What July 4 and ‘No Kings’ Means to Me
This letter to the editor, by Cheri Evjen, appeared in the Hudson Star Observer on November 13, 2025.
Americans celebrate the original “No Kings” Day July 4 of each year with parades, speeches, fireworks and picnics to honor our courageous decision ending the tyrannical reign of King George III.
Those first patriots provided good reasons to support independence from England.
Their first was that King George has “refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary to the public good.”
Not only has the current President refused his assent to laws for the public good, but he has unilaterally defunded or cancelled many such laws.
He has demanded that payments be cut from the SNAP program. 689,000 Wisconsin residents, many of them children, seniors or people with disabilities, depend on SNAP for basic nutrition. Every dollar in SNAP investments returns $1.50 to communities in Wisconsin.
He has ordered the Education Department closed and fired thousands of people who help administer Title I funding. The administration also slashed funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. His order will hurt mostly rural, low income districts and students with special needs.
He has orchestrated the largest health care cuts in America’s history, more than a trillion dollars over 10 years, without even offering “concepts of a plan” to improve the system. Many of these cuts will come from Medicaid, which serves 1.33 million (22.4%) of Wisconsin’s residents. The impact of the cuts will fall most heavily in rural areas and will lead to the closure of more clinics and hospitals in Western Wisconsin.
The Congressional Budget Office believes that 16 million Americans will lose insurance coverage by 2034 thanks to Trump’s draconian cuts. Many Wisconsinites have seen premiums for next year double as a result of continued efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act.
Anyone who celebrates July 4 should join the millions of Americans who are fighting to take back power from an autocratic ruler who actively opposes laws for the public good and restore it to the rightful owners – the people.