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Letters 2/9/2026

By AVA News Service on February 9, 2026

PAID AGITATORS?

Editor:

The Trump administration and other Republican officials have frequently claimed protesters, such as those in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and other cities are “paid agitators.” They continue to say this without ever providing an iota of proof. Conversely, the Trump administration has hired thousands of ICE agents and sent them, along with Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen, to U.S. cities. And now they are even considering sending American troops to Minneapolis. It is the actions of these ICE agents and Border Patrol agents that seem to be agitating the citizens of this country. I would like to remind your readers that these agents and troops are paid using American citizens’ tax dollars. It seems that Trump and his supporters have got the story backward regarding paid agitators.

Chris Carpenter

Petaluma

IS ANYBODY SAFE?

To the Editor:

Yes, the Trump administration is lying to our faces. This editorial encapsulates our current national situation.

I am a lifelong resident of Minnesota, 86 years of age. Our state has been known as a liberal state and mostly votes Democratic. That apparently does not sit well with the current administration.

We are besieged by federal government forces flooding our streets, terrorizing our residents, scaring our kids. They have brutally and unjustly killed two citizens here since they arrived.

Where is this going? When will it end? Who is safe now?

Judith Koll Healey

Minneapolis

WRONG PRIORITIES

To the Editor:

As a fellow doctor, I urge Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who leads the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, to reconsider his prioritizing of individual choice over community protection.

Freedom isn’t absolute; it’s balanced against harm to others. Examples of societal limits on choice include wearing seatbelts, paying taxes, obeying traffic laws, banning smoking in public areas and prohibiting drunken driving, among hundreds of other measures. These aren’t choices we debate; they’re foundational protections.

Before polio vaccines, I saw friends and family crippled. I’ve seen preventable diseases ravage communities. Compulsory vaccination isn’t about stripping rights; it’s about shared responsibility. When enough people choose not to vaccinate, outbreaks happen. Common sense says protect the herd.

David S. Cantor

Los Angeles

STILL UPHOLDING MY OATH

Editor:

As a young man I took an oath to defend our Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. I repeated this oath many times during my 21 years of military service. During all that time the enemies I worried about were foreign. Now as an older person I must include domestic enemies. Not the individuals labeled “domestic terrorist” by Donald Trump and his administration, but the domestic enemies who defy the law and our Constitution in the name of justice. In my opinion this includes most of the leaders in the present Trump administration. Attending protests against authoritarianism, ICE and defunding institutions, as well as writing letters to members of Congress and the editor, is my way of defending what I consider American democracy. Each individual must decide what they want from our government and take action to achieve it. The result is up to you.

Frank Bush

Santa Rosa

WONDERING WHY

Dear Editor:

A lot of folks in the community wonder why Mendocino Railway’s privately owned excursion train qualifies for millions in taxpayer government subsidies. The answer — they work relentlessly propagating the fiction that they are a real railroad that provides needed passenger and freight service. The truth is they are nothing more than an amusement ride with overpriced tickets.

Why do they perpetuate this fiction? The answer: the fiction enables them to get millions in federal taxpayer subsidies and take advantage of legal privileges robber baron railroad owners acquired by hook and crook going back more than hundred years.

The pursuit of corporate welfare over the years has paid off. They were awarded a $21 million federally subsidized loan and an additional $14 million dollar taxpayer funded grant just in the last three years. So in a time when our federal government is running record-breaking deficits and cutting back on food, education and healthcare programs for working families, Mendocino Railway has been raking in corporate welfare at taxpayers’ expense.

Now the railway is going around trumpeting it’s entitled to all that corporate welfare and special privilege, because of a decision by the federal Surface Transportation Board. But anyone that bothers to read the Surface Transportation Board’s decision immediately sees that rather than affirming the railway actually provides passenger and freight service, it simply states that until the board decides otherwise the railroad can continue to claim it is a federally authorized railroad.

What Mendocino Railway fails to acknowledge in all its propaganda is that California’s Attorney General disagrees with the Surface Transportation Board’s ruling and has filed an appeal in the courts to overturn the decision.

One way Mendocino Railway leverages its misuse of taxpayer money is by lobbying the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) to designate the Skunk Train as “public transportation” in the county. The reality is the Skunk Train hasn’t provided transportation of passengers or freight between Fort Bragg and Willits in over a decade. Nevertheless, Mendocino Railway keeps making promises, like it has for over ten years, that it’s going to reopen its collapsed train tunnel and upgrade its dilapidated tracks back to a level that would allow safe passenger and freight railroad service soooooooooon!!!!

Meanwhile, they keep collecting federal subsidies. And even worse, the railway has been trying to take other people’s property even when the owners don’t want to sell it to the railway.

Well, it’s time to end the fiction! And as a step in that direction, many county residents have asked MCOG to delete the Skunk Train tourist ride from the county’s transportation plan. Why? Because the Skunk Train is in fact, a tourist amusement ride — not real transportation for passengers or freight between Fort Bragg and Willits.

The transportation plan is what federal and state agencies rely upon to decide where to invest public transportation dollars in the form of grants and loans. Inclusion in MCOG’s transportation plan isn’t a harmless fiction. It diverts taxpayer money that could be going to fixing our roads or improving our public transit systems. Instead, the money is being diverted into the pockets of a privately owned amusement ride.

If you agree it’s time we stopped this wasteful fiction, send MCOG an email and urge them to stop including the Skunk Train in the transportation plan. MCOG will be taking public comment on the railway in regard to its transportation planning at its next meeting on Monday, Feb. 2 at 1:30 p.m. at the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors chambers, room 1070. You can also attend via Zoom: see www.mendocinocog.org/board-of-directors. Show up and speak your mind!

Peter McNamee

Fort Bragg

RAILWAY FICTIONS & OMISSIONS

Editor,

Re: WONDERING WHY Letter to Editor by Peter McNamee.

In a time when government funding is often distributed quite freely — including the $150,000 grant Mr. McNamee’s organization is using to “educate” the public about our property — it’s worth noting that we will fully repay all of our RRIF loan funds, with interest.

Yes, we also received a $14 million grant, but that funding is dedicated entirely to converting our locomotives to the lowest-emission fuel-based locomotives in the nation. Programs like this are common for both industry and individuals to help accelerate adoption of greener technologies that are more expensive and more complex to operate — much like incentives offered to consumers who purchase electric or hybrid vehicles. These subsidies exist to encourage behavior that aligns with broader societal goals, not to generate profit. We are contributing matching funds, manpower, years of planning, and will not profit from this project.

You also suggest that we failed to mention the California Attorney General in what you describe as “propaganda,” implying that the AG’s involvement represents a significant escalation. In reality, the Attorney General’s role here is largely procedural. I’d be happy to wager a plate of fish and chips at Sea Pal on the ultimate outcome. Moreover, your framing implies independent action, when in fact the AG is acting on behalf of the California Coastal Commission, at its request.

Since we’re discussing omissions, it’s worth noting that for years you have declined to disclose that you live nearly above Tunnel #1, and that your housemate was among those who initiated this conflict. Donne Brownsey was Chair of the California Coastal Commission when it first intervened in 2022. Since then, the Commission has opposed our efforts at nearly every step and continues to threaten legal action — even against the Federal Railroad Administration.

In this dispute, the Coastal Commission has asserted authority not only over the tunnel itself, but over sections of track located more than 30 miles inland. That interpretation stretches coastal jurisdiction well beyond any reasonable boundary. Watch out Willits, the Coastal Commission is almost to you!

We made repeated, good-faith efforts to reopen the tunnel and genuinely believed it could have occurred much sooner. Those efforts were delayed — repeatedly — by the campaign partly initiated by Ms. Brownsey against our railroad.

Have we received a loan and a grant? Yes. Both were awarded only after a competitive, multi-year review process. The funds are restricted to specific purposes, and disbursements occur incrementally — only after work is completed and independently inspected.

Finally, you describe it as “fiction” that we are a real railroad, while ignoring that the federal government affirmed our common-carrier status through both of these funding actions. You also disregard rulings by the Surface Transportation Board and the courts. It appears you are unwilling to acknowledge any outcome that contradicts your position — even if doing so prolongs a conflict to the detriment of the community.

Christopher Hart

Mendocino Railway

AFTER DUCKING SERVICE, TRUMP TRASHES ALLIES

Editor:

Donald Trump, who claimed bone spurs to evade military service during the Vietnam War, should have never berated British and NATO troops in Afghanistan. That is pure cowardice on display by a man who only fights with his mouth and his money. Bad news for America, because Trump won’t hesitate to do the same to U.S. troops.

Joe Clendenin

Santa Rosa

CELLPHONES MAY BE THE BEST TOOL TO HALT ICE

Editor:

It’s sadly ironic but it appears that a cellphone with a camera is considered a lethal weapon by the inadequately trained and highly agitated recruits who are the public face of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In fact, it may be the single most important tool we have to regain a sense of humanity. Hopefully it will happen not only soon, but become an irreversible trend, unlike our penchant to not learn from history’s tragic examples. That will make it seem like a worthwhile detour in the advancement of civilization.

Jonathan McClelland

Santa Rosa

VIOLENCE NOT NECESSARY

Editor,

The U.S. has long deported people. Indeed, former President Barack Obama was referred to as “the Deporter in Chief” for the high numbers of deportations during his administration.

Deportations have occurred without invasion of our cities by an army of untrained, masked thugs, without multiple shootings of civilians and without harassment of people merely for the color of their skin or speaking with an accent.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a menace.

Christiana Tiedemann

Berkeley

BRINGING A FIREARM TO A DEMONSTRATION

Editor:

Like many in this country and the world, I was saddened and sickened by the senseless deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Minneapolis is the leading edge of Donald Trump’s attempt to fundamentally change our form of government from a democracy to a fascist state. I wholeheartedly support our brothers and sisters in Minnesota as they face the faceless thugs acting on Trump’s behalf.

I was disheartened to read that Pretti was carrying a handgun. In September 1981 I was one of almost 2,000 people arrested for protesting the opening of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant despite its close proximity to an earthquake fault. Prior to that action, which involved almost 30,000 people, the Abalone Alliance provided nonviolent civil disobedience training for those of us anticipating arrest, in order to defuse potential volatile interactions with police.

Not actually being present in Minneapolis, I can’t say if the situation has degraded beyond the point of nonviolent protest, but it seems to me that bringing a handgun to a protest just provides an excuse for Trump and his henchmen to continue their march toward fascism. Is Gandhi passé?

Glenn McCrea

Santa Rosa

25TH AMENDMENT FOR TRUMP

Editor:

As I write this, our one-time allies in Europe and around the world are holding emergency meetings to try to figure out how to protect their people from us. What do they do in case the United States’ unpredictable, vengeful, amoral president decides to further disrupt the world economy and/or send U.S. troops to carry out his wildest fantasies?

I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking more and more about the 25th Amendment to our Constitution and its guidelines for determining incompetence and removing the president. It’s looking like we cannot wait for the midterm elections in November to halt the insanity. Have we reached a red line for Donald Trump-supporting Congress people yet? If not, how much worse must it get before they say enough?

I believe the world still believes in the basic goodness of the U.S. The world is waiting for us to act.

Pamela Tennant

Sebastopol

DOESN’T APPLY TO HOUSING

Editor:

We keep hearing about the need to build more affordable housing in Sonoma County. However, I am not aware of any specific guidance as to exactly what price range constitutes housing that is, in fact, “affordable.” There appears to be a belief that if we simply build more housing, home prices will somehow decline. This belief is probably based on the law of supply and demand — increase supply and demand will be met. However, in terms of housing in California, and especially in desirable places like Sonoma County, this is a misconception. There is, and probably always will be, an essentially infinite demand for housing here. The more we build, the more people will come, and prices will, if anything, continue to rise. Supply-side economics simply doesn’t apply. If we want to help assure that current residents, including those raised here, can buy homes in the area we will need some sort of funding mechanism to help current residents purchase homes here.

Doug Yule

Sebastopol

MEMO OF THE WEEK

January 14, 2026

To: The Honorable Brooke Rollins, Secretary, Department of Agriculture, 1400 Independence Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20250 / The Honorable Doug Burgum, Secretary, Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street, NW, Washigtion, DC 20240.

Subject: Fishery and Water Rights held in Trust by the United States for the benefit of the Round Valley Indian Tribes that will be affected by resolution of Pacific Gas & Electric Company's Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Project Number 77-332.

Dear Secretary Rollins and Secretary Burgum:

Greetings from the Round Valley Indian Tribes. We are writing to you today about recent statements by the Administration regarding the Potter Valley Project. Based on these statements, we believe there are additional facts of which you should be aware, and we therefore request government-to-government consultation in this matter.

We are a federally recognized Tribal Nation located in Northern California and our members are descendants of seven distinct tribes: Yuki; Pit River; Little Lake; Pomo; Nomlacki; Concow; and Wailacki. The Eel River and its tributaries border our reservation lands and has been the center of our culture, religion, and economy from the beginning of time. In 1856, the Secretary of the Interior set aside the Nome Cult Farm that comprised 25,030 acres as a reservation for several tribes, including those that comprise the confederated Round Valley Indian Tribes. President Grant in 1870 expanded the reservation to 31,683 acres and confirmed its designation as the Round Valley Indian Reservation.

The Reservation remains our home today.

In creating the reservation, the United States implicitly reserved water from all appurtenant sources then unappropriated, including the Eel River; as necessary to accomplish the Indian purposes of the reservation. (See Cappaert v. United States, 426 U.S. 128,138 (1976). Our federal reserved water rights were vested on the date the reservation was created, 1856. They are senior to all appropriative rights in the Eel River system. Our federal reserved fishing rights likewise were secured by the creation of our reservation, including the act of Congress in 1873, which enlarged our reservation by 77,000 acres and set the boundaries of our reservation “extending from the Middle Fork of Eel River on the east to the ‹Eel River on the west… and the center of the Middle Fork river shall be the eastern boundary, and the center of the Eel shall be the western boundary of said reservation, with the privilege of fishing in said streams.” Act of March 3, 1873 (17 Stat. 633).

Although our water and fishing rights are unquantified and unadjudicated, they are the senior, or first priority, rights on the Eel River system for which the United States has a fiduciary responsibility. An unbroken line of case-law supports the existence of Tribal rights in similar circumstances and the obligation of the United States to protect our rights. (Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564) (1908). Because Winters rights belong to the Tribes themselves, the United States may not impair such rights by diverting water subject to the right off the reservation); Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 603, 626-627, (1983) (when the United States holds tribal water rights in trust, it must manage those rights as a fiduciary held to the most exacting fiduciary standards).

In the early 1900s, the Potter Valley Project (PVP), which is junior to the date of our reservation by more than 50 years, began diverting Eel River water into the Russian River system. The diversion was intended principally for the development of electricity (which PG&E ceased generating in 2021 because it was no longer economically sound to maintain and operate the project) and then made available for beneficial use by water users in the Russian River Basin, which continues to this day.

While this diversion has been a significant benefit to the communities of the Russian River Basin, it has also resulted in the PVP effectively subordinating the Eel River to the needs of the Russian River and along with it, our culture, our fishery, our economy, and our way of life.

Over the past 100 years, we never received any electricity generated by the PVP or any economic benefit from our water being taken to benefit junior water users, as is commonplace throughout the west. By any measurement, this has been a one-sided arrangement to benefit others at our expense.

We provide this background because the United States is our trustee and holds in trust our water and fishing rights. In our review of recent public statements and filings made by the Administration before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the alleged impacts of removing the PVP on junior water users is discussed at length, but the impacts from retaining the PVP on our senior water and fishing rights, much less our culture, our economy, and our way of life, are never mentioned. Also not mentioned is the obligation of the United States as trustee, to protect these rights.

Additionally overlooked are the benefits of the Two-Basin Solution, which strikes a balance between the needs of the Eel River and its communities, and that of junior Russian River water users. Under this approach, we are agreeing to forbear the exercise of our senior water and fishing rights and allow for diversions to be maintained for junior water users, in a manner that will also support recovery of our fishery, for thirty (30) years with a potential renewal for an additional twenty (20) years, if certain conditions are met.

Moreover, we are collaborating with our partners in the Russian River Basin to expand the storage of Coyote Valley Dam and to expedite a pipeline from Lake Mendocino to minimize disruptions to our neighbors. Our tribal members work and live in the broader regional community and despite the historic injustice to our tribal community, an “all or nothing approach” is simply not realistic. We have instead agreed to a solution that protects our sovereignty and rebuilds our fishery and our economy while also allowing diversions to continue despite our holding senior rights.

Notwithstanding our desire to find a workable solution, we continue to hear from opponents to the Two-Basin Solution that the Administration is continuing to explore maintaining these facilities. We do not understand how a one-sided solution that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure retrofitting while continuing the subordination of our rights and our tribal community, will benefit the entire region. Instead, it will only benefit a select few who want to continue a century of their gains at our expense.

Our desire to work with those who want to work with us will not extend to working with those who seek to harken back to a time in our history when Tribal Resources were subordinated to benefit others in violation of our federal fishing and water rights.

We were not afforded the opportunity to oppose the initial Potter Valley Project more than 100 years ago, but we will oppose any attempts to retain it. Potential subsequent owners should understand that in addition to necessary and costly structural solutions, retaining these dams will require changes in water rights that are subject to the jurisdiction of the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB).

The Tribe, as the beneficiary of senior-water and fishing rights, will oppose any attempts to retain these dams before the SWRCB or in any other legal forum, and will protect our water and fishing rights.

The Two-Basin Solution is not about radical environmentalism or putting fish above people.

Instead, it is a reasonable and measured solution reached by communities in both basins that acknowledges our sovereignty and rebuilds our economy while protecting junior users for at least thirty (30) and possibly fifty (50) years. We welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss our history and the devastation the Potter Valley Project has had on our Nation as well as the Two-Basin Solution and why we believe it is a workable solution.

Respectfully,

Joseph Parker Sr., President

Round Valley Indian Tribes

A Sovereign Nation of Confederated Tribes

Located on State Hwy 162, one mile north of Covelo in Round Valley. Tribal Territory Since Time Began

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