning back the clock to an era when people were sicker and died sooner.

The administration’s hostility to lifesaving vaccines, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has already contributed to a rise in measles. Mr. Trump’s cuts to scientific research will forestall future treatments of cancer, heart disease and childhood illnesses. His cuts to Medicaid, which pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, will leave millions of Americans without health insurance and, by extension, health care. His rollback of environmental regulations has allowed corporations to pump more pollution into the air and water, which will contribute to lung diseases and other ailments.

As disappointing as the pre-Trump trends in public health were, Americans remain far healthier than in previous generations. Life expectancy today is almost 80, up from less than 60 a century ago. In that century, we have conquered smallpox and polio. We have cleaned our cities of the smog that was once normal. We have made progress against cancers and cardiovascular diseases that once were death sentences. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy are dismantling the eight decades of work that made that progress possible. There is a great deal to lose.

Here’s what they’re doing:

1. Exposing Americans to curable diseases

The taming of infectious diseases, including polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, tetanus, influenza and, most recently, Covid-19, has been one of humankind’s greatest achievements. These diseases have all been made far less deadly, and in some cases virtually nonexistent, thanks to vaccines. Mr. Trump himself recently said that vaccines work, “ pure and simple.”

Yet as his top health official he has appointed a conspiracist, Mr. Kennedy, who exaggerates or outright lies about the risks that come with these vaccines. Mr. Kennedy has filled an important federal panel, which shapes which vaccines are covered by insurers, with other conspiracists. Republican-led states are following the administration’s lead; Florida is trying to repeal vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.

These misguided changes are already having an effect. The Covid vaccine has become harder to get, even for some vulnerable people. Childhood vaccination rates, which were falling before Mr. Trump returned to office, seem likely to fall further as Mr. Kennedy fans parents’ fears. Already, measles outbreaks have occurred in Texas and elsewhere, and the effects may be far worse in the coming years as society risks losing the herd immunity that it had achieved.

We know about the consequences from these diseases because humanity has lived them. Before vaccines, illnesses like smallpox, measles and polio left people scarred, paralyzed, blind or dead. Many of the victims were children. The Trump administration is condemning more people to suffer and die from diseases that we know how to prevent.

2. Making a future pandemic more deadly

Nobody knows when the next pandemic will arrive. Whenever it does, the United States may be even less prepared than it was for Covid.

With Elon Musk’s help, Mr. Trump this year dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. He also withdrew from the World Health Organization, the global hub for tracking health emergencies, and emptied the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. These moves may have their biggest effects on poor citizens of other countries who previously benefited from American aid, but they put Americans at risk, too.

Mr. Trump fired the experts and community health workers who once monitored the world for outbreaks and helped restrain those outbreaks before they spread. In the past few decades alone, these workers led the fight against SARS, Zika, Ebola, bird flu and other illnesses, and Americans were largely spared from their effects.

Perhaps the strangest part of Mr. Trump’s health policy is his turn against mRNA vaccines. In his first term, his administration helped make possible the stunningly rapid development of mRNA vaccines for Covid. Mr. Trump could claim mRNA as his greatest accomplishment. Instead, he has caved to vaccine skeptics within the MAGA movement and canceled $500 million in contracts to develop future mRNA vaccines. That will slow the development of treatments for a future pandemic, when every week without a vaccine can lead to thousands of additional deaths.

3. Eliminating future cures

In addition to cutting mRNA funding, the administration has sharply cut medical research funding. Mr. Trump and his aides have justified these cuts by citing government efficiency and the “wokeness” of the universities that conduct much of the research. But science funding represents just 0.6 percent of federal spending, and most medical researchers have little to do with the wokeness wars. Their goal is to find effective treatments.

Without federal funding, much of this research — into cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, addiction, diabetes and more — will not happen. It involves basic science that tends to be unprofitable for any one company but can have enormous returns for society. In all, basic research may lose one-third of its federal funding.

Consider the work that a team of researchers at the University of Mississippi and the University of Ohio is doing into glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that is usually deadly within 18 months of diagnosis. The Trump administration cut the team’s funding without a good explanation, forcing the project to pause. After the funding was cut, Eden Tanner, a chemist on the project, received a flood of emails from people affected by the disease. “It’s really heartbreaking to tell them,” she said.

4. Dirtying the air and water

One public-health success story of the past half-century has been the sharp reduction of air and water pollution. As a result of regulations and clean energy breakthroughs, we breathe and drink many fewer toxins than Americans did decades ago. Pollution-related illnesses, like severe asthma, have declined as a result.

This trend may now be over. The Trump administration is hollowing out the Environmental Protection Agency, rolling back regulations, withdrawing support for clean energy and promoting dirty energy that causes illnesses. One example: The administration has given hundreds of industrial facilities a two-year pass on pollution rules. Another example: The J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in West Olive, Mich., was on the verge of closing until the Trump administration issued an emergency order, forcing it to stay open — even though the power company had not asked to keep it open. The plant continues to operate today, producing fine particle pollution that is associated with asthma, cardiac problems and lung disease.

The effects will be largest in red states, which tend to have more industrial facilities and lighter regulation. In Texas, coal plants are now allowed to release more than twice as much wastewater pollution as they were at the beginning of this year, as well as more than five times as much sulfur dioxide and more than six times as much carbon dioxide, according to the Sierra Club. These changes are also likely to aggravate climate change.

5. Taking away medical care

Mr. Trump’s recently passed domestic policy law will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance, experts estimate. Another 4.2 million could lose health insurance if Republicans in Congress refuse to extend expanded tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. Together, these changes would undo about one-third of the coverage gains from that law.

Without health insurance, millions of Americans will not be able to get crucial medical care. A large recent study concluded that poor adults who received Medicaid were 21 percent less likely to die than those who were not enrolled. People with insurance are also more likely to be healthy enough to lead happy, productive lives than people without it. Among the biggest victims of the Medicaid cuts, as we recently explained, will be people addicted to opioids — a group Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to help.

The Medicaid cuts exist largely to finance tax cuts for affluent Americans. That same recent law also includes cuts to food stamps, which will leave poor Americans less able to feed their families and almost certainly less healthy. Wealthy Americans who do not need the money nonetheless receive more of it, while lower-income Americans lose food stamps and health coverage.

In each of these areas, it is easy to name ways that our health system has failed many Americans over the past few decades. Insurance is too expensive. Pollution is concentrated in lower-income communities. Cutting-edge medical treatments are sometimes available only to the affluent. Preventive care and chronic diseases receive too little attention from insurers, doctors, scientific researchers and government agencies. Ultraprocessed foods and “overmedicalization” have hurt children, as Mr. Kennedy has noted.

All of which shows the need for a true Make America Healthy Again movement. Mr. Trump is not leading that movement, though. He is instead taking the country backward to a time when many health threats were much more ominous than they are today. Mr. Trump is surrendering America to curable diseases.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/opinion/trump-maha-public-health-agenda.html

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Sept. 11

The Wall Street Journal says inflation still lives

Our friends on Wall Street and in Washington keep saying that inflation is vanquished as they hope—plead—for lower interest rates. Yet the economic data aren’t bearing out their optimism, as the Labor Department’s consumer price report for August revealed on Thursday.

Consumer prices climbed 0.4% in August and 2.9% over the past year, both the most since January. Price increases last month were broad-based, hitting food consumed at home (0.6%), alcohol (0.6%), children’s shoes (1.5%), clothing (0.5%), new cars (0.3%), used cars (1.0%), housing (0.4%), hotels (2.6%), vehicle repair (5.0%), air fares (5.9%) and more.

The index for so-called core prices (less volatile food and energy) wasn’t more reassuring. Those prices rose 0.3% in the month, or 3.1% over the last 12 months. The fall in inflation from March through May turned into a modest re-acceleration in the summer.

President Trump’s tariffs are clearly driving up some prices, especially in food and goods. Imports account for about 20% of food and beverages in the U.S. Goods prices had been quiescent in recent months while services inflation was high, but prices rose for both last month.

Businesses report that they’ve run through inventory they stockpiled before Mr. Trump’s tariff barrage and are starting to pass on their higher costs to customers. Auto-repair shops are getting whacked by Mr. Trump’s 25% tariff on parts and 50% on steel and aluminum. The tariffs could also have indirect effects. Used cars prices are increasing because the supply has shrunk as people hold onto their jalopies longer because they can’t afford new cars.

At the same time, Mr. Trump’s restrictive immigration policies are contributing to labor shortages, which may be pushing up wages and prices in industries like agriculture, construction and hospitality. One “agribusiness reported that wages rose 8 to 10 percent annually, yet turnover remained high,” a Federal Reserve business survey noted last week.

Buoyant consumer spending, rising prices, and frothy stock valuations suggest that current interest rates aren’t all that restrictive. While many lower and middle-income Americans are stretched, ebullient markets may in part be fueling more spending by the affluent and creating a wealth effect.

A BlackRock portfolio manager told Bloomberg News last week that a boost to wealth from soaring asset prices “is supporting consumption and that is what drives the economy more than anything else.” What’s fueling stock prices? In part expectations that the Fed may cut rates sharply this fall because of signs the labor market is weakening.

All of which makes next week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee more difficult than Wall Street hopes. A 25 basis-point cut is probably in the bag after last week’s labor report showed a summer stall in job creation. But the Fed has to worry about persistent inflation above its 2% target. Easier money may help Wall Street, but it won’t counter the economic policy mistakes that are to blame for Main Street’s malaise.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/inflation-consumer-price-index-u-s-economy-tariffs-federal-reserve-rate-cuts-8289d9b5?mod=editorials_article_pos8

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Sept. 11

The Guardian says Charlie Kirk's killing shouldn't be used to foment further political division already polarized US

“Democracy is the way that we have diverse societies that don’t kill each other, largely,” Lilliana Mason, a leading scholar of partisanship, observed recently. She added: “As soon as we stop believing in it, it disappears.” Dr Mason’s own research suggests that there is sharply rising tolerance of political violence. On Wednesday, it claimed one more victim.

The shocking killing of the co-founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, a hugely influential activist who rallied young people to Donald Trump’s cause and far-right ideology more broadly, has been widely and rightly condemned across the political spectrum. Leading Democrats and progressive activists made clear that such violence must not be tolerated.

Before a perpetrator had even been identified, the president, like several other Republicans, blamed “radical left political violence”, claiming that liberal rhetoric against conservatives was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country”. Mr Trump himself faced two attempts on his life last year. He cited other victims, but not the many Democrats who have been targeted, including Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota state representative shot dead at her home alongside her husband, Mark, in June. Meanwhile, some far-right commentators spoke of vengeance.

Political violence is hardly a new phenomenon in a country that has seen a civil war, four presidential assassinations, and lynchings. But it is rising again. Ordinary Americans are being radicalised. In such an environment, one thing unites the political poles; any prominent figure is vulnerable, though women and people of colour are particularly targeted. Threats to members of Congress rocketed last year.

“Demonising those with whom you disagree” is indeed dangerous, but Mr Trump himself has normalised vicious attacks on opponents. The tolerance of violent action – as with Mr Trump’s blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters – sends a message too. The roots of violent acts are complex, but an environment conducive to political attacks may channel the propensities of potential perpetrators. Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, has warned that US politics may be on the brink “of an extremely violent era … The more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.” The US addiction to guns drastically increases the impact.

Acts of political violence exact an appalling human toll in lives lost and families shattered; Mr Kirk’s death leaves two small children fatherless. But they also – by design – deter other people from political or other civic activity at all levels. The most extreme voices may persist and prevail. Blaming political adversaries before a perpetrator has even been identified risks fuelling anger and attacks, to everyone’s cost. Research by Dr Mason, of Johns Hopkins University, and Nathan Kalmoe, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that a fifth of respondents said political violence could sometimes be justified, but three-fifths thought it could sometimes be justified if the other side committed violence first.

Yet other research notes that people appear less willing to condone violence if misperceptions of the other side’s extremism or propensity for force are corrected. In this perilous moment, the response to such hateful crimes should be to coalesce to stress non-violence and civic tolerance. To instead promote division will only increase the threat to politicians and activists of all stripes, and strike another blow to democracy itself.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/11/the-guardian-view-on-the-killing-of-charlie-kirk-a-perilous-moment-that-may-lead-to-more

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Sept. 11

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says since 9/11, America has gone from beacon to belligerent

Twenty-four years ago Thursday, hijacked airliners collapsed both the World Trade Center and America’s long-held illusion of invulnerability. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, killed almost 3,000 Americans in and around the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash site of Flight 93. It was the single worst one-day loss of life ever on American soil from a foreign attack, exceeding even the death toll of Pearl Harbor.

In the aftermath, the world rallied around America in ways big and small. Doctors, aid organizations and individual volunteers from around the world rushed to New York to assist in rescue and recovery operations. Allies and even adversaries the world over condemned the attacks, froze terrorists’ assets and joined the U.S. in building a global coalition to fight terrorism. School children from across the globe inundated America with letters and other expressions of sympathy and support.

The U.S. squandered much of that international goodwill in the years that followed, with an Iraq misadventure, an Afghanistan quagmire and controversial terrorism interrogation methods dulling its shine on the global stage.

But the second Trump administration has arguably done more than all that in a few short months to turn America from a beacon of hope to a bastion of belligerence in the eyes of a once-supportive world. President Donald Trump can crow “America first!” all he wants, but the damage he is inflicting on America’s standing globally undermines that mantra.

That damage is real. Polls and studies abound today charting the steep decline in global regard for America since Trump returned to office in January. The international research firm Ipsos, for one, reported earlier this year that since Trump’s reelection, polling shows that majorities in 26 among 29 key nations no longer accept the premise that America is a positive force globally; even stalwart allies such as Great Britain, France and Germany are below 50% support of that premise since last year. The support level in Canada for American leadership has dropped an astounding 33 points, from 52% last year to 19% as of April.

What explains this sudden plunge in regard for the country the whole world rallied around 24 years ago? You needn’t look far for some solid theories.

Trump’s unprovoked, spastic tariff wars against U.S. trading partners are not only economically devastating to American industries and consumers — which is why serious economists of all political stripes overwhelmingly oppose them — but are doing lasting harm to our global trade relationships with what were once our closest economic allies. Even the prime minister of Canada (Canada!) has declared that America “ is no longer a reliable partner.”

Trump’s petty squabbles and rhetorical attacks against our NATO partners — to the point of hinting the U.S. wouldn’t carry out its collective defense obligations under the treaty — have undermined the longest and most successful global alliance in human history. His vacillation on the defense of Ukraine is a gross abdication of America’s initial, historic leadership on that issue. His apparent powerlessness to move Israel toward a resolution of the carnage in Gaza is both tragic and nationally humiliating.

Trump’s all-too-obvious admiration for despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban has given pause to democracies around the world that once looked to the U.S. for inspiration. His inhumane and short-sighted gutting of U.S. food and health programs abroad ignores the truism that humanitarian aid is far less costly (in both money and lives) than the wars such aid helps prevent.

Atop all these concrete examples of failed global leadership under Trump is a failure to live up to our own founding principles and national character. Trump’s deployment of federal troops on American soil, his toxic vilification of blue states and urban centers, his grubby monetization of his office, his relentless attacks on the free press, the rule of law and the Constitution itself — how chilling this all must look to once-enamored admirers of America the world over, watching from afar as this aspiring autocrat maliciously dismantles everything that makes America exceptional among nations.

How much of the world’s falling regard for America is directly attributable to Trump’s belligerent foreign policies? Consider this: A Pew Research study of global polling released in June found that citizens in virtually all advanced nations express “ no confidence “ in Trump by wide margins (U.K., 62%; Canada, 77%; Germany, 81%).

A separate Pew survey of 24 counties, released in June, reports that 65% of respondents describe Trump as “ dangerous.”

Twenty-four years ago Thursday, the world wept for America — and then had our back. It’s disturbing but necessary to ask if, should the U.S. face a similarly dire moment today, either of those global responses would be forthcoming.

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_ed6031ac-5888-4d19-b033-cad436866193.html

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Sept. 12

The Washington Post says that Russian drones entering Polish airspace is a test of NATO's resolve

When asked by reporters on Thursday about the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace, President Donald Trump was nonchalant. “Could’ve been a mistake,” he shrugged. “But regardless, I’m not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation.”

There’s nothing to be happy about. Whether Trump knows it or not, he is playing with fire. Poland is a NATO ally and as such enjoys treaty guarantees. Guarantees are nothing but pieces of paper — until they are tested. Regardless of whether the drones were deliberately sent into Polish airspace, they have become a test of allied resolve. And Trump’s cautious rhetoric risks failing that test.

It wasn’t a one-off mistake — the kind of casual remark that staffers are so often tasked with cleaning up. When Fox News asked Friday morning about the incident, Trump equivocated again. “The Poland thing, I mean, I’m not going to defend anybody. But the Poland — they were actually knocked down and they fell” within Polish airspace, he said. “But he shouldn’t be close to Poland anyway,” the president added, not very menacingly.

But the Trump administration didn’t completely fail the test. The U.S. ambassador to NATO quickly reacted to the news on X, writing: “We stand by our NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.” Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, spoke to Trump on the phone and later described the discussion as having “confirmed the alliance’s unity.” And Poland’s defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, posted on X that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had assured him that “Poland can count on the friendship and full allied support of the United States.”

NATO itself has also stepped up. Secretary General Mark Rutte announced an operation dubbed Eastern Sentry, effective immediately. Denmark, France, Britain and Germany have committed fighter jets and other assets to securing the alliance’s entire eastern flank, including the Baltic states. Rutte called the incursions “reckless and unacceptable,” adding: “We can’t have Russian drones entering allied airspace.”

The American president could be just as forthright. “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art,” John Foster Dulles famously said. “If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war.”

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/12/trump-nato-poland-russia-drones/

News from © The Associated Press, 2025