Neighborhood for disabled is a blessing
Thank you for balancing the “Is this Orlando’s Alcatraz?” article with the “Orlando couple plan 400-acre neighborhood for disabled adults” article on Sunday’s front page. As a God-loving native Central Floridian, I am grateful for fellow Floridians like Tim and Marie Kuck, who with their planned neighborhood and good works, exemplify to me the practice of the Golden Rule. May donations to Nathaniel’s Hope greatly surpass the profits paid with our tax dollars to the realtors, warehouse owners and contractors who are working to open a detention facility here in Orlando.
— Darlyn Facundus Jimenez, Winter Park
Ladapo’s bad advice
Great! Now we have a measles outbreak in Florida. There was already a measles outbreak in South Carolina and now it is here. So I just want to thank Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo for his idiotic stance on getting children vaccinated against a childhood disease which is highly contagious and can cause severe side effects including neurodegenerative disease and deafness.
A serious complication of measles is acute encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, which can result in permanent brain damage in one of every 1,000 cases. In the U.S., death from neurologic or respiratory complications of measles occurs in one to three of every 1,000 cases. Measles is one of the most highly communicable infections. It’s spread through contact with infectious droplets or through the air. Patients with a measles infection are contagious from four days before the rash through four days after the rash appears .More than 97% of people who receive two doses of the MMR vaccine develop immunity to measles. The second dose of the vaccine protects those who fail to respond to their primary dose.
Now, what do people want to do? Lissten to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or listen to the facts and the scientists who know what they are talking about? It’s up to them. I’d listen to the doctors and not someone without a science or medical degree. Here’s to not having children suffer from measles.
— Joy Putnam, Daytona Beach
State policies are attacking wildlife
Florida’s wildlife is under attack, not from nature, but from our own state policies. From loosening development restrictions to proposing new toll roads that cut through vital habitats, it’s clear that the state’s priorities favor short-term economic gain over long-term ecological health.
As a resident who values Florida’s unique biodiversity, I am deeply concerned about the disregard for environmental protections. Our manatees, panthers, bears and countless other species rely on healthy ecosystems to survive, ecosystems that are shrinking daily due to human encroachment and legislative negligence.
I urge our lawmakers and fellow citizens to remember that once these wild places and animals are gone, they’re gone forever. We must push for policies that protect, not exploit, our natural heritage.
What will we tell the children when the animals are gone?
— Jocelyn Amalong Oehmler, Winter Park
Count Trump’s lies
On June 23, 2017, the New York Times published a landmark two-page spread documenting every lie told by Donald Trump in his first six months titled “Trump’s Lies.”
Today, in 2026, those two pages would look like a mere footnote.
By the end of his first term, The Washington Post had documented 30,573 false or misleading claims. Up from six daily lies in 2017 to over 500 per day by late 2020. Since his return to office in 2025, this firehose of lies has only accelerated, distorting everything from economic data to constitutional law.
Shame on us for lowering the standards of basic truth for the highest office in the land. This is not just “politics as usual;” it is a strategic “flooding of the zone” designed to exhaust us into indifference. We cannot afford to be exhausted.
I am calling on the New York Times to republish and update that 2017 editorial. It wouldn’t fit on two pages anymore; it would likely require an entire special section. But we, the people, need to see the full, staggering scope of this deception in black and white.
A democracy cannot survive without a shared reality. We must demand a return to integrity from our leaders and a return to courage from our newspapers.
— Julia Roach, Maitland
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