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I write in support of Lois Ahren’s May 14 letter suggesting Northampton join progressive cities across the state in enacting a rule that 20% of any large housing development be affordable. For this area, that might be any development with five or more buildings, apartments, or condominiums. The city's housing stock is not keeping up with its demographic changes. I am a YIMBY: Yes! in my Neighborhood and am delighted to live next to Valley CDC's redevelopment of 737 Bridge Road which is turning an abandoned rehab home into 60 family apartments. Northampton needs to keep its arms open to thrive.

In the recent Canadian election, a nation of 40 million elected 343 members of Parliament, each representing 117,000 people. In the most recent U.S. election, a nation of a 331 million elected 435 members of Congress, each representing 761,000 people. Perhaps Canadians feel less alienated from their government because their representatives serve constituencies only 1/6 as big. The number of members in the U.S. House is not specified in the Constitution. It grew steadily until Congress voted to cap it at it 435 in 1929. The U.S. population then was 125 million, so each member of Congress represented 282,000 people. As recently as 2000, when the U.S. population was 261 million, each member of Congress represented 646,000 people. Congress voting to cap the number of constituents in each district at 646,000 rather than capping the total number of districts would raise the number of House members to 512; if Congress capped the number of constituents in each district at 575,000 , what it was in 1990, the number of House members would rise to 576. This change would not require a constitutional amendment, only Congress voting to lift the cap on the number of congressional districts it arbitrarily imposed in 1929. The House chamber, which currently seats 850 for a State of the Union address, 450 on the floor, 400 in the gallery, could easily be remodeled to seat 450 on the floor, 200 in a mezzanine, and 200 in the gallery and still leave room for future growth.

Regarding the Phillips Place proposed development, please check your facts before resorting to the all too familiar name calling.

Federal law enforcement agents, pledged to protect and serve. They whisk away a student for her opinions and associations. Hiding behind masks, are they ashamed, afraid, or both? Dishonorable, disgraceful and alarming. We are better than this. This cannot stand.

I’m so sad that Beaver Brook will soon no longer be a golf course. I started playing there when I was a kid. Bub Tiley was the manager and Jack Toski was the pro. I was very fortunate to get many golf lessons from Jack (at no charge). I’ve seen some wonderful wildlife, such as bears, deer, coydogs, minks, heron, egrets, turtles and a wide variety of birds. I even saw a doe give birth to her baby right by the eighth hole! I really loved playing golf there and meeting a lot of wonderful people. I wish it didn’t have to go.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of deporting gangsters, thugs, and drug-dealing criminals. Closing the border was the promise of keeping those threats from entering again. How is it working? We cannot know since those arrested and deported are denied access to the very truth-finding legal processes enacted into law by our representatives in Congress.

Today’s Republican Party, committed to unpopular policies, shackled to an increasingly unpopular president and his billionaire co-president, is taking voter suppression strategies to ever greater lengths. Rather than implement policies of which voters approve, the Republican strategy is to eliminate as many voters as possible by creating obstacles to voter registration.

The Feb. 22 opinion page of the Gazette displayed an illustration depicting our president as a fierce dog with nobody holding his leash [letter, “Hell hath no fury like a narcissist scorned”].

In the space of about a month, we’ve heard about: invading Mexico and Panama, and taking over Greenland and Canada; ethnic cleansing and “owning” Gaza; withdrawal from the Paris climate accords; beginning peace negotiations with Russia over Ukraine without Ukraine’s leaders; withdrawal from NATO; trade wars with allies; and J.D. Vance and Musk’s support of neo-Nazi groups in Germany

One of worst aspects of the current political zeitgeist is the ascension of bullies into unchecked power. Tough guy Trump and Macho Musk have made the Oval Office into a middle school playground, preying on the weak.

Nothing new under the sun: The Doge of Venice acted as both the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy. Doges were elected for life through a complex voting process.

Waiting for craven legislators or beholden Supreme Court justices to put the brakes on Donald Trump, and his band of opportunist miscreants? It isn’t going to happen.

Our new “dictator for a day” — stretching it to almost a month now — has already made less safe roads, airways, medicines, drinking water, schools, media and groceries, all while propelling eggs toward $12 a dozen.

The president has subcontracted the work of the legislative and executive branches to tech oligarch Elon Musk, who is dismantling agencies created and funded by our elected members of Congress. It’s not about reform or efficiency, but destruction.

The headline for Stephen Fox’s Jan. 30 guest column was bleak: “Just not ready for clean energy future.” I was encouraged, though, that he called himself a climate change believer and conservationist. Then I read on and was discouraged by outdated and misleading information.

Deb Henson’s Feb. 15 column [“Northampton mayor, council fail to heed our priority — Schools,” Feb. 14) made two significant assertions that are not supported by the facts.

In his guest column “Just Not Ready for Clean Energy Future” [Jan. 30], Stephen Fox identifies himself as a climate change believer and conservationist but then engages in fear-mongering about the transition to renewable energies.

Studies reveal the mental health of Americans is deteriorating, and this deterioration is sure to increase as a result of witnessing Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu declare that Gaza will be taken over and the Palestinians will be removed so it can be turned into a world-class beach resort.

So many of us feel an urgent need to do something right now even as we simultaneously feel powerless. In fact, there are things we can do — many powerful things. Culturally, we tend to value big, grand actions, but small acts add up in ways we cannot know.

Richard Fein’s Jan. 27 column “Can anything good happen with Trump?” is worrisome. Not since Vichy France have I read such an apologist piece.

I wanted go congratulate the Gazette on the splendid editorial cartoon in the Oct. 22 edition, “Would you like lies with that?”Our tense pre-election time is not easy to live through. I was a child in Nazi Germany. My father, an American citizen,...