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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Growing up at the end of the Cold War, I experienced the elation of watching the Berlin Wall fall in 1989 and the relief of seeing the USSR collapse in 1991.

But when I witnessed President Trump and V.P. Vance attempt to strong arm Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy into a “peace” deal in the Oval Office last Friday, my heart dropped to my stomach.

When the USSR disintegrated, the question of what would become of the Soviet’s nuclear weapons stockpile was an urgent question. Several former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, possessed these weapons.

The U.S. helped negotiate the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which Ukraine voluntarily gave up the nuclear weapons it controlled, including 1,900 nuclear warheads.

In return, the U.S. is obligated to help Ukraine defend its territorial integrity against any Russian aggression.

There are many excellent reasons to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s violent occupation, but the bottom line is that we made a promise in good faith never to abandon Ukraine to Russian intrusion.

This obligation means nothing to Trump, and he is aligning the U.S. with Russia. Whatever is motivating Trump’s peculiar affinity for Putin, here are some things we know:

1) Trump repeats Russian disinformation, including the false claim that Ukraine started the war. His former V.P. Mike Pence pointedly rebuked this claim. “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.”

2) Trump was impeached for attempting to shake down Zelenskyy on a phone call in 2019. On Friday, he attempted to shake him down on live TV. The free world is now openly realigning without the U.S. at its center, and Putin benefits most from the U.S.’s retreat.

3) The Trump administration has directed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to stop investigating and reporting Russian threats, including to our election systems.

Disturbing stuff. What can we do in this situation?

Normally the monthly Freeborn County DFL coffee hour crowd can fit around a long table at the Main Street Family Restaurant. This past Saturday, though, nearly 50 people showed up, many who have never attended before, to make connections, share ideas and work together.

About 200 people showed up outside Congressman Brad Finstad’s offices in New Ulm and Rochester this past Thursday to protest his vote in favor of a budget framework that would direct $880 billion in cuts from Medicaid’s budget.

That kind of cut would put a hole of about $2 billion in Minnesota’s annual Medicaid (Medical Assistance) budget, and that’s why 14 Republicans in the Minnesota legislature (not including Rep. Bennett nor Sen. Dornink) wrote a letter to Rep. Finstad and the rest of our Republican contingent in the U.S. House asking them to consider that these cuts would force communities to either drastically hike local taxes or suspend services.

Despite a bipartisan chorus backing Medicaid funding, Finstad voted in favor of making deep cuts that would shift a higher burden onto our communities.

That was not the final budget bill, and we must keep speaking out to save Medicaid funding. We have to be very loud at home until Finstad gets the message that he serves the people in this district, not greedy billionaires’ insatiable desire for tax breaks.

None of the people holding everything together in our lives are billionaires. They are ordinary, dedicated people who provide goods and services and human connection.

The people holding this country together include air traffic controllers, Farm Service agents, VA outreach specialists, Social Security benefits authorizers, park rangers, epidemiologists at the NIH, and meteorologists at the National Weather Service. They’re all facing attacks from Musk’s DOGE with Trump’s blessing, supposedly in the name of “efficiency.”

We’re rural, and we lack many efficiencies of scale. If the government decides to be “efficient” rather than effective for rural areas, it will likely become more expensive to live here.

For example, it would be more “efficient” for the USPS to close small post offices like Clarks Grove and Hayward, discontinue rural delivery and switch those rural customers to PO boxes in Albert Lea.

We have value apart from economic output and “efficiencies.” Wealth is not character and greed is not a virtue. There are thousands of ambitious, dedicated people here who are motivated by higher ideals, including truth, community, compassion, justice and duty.

When our leaders hold these values too, we do well and we can rise to any challenge.

We can do many things right now, today. We can call Brad Finstad’s New Ulm office (507-577-6151). We can shop locally. We can stand up for our neighbors. We can subscribe to local news.

We are not alone, and bad times don’t last when good people organize and stand up to them.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.