My Sunday roundup of articles and ideas from the past week—re-upping content that might help us figure out what's going on, what comes next, and how to get through it all.
If Social Security is the "third rail" in US politics, you'd have to be high on some kind of mind-altering drug to want to attack it with a chainsaw.
But Elon sees dead people.
And he's nothing if not determined.
Musk has made false claims about Social Security fraud a centerpiece of his efforts to attack the program he views as a "Ponzi scheme." And despite the reality that fraud is a fraction of 1% of the payments made annually, he refuses to abandon his misinformation campaign.
Meanwhile, at a time when staffing at the Social Security Administration is at a 50-year low, the SSA's Trump-appointed leadership "recently announced its intent to eliminate 7,000 jobs, slicing the agency’s already skeletal staff down to the marrow," writes Molly Weston Williamson in an MSNBC opinion column.
"With no capacity to spare," she adds, "the consequences could quickly turn dire."
If Social Security benefits stop — or even experience delays — the impact will be immediate and catastrophic. In a recent survey, 42% of Americans age 65 and up reported they wouldn’t be able to afford necessities like food, clothes or housing without their monthly Social Security retirement benefits. Over 11 million disabled Americans under age 65 also receive benefits through Social Security — payments that are subject to strict rules limiting recipients’ ability to earn wages or accrue savings. For these disabled Americans, too, even a few days’ delay could mean not putting food on the table.
But Trump, Musk and Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek aren't stopping there.
This week they announced a major change that one leading Social Security advocate says is designed "ultimately collapse the system" that allows tens of millions of Americans to collect their earned Social Security benefits each month.
The new plan—effective March 31—will eliminate the decades-old process that allowed senior citizens and people with disabilities to verify their identities over the phone when applying for benefits.
Those who lack the computer skills or internet access they need to apply online will now be required to call SSA (if they can get through) to set up an appointment and travel in person to an SSA field office.
According to Judd Legum's Popular Information newsletter:
Even before these changes, the average wait time for an in-person appointment was one month, and some people had to travel 100 miles to reach their nearest field office.
As Legum wrote on X:
The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices, and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system — denying many Americans the benefits they are due.
Says the AARP:
There is nothing ‘efficient’ about creating more confusion and disrupting the lives of millions of hardworking American taxpayers with such short notice and with no input from the public.
Protests against the changes are happening across the country. And the AARP said said its members have delivered more than 800,000 messages to members of Congress in the past two weeks urging lawmakers to protect Social Security.
Whitewashing American history
Two years ago, I interviewed Texas historian Benjamin H. Johnson to learn more about a "palace coup" at the Texas State Historical Association led by Houston billionaire J.P. Bryan. Back then, I wrote that:
Conservatives... are trying to... elevate a white Christian fantasy about the world, while silencing, even erasing, the stories of those they don't like or approve of.
Whitewashing Texas History
Houston billionaire J.P. Bryan has staged a “palace coup” at the Texas State Historical Association with a plan to remove from the influential Handbook of Texas details of the state’s history of racial violence. I interview Texas historian Benjamin H. Johnson to find out what’s going on.
Richard Hine
Turns out what was happening in Texas was just another example of radical white supremacist strategies being road-tested at the state level before going national.
This week, Don Moynihan wrote:
Right now, the federal government is engaged in a dramatic purging of visual representations of American history and its current workforce... “DEI” labels had been added to now inaccessible pages honoring Civil War nurses, prominent Black veterans and units, including the 54th Massachusetts Regiment depicted in the film "Glory" and the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II. And, I shit you not, Golden Girl Bea Arthur’s page noting her record as a marine is gone.... A story about how baseball great Jackie Robinson faced discrimination in the military before he broke the color barrier in baseball has been removed.... A page honoring Colin Powell has been removed and relabeled as DEI. Pages discussing racial integration of the military have been cut.
Whitewashing American history
The Trump Presidency as a project of erasure
Don Moynihan
The Labor Department's new CIO is a 28 year-old, "AI-first" ex-Tesla engineer
As Brian Merchant reports in his Blood in Machine newsletter:
Thomas Shedd, the 28 year-old ex-Tesla engineer and DOGE official installed as the head of the federal government’s Technology Transformation Services, has quietly—and perhaps illegally—become the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Labor, too. Shedd is the official who made waves for announcing that DOGE would be implementing an “AI-first strategy” across the government as it orchestrated the firing of tens of thousands of federal workers. Now he’s in charge of the US labor department’s technology.
The seemingly illegal appointment is especially concerning because the Department of Labor:
Administers and enforces 180 federal laws that protect, according to agency estimates, 165 million workers in 11 million workplaces. In addition to collecting vast data troves on workers under the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the department oversees wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, union laws, and workplace safety laws. It enforces laws protecting recipients of government contracts, grants, and financial aid. It enforces laws governing the distribution of pensions and welfare benefits—the latter two being of particular interest to DOGE, whose stated intent is to slash labor costs and eliminate contracts deemed to be connected to “DEI” principles.
As Merchant sums it up:
A former Tesla engineer, Musk lackey, and AI aficionado is now in a leadership role at the labor department. A Silicon Valley acolyte with dull plans to put “AI first” is in the command center of the agency tasked with protecting the nation’s workers.
Shedd is one of the brilliant minds who helped Musk rush 46,000 extremely dangerous Cybertrucks onto the road.
What could go wrong?
DOGE’s ‘AI-first’ strategist is now the head of technology at the Department of Labor
The ex-Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd has quietly become the CIO of the labor department as mass layoffs and federal workforce automation continue.
Brian Merchant
C02 levels are at an 800,000-year high
Trump probably picked the wrong month to roll back the EPA rules that had been projected to save 200,000 lives.
According to a new UN report out this week:
Last year was the hottest year on record, the top 10 hottest years were all in the past decade and planet-heating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at an 800,000-year high.
Meanwhile cuts at the National Weather Service will soon be making it harder to get reliable forecasts about the even-extremer weather events coming our way.
As Axios reports, Trump's cuts have leaders of the Weather Industrial Complex freaked out.
The Weather Company's Neilley called the advancements in weather forecasting during the past 75 years "one of the greatest scientific achievements."
In an interview with Axios, he described a three-legged stool of academia, private weather and climate companies and the federal government.
Weaken any leg, he warned, and an "informed and resilient society" is in jeopardy.
Turns out the for-profit weather industry would be nothing without Big Government. It's whole business model is built "on the raw data that NOAA's satellites, ground observation stations, computer models and other infrastructure gather and disseminate for free."
The Trumpcession is coming
You heard it here first.
But now the man who promised on January 20th that “the golden age of America begins right now” is admitting he has failed us—that his policies could turn the Biden Boom into a Trump Tailspin.
Don't be surprised if things get so bad in the next 18 months that Donny and Elon decide they have to declare a national emergency and cancel the midterms.
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P.S. This really is the time to get off X once and for all. Please find me on Bluesky and these other places.
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