To the editor:

Feb. 19, 2026 was a big day for Donald Trump. The DOJ hung a huge three-story (1984 & Animal Farm-like) “great leader” banner featuring his picture on their office building. 

Evidently such banners are planned for other federal buildings.

He held the first meeting of his board of peace, which costs a billion dollars to join and which Argentina signed up for after we gave them $60 billion to save their economy. At that meeting he announced a name change to “Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace.” He announced the U.S. would be contributing $10 billion to this institute.

At this meeting, Trump also announced he will be making his decision within 10 days about whether the U.S. military will strike Iran.

At his speech in Georgia on Feb. 19, Trump said he has “won” on affordability. He also repeated again the lie that he won the 2020 election. He went on to say that if his allies in Congress pass the SAVE act, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.” This comment came after Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem said, “We’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead the country.”

Even with all these developments, I was planning on taking a break from letter writing until I learned that in that same Georgia speech he made a comment that few news sources reported. He said that he wanted to give himself the Congressional Medal of Honor because he had been “extremely brave” when he visited U.S. troops in Iraq in 2018. These are one day’s distractions from the failure to release the Epstein files!

Ron Svaty

Ellsworth