Every U.S. president has the right to create their own executive orders or negate executive orders from prior presidents. Each time an executive order is reversed, there may be financial and process-oriented government actions that occur, paid for by American taxpayers.

Some orders, such as Donald Trump’s recent vanity decision to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in the United States, aren’t financially draining. Others, though, such as his decision to direct federal agencies to align U.S. childhood vaccine recommendations with scientific evidence and practices in peer-developed countries, have costly implications.

Trump has signed more than 250 executive orders during his second term. He has also reversed dozens of executive orders by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, adding greater financial burden. If a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, chances are many of Trump’s executive orders will be reversed, continuing this endless cycle of reverse and replacement.

This continual whipsaw of changes in which the opposite party wins the White House has never been a productive way to govern. It’s time Congress looks at this arcane process and creates new laws to shape, clarify and limit what an incoming president can and cannot do after taking office.

— Rick Weber, Northbrook

Iran’s pursuit of a nuke

Although Daniel DePetris opines that there is still “no clear winner” (“At 6 months, there is no clear winner in Iran war,” Sept. 1) in the war on Iran and that President Donald Trump should extricate the U.S. from this conflict, just this week, Trump told the world that Iran has been “totally defeated militarily,” and last summer, Trump proclaimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated.”

Of course, Trump’s claims might not match up with the facts. No surprise there.

Still, DePetris also writes that Iran’s supreme leader is intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon and Iran may have access to enriched uranium. If this is the case, would extricating the U.S. from the conflict be the right decision?

Given Iran’s history of aggression and hatred for the West, as well as this regime’s zealotry, could anyone be confident that Iran would never use a nuke?

— Terry Takash, Western Springs

Real winners of Iran war

I beg to differ with columnist Daniel DePetris’ opinion that there is no clear winner in the Iran war. It is clear to me that demand for the weapons used (missiles, guns, drones, etc.) and the subsequent manufacture and sales of these weapons have made the arms manufacturers and suppliers to the war effort the real winners.

The clear losers (in addition to those who have been injured or killed) are the American taxpayers, who besides paying federal income taxes continue to pay an inflation tax every day.

— Wayne A. Mitchell, Crystal Lake

Can’t we be better as a nation?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement now wants to purchase and use electric shock gloves on the immigrants and refugees it detains. And right now, immigrants from Haiti are being forced to wear ankle monitors.

I do not have the words. I am the granddaughter of an immigrant — and sure, she did it the “right way,” but people showing up for hearings, trying to complete the process the “right way,” have been detained and sent to our modern-day concentration camps, where the lucky ones who have been released report insects in moldy food, inhumanely crowded conditions and no medical care, even for those with extreme needs.

I’m alas aware that our country has never been perfect — from our treatment of people indigenous to this land, to slavery, the owning of fellow human beings that was legal for years. But can’t we be better? Can’t we at least strive to meet the ideals of each person being entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the forbidding of cruel and unusual punishment?

— Diane O’Neill, Chicago

Ban mass mail-in voting

Regarding the Associated Press story “Across US, a race to defend vote” (in print Aug. 29): Are you kidding me? A race to defend the vote?

Mass mail-in voting started only six years ago because of COVID-19. For a few hundred years, we didn’t have it, and nobody thought their voting rights were being infringed upon. I would be very suspicious of this.

We have four weeks of early voting, but we still need to be able to do this at home? Why do we even have polling places? When a person votes in person, we know who is casting the ballot. When they vote at home, we don’t know who is filling out the ballot.

When a person votes in person, we know that person is voting in private. When they vote at home, we don’t know if other people are telling them how to vote.

Mass mail-in voting should be banned. At the very least, no ballots should be accepted after the polls close on Election Day. If you can’t get your vote in by then, then that is on you.

— Larry Craig, Wilmette

Renaming of Lake Ontario

Now that President Donald Trump has signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” we’re all being forced to witness yet another round of knuckleheaded nomenclature nonsense. Let’s see if we can guess which of three things will likely happen next.

One: A whole bunch of people, who I will decline to name here, will finally be able to identify on a map where Lake Ontario is? Two: Those same people will finally be able admit the president’s not doing a damn thing for anybody but himself? Three: Do I even need to ask?

— Jim Koppensteiner, Niles

Remember this from 1979

Americans should be outraged because of President Donald Trump’s shameful treatment of Canada.

Trump seems to have no clue concerning the gallant role the Canadian Embassy played in sheltering six American diplomats after Iranian students seized the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held the occupants hostage. The Canadian Embassy harbored the diplomats who eluded capture and then gave them fake Canadian passports that enabled them to escape from Iran early in 1980.

Trump’s treatment of our great neighbor to the north is a national disgrace.

— Neil Milbert, Wilmette

The country that we want

Are you living in the kind of country you want?

Our republic is a representative democracy. This means we the people have the power to choose who will do our bidding in “the room where it happens.” How do we accomplish this? We talk with our neighbors about our needs and wants, and we find someone who will speak and work for us at local, state and national levels.

Those representatives must be willing and able to serve us for a period of time. Also, they must reflect our needs and wishes in local, state and national managing bodies.

This all depends on our communication, not only with one another, but also with the representatives we choose. Further, it depends on these representatives communicating with us about their work in those local, state and national bodies.

Questions:

How do we discuss with one another and prioritize our needs and wants? How do we find people who can and will represent these needs and wants? How do these representatives continue to know what we need and want? And how do we know they are, in fact, serving us the people? And finally, is this the way our democracy — our republic — is working now?

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin summarizing the fragility of this form of self-government: We have “a republic, if we can keep it.”

— Bill King, McHenry

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.