LETTER TO OUR PA SENATORS

By Ruth A. Sheets

April 29, 2026

This is my most recent plea to our Pennsylvania senators concerning immigration.  

Dear Senators,

As your concerned constituent, I’m writing to ask you to vote YES on S.J. Res. 99.  Stop the cruelty directed at immigrants living and working hard in this country, harder than most citizens work, including the entire membership of this Trump regime!

As you know, Last October, the Trump administration eliminated automatic extensions for work permits of immigrants – a policy that had been in place for over a decade, and for no reason other than racism and simple cruelty!  They and any of you who go along with this should be ashamed, but it seems shame has no place in Trumplandia, which has permitted members of their Klan to do enormous harm to people who have not deserved it. 

Trump lied that he and his “team” only wanted to arrest and deport serious criminals who are immigrants,  but, that is not who they are going after.  They have ordered and Congress has approved with its inaction, separating families, arresting and imprisoning families with children, deporting parents from their American children and spouses, murdered American citizens as well as immigrants, allowed armed masked thugs loose on the streets of our communities.  There are no excuses that will make up for what has been done and it appears racism, fear of the other, and a drive for personal power have been at work. 

Huge amounts of  money have been paid from our taxes to rich corporations who run concentration camp prisons where the incarcerated people have been forced to live in conditions no one should want anyone to endure:  severe overcrowding, given garbage to eat they called food, been denied medical care, been beaten, tortured, and more, and for what!

Under this immigration work permit policy, workers who filed their renewal paperwork on time were protected from losing their jobs while they waited on government processing. It was straightforward: if you did your part, the government wouldn't punish you for its own delays.  Trump's/Musk's DOGE and Dept. of Homeland Security Noem fired so many people that of course, there were government-produced delays, so Trumplandia permitted ICE to start arresting those waiting-folks then imprisoning them, and more, and for what!

That protection is now gone, with no honest justification from this administration. An estimated 3.8 million immigrant workers can now be legally fired and deported through no fault of their own, simply because federal processing backlogs are slow, deliberately slow. These are people who followed every rule, filed every form on time, and built their lives here. They don't deserve to lose their livelihoods, their families, and their community because of a bureaucratic backlog they have no control over, but a group of men in charge who hate people of color do. It’s neither fair nor right and you should know that. 

Congress has done little to nothing to help these hard-working people who trusted this nation to help.  Congress has been participating in the evil being done mostly by doing nothing and just tacitly agreeing to whatever Trump and his clown car of evil demand.

S.J. Res. 99 would restore the protections those immigrants deserve. That’s why I’m asking you to vote yes, so that 3.8 million people’s lives are not needlessly harmed. We are watching to see whose side you are on, the evil and ignorance of this current regime or the side of human beings who are being brutalized so a bunch of scared white folks can practice their racism unimpeded.  Thanks for what I hope is your attention.   Sincerely, Ruth Sheets

Feel free to use this as a template for contacting your senators.

OPEN LETTER TO TRUMP’S SYCOPHANTS

By Ruth A. Sheets

April 9, 2026

Dear “Friends,”

I have decided it is imperative I finally write to you all.  It seems you have fallen off the path of true public service into the ditch filled with slime coming off the lie and disinformation factory up the road, owned and operated by rich white men for their benefit and that of Donald Trump. 

Do you realize you have chosen to follow a man who was never what he claimed to be.  For some reason our media just loved projecting him as a great businessman when he was not nearly that, you know, bankrupting 6 times.  I know he called those bankruptcies being “smart.”  Would you have considered yourself “smart” had you bankrupted even once, OK, twice?

In order to follow Trump a man with failing mental capacities for years, you chose to sacrifice whatever decency you may once have had, possibly for personal gain, possibly to get revenge on someone.  Neither of these is what one would think of as the action of a decent human being.

When I hear of your antics, it reminds me of a Toddler (Trump), playing with his toys, making them participate in his fantasy, being wherever told to stand, spouting whatever nonsense comes from Trump’s dementia-laden mouth.  You are expected to treat the beings around you as though not worthy of care, actually, worthy of abuse.  All of this on the command of your toddler-in-chief.  How does it feel to be a toy in the hands of someone unable to think clearly, has no compassion for you or anyone else, and feels no allegiance to our Constitution?  It can’t be fun!

I feel some sympathy for women in the sycophantic sphere because you have decided the Mar-a-Lago Barbie face is your best look and perfecting the perfect pout works well for you.  You insult everyone around you who recognizes you as the sycophant you are.  I thought you were proud of your role.  You should be telling everyone just how much you love being a toy in Trumplandia.  I feel your lack of pain when two of the best of you in your sycophancy, Pam Bondi (Trump’s Pseudomommy) and Kristi Noem (Trump’s Enforcer) were dumped, Pam in favor of someone Trump considers a better Pseudomommy and Noem tossed away because she got more attention than Trump himself.  Yo Ladies, consider what you are sacrificing for this particular honor as members of Trump’s Bimbo Squad.

Pete Hegseth, you know you are participating in criminal activities with that little war you and your toddler boss started, well, just because.  It didn’t work, you know.  Despite Trump’s words to the public, none of your goals were met and “destroying an entire civilization” is not a path to righteousness or Heaven, however you define them.  I bet your generals tried to tell you that.  Ooops, that’s probably why you tried to fire them.  And, your racism and misogyny are showing, not properly promoting women and men of color.  Shame Shame!!  You’re supposed to do it quietly and pretend you didn’t do it; they just resigned or chose not to be promoted, or something like that.

And, DOJ sycophants, you all are not supposed to push crimes under the rug, like the murders of Good and Pretty in Minneapolis, and the 26 or so people who died in your concentration camp prisons.  Oh I know, that is supposed to be under the Department of Homeland Security, but you have quickly tried to hide the facts on those cases, which is not your job.  Honesty no longer reigns in DOJ and that is sad, but expected when sycophants are in charge.

Then, you let your toddler-boss force you to claim global warming/climate change is not happening.  That is beyond stupid.  You, yes even you can see it is happening and that fossil fuels and poor farming practices are causing it.  You forget that you live on this planet too and will suffer along with the rest of us when the warming becomes too intense.  I suspect you are planning to be dead by then, but what about your children and grandchildren or don’t you care about them either?  We had a good program of renewable energy going before Trump’s rule, but alas, I know, sycophancy does not permit science or common sense, just obedience, even if the one to be obeyed is making pronouncements in the throes of dementia.

Trashing immigrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees makes you all look like hypocrites since you had parents or grandparents who immigrated here.  I know, I know, your people came here “the right way.”  You know that is BS.  They came here the same way everyone else who is not Native American came here.

So, I just want you to know that sycophancy is not a good career choice beyond the here and now.  Consider finding a new career, maybe in the private sector you all have been working so hard to protect, to finance, and to confiscate our hard earned tax money for.  Maybe they will be OK if you take the job of sycophant for them too.  Just sayin’.

Peace, Ruth Sheets

  

 

 

BREAKING THE MOLD

By Ruth A. Sheets

In a Substack piece, Robert Reich, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkley, wrote about getting voters to vote for candidates who have their interests at heart.  I started thinking about how hard that is going to be for Republicans, maybe some Democrats too.  This is what I came up with in response. 

Over the years, we Americans, and people of other nations too, have been carefully groomed by the rich and powerful to go for the loud-mouthed white male as having the "best" answers to every question of importance, the “mold.”  Those loud-mouthed white men decided what is natural among the beasts of the field and birds of the air and among human beings too.  They told us what to buy and what makes us beautiful/handsome.  They told us they knew how to rule and that it was right for loud-mouthed white men to rule the world.  Well, those same loud-mouthed white men took us into Holocaust, into endless wars, enhanced significantly the wealth gap, have blamed poor people for being poor, have used the taxes paid by working people all over the world to produce and buy war machines that have no other purpose than killing our fellow human beings and any other creatures that get in the way. 

Here, the Republican Party has made recruiting those loud-mouthed white men into their ranks critical, and put a lot of money behind them.  What those in charge of the party recruitment knew is that in the position of "president" you can put the not-so-loud and definitely not very competent, but behind them must be a loud-mouthed white man.  If you can't manage that, go with the loud-mouthed guy for president who can lie like a rug and the guys in charge can make the public believe every word. 

If one looks at Republicans say from 1960 onward, every victorious Republican presidential candidate has fit one of the molds or other.  Nixon could be a loud-mouth, but he depended on others like his VPs Lodge and Agnew to do the shouting while Nixon pretended he was just like a thoughtful judge.  Goldwater fit the mold perfectly, threatening all sorts of people and groups with American might.  Ford was the least like the mold, but he was only needed to pardon Nixon of his crimes.  He did it and was gone.  Reagan was portrayed as everyone's grandpa, but he had no clue.  His VP was rich and knew how to manipulate folks behind the scene and did, Bush,Sr.  As president Bush,Sr. had all the words, but also had racism and misogyny to keep him in favor.  Bush,Jr. was incompetent, but I think, wanted to do a good job, at least some of the time.  His VP Cheyney was the needed loud-mouth. 

Trump was the perfect creation that fit the mold sufficiently to be carefully shaped using Trump's own loud-mouthed white man tendencies to believe himself better than everyone else when in reality, he was not smart, a bad businessman, a cheat, a liar, a rapist, and more.  That could easily be covered by a lying media and his loud-mouthed hatred of everyone he chose to or was directed to hate.  With the Republican Party cheating in elections, Trump was elected, then re-elected.  He gives the rich white men in corporate power nearly everything they want while enriching his family (well, the corporations enrich them so their patriarch won't get out of line during the takeover of our democracy). 

Republican voters are drawn to this kind of loud-mouthed bullying that Trump portrayed so well before his dementia made it harder for him to know what is going on.  How do we convince Republican voters that they are focusing on the wrong hand.  The corporate magicians are doing them immense harm while they watch their Trumpian puppet lie his way through this corporate destruction machine.  It will be hard for them to break out because their loyalty has been so carefully groomed and tended.

On Saturday, March 28, 2026, people all over the country rallied to try to draw attention to and stop the loud-mouthed bully in the white house.  In our tristate area, the media practically ignored the whole day’s activities, giving no more than a minute to the event while covering Tiger Woods’ car crash in Florida for a far longer report.  That truly is what we are dealing with, a corporate media that props up an old man with dementia while ignoring the American people.

It’s time We the People work harder to “break the mold” and find more ways to get information to people who are stuck in their perceived need for loyalty to a party that left them behind long ago.  The people and corporations in power want to drain them of their will to act, and to distract them from making good decisions for their lives; it’s working.

I didn’t mention the Republicans who lost the presidency, except for Goldwater because for the most part, they were white men who did not fit the corporate/conservative uncaring mold:  Dole, McCain, and Romney.  And, they didn’t have the VP back-ups to counter their decency.  The Democrats who ran against them had ideas that were more powerful to capture Democratic voters.  Remember, when Democrats get out to vote in their greater numbers, unless there is  AI or media-based  fraud, Democrats win.