1. United States
2. Minn.
3. Letter

Stop the big military payout! Tim Snyder knows a whole lot more about authoritarian regimes than I do but the warning he issues in his recent Substack column totally makes sense to me. There is no valid military reason to increase the military budget by 50% as the Trump administration proposes. It looks a lot like a bribe to buy off the military from opposing the administration's unlawful actions . Snyder says, "Trump’s proposal to increase the military budget by nearly 50% [is a] bribe to officers and soldiers so that they will side with him when he tries to overthrow the Constitution and stay in power indefinitely." With a Congress that is incapable of providing effective oversight, a Supreme Court that is rubber stamping unconstitutional laws, and an executive branch replete with loyalists and grifters, the U.S. military is the only remaining branch of government sufficiently powerful to protect the Constitution and any vestiges of democracy in our nation. When it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck, its a duck. Or, in this case, a bribe. Do not let this happen.