 |
|
|
|||||
President Donald Trump’s claim that there is shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security system during his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday is just the latest in a series of attacks from the Republican administration, sparking concern over the program’s future. Meanwhile, Trump adviser Elon Musk has falsely called it a “Ponzi scheme,” and he’s even claimed on X that some 20 million dead Americans over the age of 100 were receiving payments which, of course, has been debunked. (Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said those claims are “an outrageous lie . . . intended to lay the groundwork” to cut benefits.) At the same time Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been caught trying to access private, personal taxpayer data at the Social Security Administration (SSA), leading the acting head of the SSA to reportedly resign. It comes on the heels of the SSA’s cuts to some 7,000 jobs as part of DOGE’s slashing of the federal workforce, which threaten to interrupt Social Security payments within the next “30 to 90 days,” according to former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley. “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley told CNBC. That threat has a lot of people “wondering what theyre gonna do when their social security checks start failing,” one Bluesky user noted. It also angered another user, who goes by Sandi Bachom, who posted, “I’m 80 years old. I decided to call #SocialSecurity . . . ‘If you are calling about a disability application due to staffing reductions, our average processing time for disability applications is 200 to 230 days. The estimated hold time is greater than 120 minutes.'” About 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people, and their families receive Social Security benefits; and many elderly Americans rely on the checks just to make ends meet. Several Democrats also took to social media to set the record straight, including Democratic Washington Senator Patty Murray, who explained on X, “Trump is LYING about Social Security right now . . . [He and Musk] are cutting staff drastically at Social Security to make it harder for seniors to get their benefits. These corrupt billionaires need to keep their HANDS OFF Social Security!” Senator Sanders added on X, “What is the goal of this disinformation campaign? To privatize the most successful government program in history and give it over to Wall Street.” According to the Brookings Institution, that would be difficult and has a “major financial hurdle,” because Social Security has accumulated “trillions of dollars in liabilities to workers who are already retired or who will retire soon.” To make room for a new private system, “policymakers would have to find funds to pay for these liabilities while still leaving young workers enough money to deposit in new private accounts,” which would lead to cutting benefits or increasing contributions from current workers.
Category:
E-Commerce
There are few stages in politics like a joint session of Congress for the president to get their message out to a wide audience, but members of Congress have increasingly attempted to wrest that stage back for themselves. Tuesday’s speech was the latest in a growing trend. The House sergeant at arms removed Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, from President Donald Trump’s speech after he repeatedly shouted that Trump had no mandate to cut Medicaid. Republican lawmakers have shouted in the past during addresses from former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, but those incidents did not lead to lawmakers’ removal. Rep. Al Green (D-TX) is removed from the chamber as President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025. [Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images] It’s nonverbal communications, though, that most members of Congress have turned to in recent years in an attempt to co-opt presidents’ speeches. Democrats this year did something unique this year: they brought props. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouts as U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2009. [Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images] Some held simple, circular black signs with slogans written in white letters like, False, Save Medicaid, and Musk Steals. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico held a handwritten sign that read This Is Not Normal that a Republican colleague ripped from her hands. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan brought a whiteboard that she used to write messages like Stop lying to the American people! and That’s a lie! Rep. Melanie Stansbury, (D-NM), holds a sign reading “This is not normal” as US President Donald Trump arrives to address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol on March 4, 2025. [Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images] Trump’s speech was indeed filled with false statements. He overinflated how much the U.S. has spent to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and underestimated how much his tariffs could cost American families. Throughout his speech, Trump used Democrats as a foil and criticized them for not clapping. Lawmakers have turned to clothing to make a statement at the State of the Union, like the all-white outfits women wore to symbolize suffrage during Trump’s first term. Trump’s Tuesday speech was no different, with some wearing pink and others blue and yellow as a show of support for Ukraine. Last year, though, a pair of Republicans were less subtle with the message of their dress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) shouts during Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Thursday, March 7, 2024. [Photo: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia wore a Make America Great Again hat and t-shirt with the phrase Say Her Name in reference to Laken Riley, a 22-year old nursing student who was killed by a man who was in the country illegally, to Biden’s State of the Union address last year. Rep. Troy Nehls wore a shirt with Trump’s mugshot and paired it with a bowtie wrapped around his collarless neck. Green’s and Nehls’s t-shirt messaging in 2024 portended the signs Democrats held in 2025, and suggest lawmakers no longer see the State of the Union as something to merely watch. It’s political theater, but the president is no longer the only actor on the stage.
Category:
E-Commerce
On Tuesday, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro launched a campaign for President Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in the death of George Floyd. Shortly after, Elon Musk, who has been one of Trump’s closest advisors during his first six weeks in office, reshared the campaign on X (formerly Twitter) to his 219 million followers along with his own commentary: “Something to think about.” Shapiro posted a call for Chauvins pardon along with a petition for supporters to sign on the conservative media site he founded, The Daily Wire.“We write to urge you to immediately issue a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin, who was unjustly convicted and is currently serving a 22-and-a-half-year sentence for the murder of George Floyd and associated federal charges,” Shapiro wrote in the online petition called Pardon Derek. He continued, “As you know, this was the inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in cities across the United States and set Americas race relations on their worst footing in recent memory. Yet, the evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd.”Shapiro claims that immense pressure from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, rather than just the facts of the case, caused the jury to find the former officer guilty. He also says that Floyd was high on fentanyl and had a preexisting heart condition. Though a flurry of false information about Floyds death has gone viral since Chavin’s conviction, the victim’s death was ruled a homicide. Expert witnesses concluded that Floyd did not die of an overdose due to drug use, but as a result of cardiopulmonary arrest.” The jury took only 10 hours to deliberate on the matter and return to the courtroom with a guilty verdict. Trump himself hasn’t publicly weighed in on a pardon for Chauvin, but it wouldn’t be the first time he pardoned a violent criminal since taking office. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants, including some who violently attacked police officers defending the Capitol. “It would be very, very cumbersome to go and lookyou know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people,” Trump told Fox News while defending the pardons. “These people have served, horribly, a long time,” he said. An NPR report found that dozens of the pardoned January 6 defendants had prior convictions or pending charges for violent crimes ranging from domestic violence and sexual abuse of a minor to rape and manslaughter. Just days after Trump’s order, one of the pardoned rioters, Matthew Tuttle, who prosecutors said had an “extensive criminal history” including abuse of his child, was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||