In Brattleboro on March 2 there will be a march to protest Trump's policies. The march will start at noon outside 192 Main Street and will end at the food co-op. For more information, contact Dan Dewalt via https://rcpVermont.org.

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In the Pioneer Valley, on February 21 on the Gill-Turners Falls bridge on Route 2, about 20 people attended a rally to protest Trump's policies. The rallies will continue there every Friday at 4:30 p.m., according to a mass email from a group that has a web site at www.traprock.org.

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On February 19, the New York Times published a news article with the headline, “Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Draw Up Plans for Cuts.” The article begins, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.” The article is at:

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/hegseth-military-cuts.html

It's available for free from any public library.

The Northampton-based group the National Priorities Project has as its mission, “Fighting for a U.S. federal budget that prioritizes peace, economic security and shared prosperity.” Hanna Homestead works for the group. On February 27, she gave the Valley Post her reaction to that Times article and to another one headlined, "Defense Department to Cut Over 5,000 Workers." That one is at:

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/us/politics/pentagon-job-cuts.html

Homestead said, “This budget blueprint is a disaster. It lays out massive tax cuts for the wealthy, increased spending for the Pentagon, and a disastrous mass deportation plan -- paid for with up to $2 trillion in cuts for critical social services like Medicaid and food assistance. The U.S. already spends more than a trillion dollars on the Pentagon each year, more than the next eight countries combined, despite it failing to account for trillions in assets. Half of the Pentagon budget already goes to private contractors. If Pentagon contractors were a federal agency, they would be the largest federal agency. Republicans are trying to take food and healthcare away from children across the country to line the pockets of billionaires and war profiteers, including Elon Musk. Taxpayers will not be saving a cent. Working people and vulnerable populations will be made much more insecure under this cruel and extreme budget which overwhelmingly benefits the ultra-rich. There is time to fight back.”

She went on, “Reporting about an 8% (or $50 billion) cut is misleading – the Trump Administration is planning on shifting funding away from programs aimed at improving racial and gender equity and reducing the environmental impact of the U.S. military -- the world’s largest institutional polluter. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert G. Salesses clarified the administration will actually be redirecting these funds for alternative use -- including potentially using the military to facilitate Trump’s disastrous mass deportation policy, or increasing Pentagon contracts to corporations and billionaires profiting from endless war and climate collapse.”

Homestead said, “In fact, we are all made less secure by the extreme increases in Pentagon spending from Trump and MAGA Republicans, which are being paid for with massive cuts in social spending that hurt working people. Simply cutting the Pentagon workforce without a corresponding strategy is a recipe for chaos and even greater governmental waste, fraud, and abuse. We know historically from the Bush years that Pentagon workforce cuts translate to more spending on private contractors, which already account for half of the Pentagon’s nearly trillion-dollar budget. If the Trump administration is serious about addressing cost concerns, they could start by addressing the numerous issues related to Pentagon contracting that have already been identified by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which if reformed, would save taxpayers billions.”