Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    When I am reading about Austin’s budget deficit, all I can think about are the huge tax incentives given to big corporations to move to town ["Council Works on Budgeting Around a Steep Deficit," News, June 6]. Think Tesla and other tech companies. How could the city not see this coming given the data that shows giving tax breaks to billionaire companies don’t provide a net benefit to the city. So here we are again asking individual taxpayers to pick up the tab while corporate giants get off tax-free and overburden our roads, power grids, city services and increase pollution. Come on man. Make the corporations pay.

Dear Editor,
    I was shaking my head when I read the Opinion column on ALPR ["License Plate Readers Make Us All Less Safe," Columns, June 6] as to the apathy and ignorance shown by our city manager and the City Council.
    Once again, the Austin City Council has turned its back on police and public safety by taking away a "must have" tool from the police to fight crime and criminals - the Automatic License Plate Reader.
    This technology is old (yesteryear's AI) and it is widely used by tolling authorities for several years. I am puzzled that our Council members think of it as some kind of a new AI surveillance device untrustworthy of police to use it responsibly. The police need all the help they can get from technology to identify the vehicles used in crime expeditiously in order to investigate, apprehend the criminals, and prevent additional loss of property and lives as quickly as possible.
    By using one-off fringe examples, Austin City Council has disabled our police by withholding widely available license plate reading technology and forcing them to use the laborious manual method of visually looking through the camera footage to identify a car and trace the criminals. What a waste of time! The same Council members and our mayor shed crocodile tears for not having enough money to pay the police! Whose side are they on - police or criminals?
    I am sure that law-abiding, taxpaying citizens like me will teach a hard lesson to the incumbents in the next election.

Dear Editor,
    No Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. If you pay attention to our state and where we stand in relation to the other 49 states, we are consistently ranked at the bottom of everything good. For example, we have the highest number of uninsured citizens, we rank in the bottom 10 in per-student education funding, we are consistently among the worst states for both air and water pollution, we're in the lowest-performing states for women's health care and 47 out of 50 in women's equality. We have low rankings in affordability and safety.
    We also have some of the most money spent in state elections from both candidates and outside groups. The [school] voucher bill was able to pass in spite of most citizens being against the bill, especially in rural areas, due to the millions of dollars given by pro voucher influences like Jeff Yass, who is from Pennsylvania and gave $6 million to Abbott, and Tim Dunn from Midland.
    Now our Lege has passed a bill that gives the state government control over our state colleges and universities. The government will control who can be hired, what they can teach, and which students can be admitted. So if our state-elected politicians are obviously not protecting its citizens, why do the Republicans keep winning elections? People need to wake up and see what harm the Republican Party has done and continues to do to our state and the people who live here. Stop electing those who don't care about us and instead care more about keeping power and lining their pockets!

Dear Editor,
    [Re: "Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported," Daily News, June 4]
    I am the child of a United States Air Force non-commissioned officer. My mother was English. I was born on a now-defunct American air force base in Great Britain. I am also the father and grandfather of United States Marines. I have all the paperwork to justify my status as a 100% American citizen. The fascists running this country are going to use any flimsy pretense to arrest, harangue, deport, and imprison "troublemakers" who oppose their treachery. Do not be passive about your status in America. Carry copies of your citizenship status everywhere you go, and look out for your friends and family. We are in a crisis that will carry many innocent victims to undeserved fates as long as this government of scofflaws and zealots prevails.

Dear Editor,
    With respect to your story concerning the deportation of Jermaine Thomas to Jamaica ["Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported," Daily News, June 4]. He was born to an American father on an American base in Germany. What nationality was his mother (though it doesn’t matter)? The rule has always been that an American base functions as American soil, conferring constitutional protections to children born to our military overseas. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of Americans, if one followed this precedent, face imminent deportment. Even if one narrows the field to children of naturalized citizens serving in our military, what does that say about the meaning of naturalized citizenship?
    I think it couldn’t be clearer that ICE used his father’s Jamaican origin, and his son’s Black skin, as a feeble legal excuse to deport an American citizen, whose criminal record and unfortunate homelessness, classified him as a less-than-ideal citizen. It’s too bad the ACLU doesn’t prosecute Mr. Thomas’ case.

Dear Editor,
    [Re: "Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported," Daily News, June 4:]
    Interesting to note I'm not the only one that this happened to, less the deportation. The big difference is both of my parents were in the Army, stationed in Germany, where I was born! I was also born in a military hospital. Applying for a new state ID, I was turned down because I couldn't prove I was a U.S. citizen! Technically, I could have been deported back to Germany. After many hours of paperwork and obtaining many documents and through the intervention of a supervisor, the state of Texas declared I was a U.S. citizen! I finally received my new ID Apparently, this is more common than what I thought.

Dear Editor,
    Sorry, just have to reply to Wendy Gordon’s letter published May 23, 2025 ["Culture and Anarchy," about the story "Arts Groups Lose Promised Grant Money in Friday Night NEA Massacre," Daily Arts, May 5]. The entire 2025 budget for the NEA is $210 million. The cost of one (1) stealth bomber in our arsenal is $2.13 BILLION, and we have a [planned] fleet of over 100 of these planes. We could fund the NEA for 10 years with the cost of just ONE plane. We are not funding social programs with the “trillion-plus-dollar budget deficits.” As a matter of fact, the cost of the NEA shows up as 0.0% of the FY 2025 U.S. federal budget as it's such a small amount out of the total government spending.