Trump is a performer who plays the part of a businessman. In New York City, he was known for his high-flying lifestyle, his frequent appearances at nightclubs, and his escapades with beautiful women. A businessman? He declared bankruptcy six times. His credit rating was so poor that no American bank would lend him money.
MAD magazine published this Trump cartoon in 1992:
ICE swept up a Maryland man and deported him to the infamous prison in El Salvador for terrorists and hardened criminals. But Abrego Garcia was not a terrorist or a gang member. The Trump administration admitted that his arrest and detention was an “administrative error” but claimed that he could not be returned because he was no longer in U.S. jurisdiction. The lower federal courts ordered the administration to bring him back. The Trump administration objected–unwilling to bring home an innocent victim of their error–and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court released a unanimous ruling that seemed to favor the return of Abrego Garcia.
Allison Gill took a close look at the decision and finds many opportunities in its decision to keep Mr. Garcia imprisoned.
She wrote:
It appears to be a victory – that the Supreme Court “unanimously” agrees that the government must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia – the Maryland father that was disappeared to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador on a government-admitted “administrative error.”
But the Supreme Court did the wrong thing here by even bothering to weigh in.
The Breakdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Do you remember in the immunity ruling, when the Supreme Court sent the case back down to Judge Chutkan after they made their “rule for the ages?” They shoved their robes where they didn’t belong because they should have just denied Trump’s application. Remanding it back to the District Court left the door open for Judge Chutkan’s clarification on official acts to be appealed again – all the way back up to the Supreme Court if necessary – so that the supremes could once again have final say over what the lower court had decided. It also had the added bonus of tacking at least another year of delay onto the case – provided the Supreme Court would have let the case live after the second go-round.
In the Abrego Garcia case, the liberal justices say they would have denied Trump’s application outright, leaving the lower court order in place:
Because every factor governing requests for equitable relief manifestly weighs against the Government, Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 426 (2009), I would have declined to intervene in this litigation and denied the application in full. (Statement of Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join.)
Technically, the ruling is unanimous because the three liberal justices ultimately agree with the court’s ruling, but by intervening instead of denying the application outright, the Supreme Court is asking the District Court to clarify it’s ruling “with due regard” to Trump:
The rest of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand.The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.
The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. I mean, you could park a truck in that sentence. It might as well say “Hey District Court, go ahead and give it a shot but don’t cross the blurry lines we aren’t going to draw and don’t break the secret rules which we aren’t going to tell you about. See you in a month!”
They were super vague on their instructions to the lower court in the immunity ruling, too: virtually guaranteeing the case would come before them again. Remember Footnote 3? It was about as clear as mud:
“[a] prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act. And the prosecutor may admit evidence of what the President allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced in the performance of the act. … What the prosecutor may not do, however, is admit testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing the official act itself. Allowing that sort of evidence would invite the jury to inspect the President’s motivations for his official actions and to second-guess their propriety. As we have explained, such inspection would be “highly intrusive” and would “ ‘seriously cripple’ ” the President’s exercise of his official duties. … And such second-guessing would threaten the independence or effectiveness of the Executive.”
And just as with the immunity ruling, the Supreme Court will likely get another review of whatever the court orders the Trump administration to do to return Abrego Garcia. Because I’m pretty sure that the government isn’t going to want to do what the lower court tells it to, nor will it be forthcoming with the steps it’s taking to comply with court orders. The Trump administration will say “The Supreme Court told you to have deference for how we conduct foreign affairs. You’re not deferencing enough.”
So yes, it’s awesome that the Supreme Court didn’t outright abandon Abrego Garcia, but now we’re going to potentially drag out the remedy – while a man is wrongfully imprisoned in a gulag – and give the Supremes another at-bat when things don’t go smoothly. The high court should have outright denied the application, just as they should have done in the immunity case.
Just my two cents.
~AG
Wisconsin Public Radio reported that State Superintendent Jill Underly has announced that the state will not comply with a letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in which she directed states to agree with the Trump administration about stamping out diversity, equity, and inclusion. Trump wants to eliminate DEI, which would involve reversing compliance with existing civil rights law. In addition, although McMahon may not know it, she is violating federal law by attempting to influence curriculum and instruction in the schools.
Thank you, Superintendent Underly!
WPR reported:
Wisconsin school districts won’t comply with a directive from the Trump administration to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs until districts have more information.
On Wednesday, state Superintendent Jill Underly asked the U.S. Department of Education for clarification on both the intent and legality of an April 3 directive that schools sign a letter acknowledging they’re following the government’s interpretation of civil rights laws.
Schools were given 10 days to do so, or be at risk of losing Title I funding. The federal government later extended the deadline to April 24.
This school year, Wisconsin received about $216 million in Title I funds. About $82 million of that money went to Milwaukee Public Schools.
Underly said the request from the Department of Education potentially violates required procedural steps, is unnecessarily redundant and appears designed to intimidate school districts by threatening to withhold critical education funding.
“We cannot stand by while the current administration threatens our schools with unnecessary and potentially unlawful mandates based on political beliefs,” Underly said in a statement. “Our responsibility is to ensure Wisconsin students receive the best education possible, and that means allowing schools to make local decisions based on what is best for their kids and their communities.”
On Feb. 14, the U.S. Department of Education sent a “Dear Colleague” letter giving educational institutions 14 days to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal funding.
At that time, the state DPI issued guidance to school districts encouraging a “measured and thoughtful approach, rather than immediate or reactionary responses to the federal government’s concerns.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has not clearly defined what the administration considers a violation of civil rights law. The February letter said institutions must “cease using race preferences and stereotypes as a factor in their admissions, hiring, promotion, scholarship.”
In a related document addressing frequently asked questions about how the administration would interpret Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the agency said: “Many schools have advanced discriminatory policies and practices under the banner of ‘DEI’ initiatives.”
The document went on to say that schools could engage in historical observances like Black History Month, “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination.”
Trump is following through on his frequent threats to punish anyone who crossed him in the past. He recently ordered his compliant Attorney General to investigate two men who were critical of him during his first term. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote about the tyrannical nature of this action and about Pam Bondi’s willingness to do whatever he wants.
Honig writes at the website Cafe, a hub for legal experts:
Donald Trump’s presidential payback tour rages on, and now it’s personal. It’s one thing to target multi-billion dollar law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own right. But now Trump is going after individual private citizens, using the might of the Executive Branch to potentially throw his detractors in prison.
In a pair of official proclamations – rendered no less unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House letterhead – Trump identifies two targets who worked in the federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor” – whatever the hell that means – who poses grave “risks” to the American public.
And then there’s Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the President in an anonymous book and various media appearances. Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses “risks” to the United States, is a “bad-faith actor” (though apparently not a significant one like Krebs) and “stoked dissension” with his public commentary.
Are you scared? Don’t you fear the “risks” posed by these two monsters?
True to the form he has displayed when going after disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The President orders security clearances stripped not only from Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the University of Pennsylvania). He’s punishing his targets – plus their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of association be darned.
It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed the Attorney General to open criminal investigations of Krebs and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This hardly needs to be said, but it’s not a federal crime to be a “bad-faith actor,” to “stoke dissension,” or even to be a “wise guy,” as Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.
The next move is Pam Bondi’s – and we know how this will go.
Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have “predication” – some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have been committed – to open a criminal investigation. The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, even Bill Barr – the subject of sharp criticism in my first book, Hatchet Man – generally ignored Trump’s public pleas for the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit back and let the tantrum pass.
Don’t count on Bondi taking the same course of passive resistance to the President. She has already shown her true colors, and they’re whatever shade Trump pleases. For example, despite the distinct possibility of criminality by top administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed – after zero inquiry, with zero evidence – that information about military attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had acted recklessly. Case closed, no inquiry needed.
Bondi no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She’s in the bag for Trump. The question now is whether she’ll cross the line that even Barr, her crooked predecessor, would not, and use the Justice Department’s staggering investigative power as an offensive weapon.
Even if DOJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice Department but not indicted. They’ll tell you it’s a nightmare.
If Bondi does somehow convince a grand jury to indict somebody for something, Trump has unwittingly handed both Krebs and Taylor a potent defense: selective prosecution, which applies where an individual has been singled out for improper purposes. Exhibit A (for the defense): Trump’s own grand proclamations, which openly confess to his personal and political motives for ordering a Justice Department inquiry. Selective prosecution defenses rarely succeed, often because prosecutors typically don’t commit their improper motives to paper. But this would be the rare case where the evidence is so plain – it’s on White House letterhead, signed by the President – that a judge could hardly overlook it.
Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents with criminal prosecution through social media posts and by spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the capricious commander-in-chief. But now it’s in writing, from the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial standards be darned. Trump’s dark fantasies are coming to life.
Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities
David Sanger wrote an article in the New York Times about Trump’s “Experiment in Recklessness.” His plan is no plan at all. His approach is no more than “burn-it-down-first,” figure what to do later. His article appeared on Wednesday, before Trump announced a 90-day pause in his incomprehensible plan to tax every nation–even uninhabited islands–but exempt Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Cuba. Even desperately impoverished Lesotho–where the average pay is $5 a day–was subject to Trump’s tariffs.
Our government is run by a cabal of people who are either evil or stupid or both. Probably both. People will die and are dying now because of their actions. Government agencies are being ripped apart. A generation of scientists has been ousted from important jobs in the government and in universities, where their federal grants have been terminated. All federal efforts to address climate change have been cancelled.
Where Trump goes, chaos , destruction and death go with him.
Sanger writes:
As the breadth of the Trump revolution has spread across Washington in recent weeks, its most defining feature is a burn-it-down-first, figure-out-the-consequences-later recklessness. The costs of that approach are now becoming clear.
Administration officials knew the markets would dive and other nations would retaliate when President Trump announced his long-promised “reciprocal” tariffs. But when pressed, several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.
And officials have yet to describe the strategy for managing a global system of astounding complexity after the initial shock wears off, other than endless threats and negotiations between the leader of the world’s largest economy and everyone else.
Take the seemingly unmanaged escalation with China, the world’s second largest economy, and the only superpower capable of challenging the United States economically, technologically and militarily. By American and Chinese accounts, there was no substantive conversation between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, or engagement among their senior aides, before the countries plunged toward a trade war.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s hastily devised formula for figuring out country-by-country tariffs came up with a 34 percent tax on all Chinese goods, everything from car parts to iPhones to much of what is on the shelves at Walmart and on Amazon’s app.
When Mr. Xi, predictably, matched that figure, Mr. Trump issued an ultimatum for him to reverse the decision in 24 hours — waving a red flag in front of a leader who would never want to appear to be backing down to Washington. On Wednesday, the tariff went to 104 percent, with no visible strategy for de-escalation.
If Mr. Trump does get into a trade war with China, he shouldn’t look for much help from America’s traditional allies — Japan, South Korea or the European Union — who together with the United States account for nearly half of the world economy. All of them were equally shocked, and while each is negotiating with Mr. Trump, they seem in no mood to help him manage China.
“Donald Trump has launched a global economic war without any allies,” the economist Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council wrote on Tuesday. “That is why — unlike previous economic crises in this century — there is no one coming to save the global economy if the situation starts to unravel.”
The global trading system is only one example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, only to reveal it has no plan for how to replace it.
State Department officials knew that eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, the nation’s premier aid agency, would inevitably cost lives. But when a devastating earthquake struck central Myanmar late last month and took down buildings as far away as Bangkok, officials scrambled to provide even a modicum of help — only to discover that the network of positioned aid, and the people and aircraft to distribute it, had been dismantled.
Having dismantled a system that had responded to major calamities before, they settled on sending a survey team of three employees to examine the wreckage and make recommendations. All three were terminated from their jobs even while they stood amid the ruins in the ancient city of Mandalay, Myanmar, trying to revive an American capability that the Department of Government Efficiency — really no department at all — had crippled.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unapologetic about the paltry American response when he talked to reporters on Friday: “There are a lot of other rich countries, they should also pitch in and help,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do our part, but it’s going to be balanced with all of the other interests we have as a country.”
Similarly, there was no plan for retrieving a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a notoriously dangerous Salvadoran prison, a move a judge called “wholly lawless” and an issue the Supreme Court is expected to take up in the next few days. A Justice Department lawyer in the case was placed on administrative leave, apparently for conceding that the man never should have been sent to the prison.
Mr. Trump has appeared mostly unmoved as the knock-on effects of his policies take shape. He has shrugged off the loss of $5 trillion in the value of the American markets in recent days. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, he said: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
To finish reading the article, click here. It should be a gift article.
Friends, we are in a whole lot of trouble. Trump is not a businessman. He played one on TV. He is a performer. He is in way over his head. He called Elon Musk a “genius.” Musk called Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro “a moron.” Trump allowed Musk to tear almost every federal agency apart, destroying vital programs and firing essential personnel.
We have to push back as hard as we can. Trump and his minions have retreated on some of their stupid actions (like purging Harriet Tubman and the Jnderground Railroad of its role in helping slaves escape). Little victories like this should encourage wider protests against the chaos that Trump has unleashed. Is he doing it for Putin’s benefit? Does he suffer from dementia?
RESIST! PROTEST! STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!
Trump signed an executive order declaring all state laws that address climate change to be null and void. He claims that efforts to protect the environment are a hindrance to energy production. So ignoring climate change is important to national security because we need oil and gas more than we need clean air and water.
Remember when Trump said he was eliminating the Departnent of Education because states should manage their own schools and the federal government should get out of the way? Why can’t states make decisions about clean air, clean water, and auto efficiency?
Trump’s tariffs are getting blowback from some of his rightwing allies. Elon Musk called tariff-lover Peter Navarro “a moron.” Several Republican Senators expressed their opposition to tariffs at a Senate hearing. The National Review tore into Trump’s tariffs and his imperial behavior:
It wrote:
If it seems preposterous that a single person could enjoy this much power over the American economy — and, with it, the global economy — rest assured that it is. In Article I, the Constitution vests the “power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” in Congress, not in the president. As a result, the president has no power to impose tariffs that he has not been accorded by an act of the legislature. If it desires, Congress can choose to take back as much of that power as it sees fit. It ought to do so — and do so now.
That the Founders placed the power to tax, tariff, and legislate in the hands of the legislature, instead of the executive, was not an accident. On the contrary: This allocation sat at the very core of the system that they designed. Because legislatures play host to a diverse cast of characters — characters who have different views, are elected by different groups, and come from different regions — they are less prone to dogmatism, caprice, and flightiness than are monarchs, presidents, or emperors. Especially within the United States, where the Senate often checks the passions of the House, the procedural challenges that result from this tend to ensure that only those proposals that enjoy broad purchase among the citizenry’s representatives are able to become law. This arrangement has two chief benefits. First, it guarantees that the ideas under consideration will be subject to serious criticism and debate. Second, it makes it difficult to alter the status quo on a whim — which, in turn, makes it easier for the people to understand the laws under which they live.
This predictability is useful in all areas of civic life. But it is especially beneficial in the financial realm, where stability is imperative. Businesses, investors, workers, and families are all aided enormously by a reliable comprehension of what their tax rates, operating rules, regulatory liabilities, and tariff exposures are likely to be for the foreseeable future. When those variables are determined by Congress, the debates that inform them are transparent and the laws that result are built to endure. When those variables are determined by the president, the debates that inform them are opaque and the law is liable to change radically from day to day. In essence, the case for Congress fulfilling its responsibilities is the same as the case for written law per se: No free man wants to be at the mercy of a king.
In his vendetta against law firms who represented his opponents, universities whose high standards offend him, and anyone who dared to stand up to his lies, Trump has selected two former government employees for retribution. These actions are typical of dictators. Trump is wannabe dictator. He certainly aspires to be a full-fledged fascist. He has a compliant Departnent of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi thinks she works for Trump, not the people of the United States.
The blog SpyTalk is written by Jeff Stein.
He writes:
President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive ordering the Justice Department to investigate two prominent former senior Homeland Security officials, saying they could be guilty of “treason” because of their criticism of him.
Trump also stripped Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs of their security clearances, although it was not clear if they maintained any. The order “also suspends any active security clearance held by individuals at entities associated with Taylor, including the University of Pennsylvania,” where Taylor is an adjunct professor, “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”
Likewise, the order also suspends security clearances held by associates of Krebs at SentinelOne, a California-based cyber security firm, where he is currently employed as the company’s chief intelligence and public policy officer.
Taylor, who served as the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during the first Trump administration, drew Trump’s wrath for writing a blistering, New York Times Op-ed, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration“, and later a book, A Warning, both under the pen name “Anonymous,” detailing his concerns about the president’s policies. The Op-ed unleashed a furious media campaign to identify him. After he surfaced in October 2020, he became a prominent TV critic of Trump
“You can’t have that happen,” Trump said as he signed the executive order, adding, “I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out.”
The executive order called Taylor “a bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government position, prioritizing his own ambition, personal notoriety, and monetary gain over fidelity to his constitutional oath.”
Taylor responded on X (formerly Twitter): “I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”…
It’s almost funny to see Trump criticize anyone for failure to be faithful to their “constitutional oath,” since he has violated his own constitutional oath on a daily basis.
Rex Huppke wrote in USA Today about Trump’s sudden decision to pause his draconian tariffs for 90 days. His conclusion: He showed the world he is chicken.
If there’s one thing that’s absolutely clear about President Donald Trump’s sensible, resolute and consistent tariff policy, it’s that he’s definitely not a chicken who panicked the minute things started looking bad.
With markets reeling and the odds of a recession shooting up, Trump made a Wednesday afternoon announcement that he would pause or lower the previously announced BIG, STRONG, NECESSARY reciprocal tariffs he had placed on all countries. China was the only nation that didn’t get the pause/lowering treatment.
It was an about-face of biblical proportions, given that a mere five days had passed since Trump posted on social media: “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”
In fact, on Wednesday morning Trump told Americans to “BE COOL” in a post on his Truth Social platform. Over the weekend, while Trump was golfing in the wake of massive market collapses, he wrote online: “WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy.”
And heading back from his golf weekend, Trump told reporters that with tariffs, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
Trump decided to HANG TOUGH on tariffs for a few minutes, then fold
I guess Trump had enough medicine. I guess he decided not to HANG TOUGH.
But don’t you dare say that Trump panicked and took his tariff ball and ran home. Don’t you dare say that!
Trump is the toughest and most no-nonsense president in American history, and there’s no way world leaders will now look at him as a paper tiger who appears to have no clue what he’s doing.
Granted, The New York Times recently reported: “President Trump said on Sunday that he would not reverse tariffs on other nations unless the trade deficits that the United States runs with China, the European Union and other nations disappeared.
“His comments indicated that the steep import taxes that have panicked global businesses and investors would be in place for the long run.”
Turns out “the long run” was not particularly long.
Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent said of the tariffs Sunday: “We’re going to hold the course.”
He also said trade negotiations would not happen quickly: “They’ve been bad actors for a long time. And it’s not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks.”
Gotcha. It appears Trump negotiated things away in approximately three days without getting anything except a nation with an economy plagued by uncertainty and a world that knows America’s president will fold in an instant.
Looking at the White House fact sheet on reciprocal tariffs posted on April 2 – a mere week ago – you can find bold statements like this:
“These tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated.”
“President Trump refuses to let the United States be taken advantage of and believes that tariffs are necessary to ensure fair trade, protect American workers, and reduce the trade deficit ‒ this is an emergency.”
“Reciprocal tariffs are a big part of why Americans voted for President Trump ‒ it was a cornerstone of his campaign from the start. Everyone knew he’d push for them once he got back in office; it’s exactly what he promised, and it’s a key reason he won the election.”
So, to sum it up: Trump’s tariff policies are what voters wanted and they will NEVER CHANGE and this is “an emergency” and the “tariffs will remain in effect” until the threat is resolved and America is in it for “the long run” and we need to “HANG TOUGH” and, oh, by the way, we’re putting a pause on all the harebrained tariffs we announced because we almost cratered the economy with this incalculably ignorant idea.
Don’t you dare say President Trump panicked. Don’t you dare say he chickened out.
That would be too kind, frankly. Because it would assume he had a clue about what he was doing in the first place.
Cluck, cluck, cluck.
What is Elon Musk’s agenda? His DOGE teams are wreaking havoc across the federal government. His claims of saving “billions” are making government inefficient. Thousands of researchers, scientists, and essential personnel have been fired. Is he working to destroy our government? Or is he settting up a scenario of failure as a prelude to privatization?
The Washington Post reported on chaos at the Social Security Administratuin:
Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online.
The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.
The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access.
Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.
The technology issues have been particularly alarming for some of the most vulnerable Social Security customers. For almost two days last week, for example, many of the 7.4 million adults and children receiving monthly benefits under the anti-poverty program known as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, confronted a jarring message that claimed they were “currently not receiving payments,” agency officials acknowledged in an internal email to staff.
The error messages set off widespread panic until recipients discovered that their monthly checks had still been deposited in their bank accounts. Another breakdown disabled the SSI system for much of the day on Friday, prompting claims staff to cancel appointments because they could not enter new disability claims in the system and blocking some already receiving benefits from gaining access to their accounts.
“Social Security’s response has been, ‘Oops,’” said Darcy Milburn, director of Social Security and health-care policy at the Arc, a national nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities. The group fielded dozens of calls last week from nervous clients who saw the inaccurate message and assumed their monthly check, usually paid on the first of the month, would not arrive.
“It’s woefully insufficient when we’re talking about a government agency that’s holding someone’s lifeline in their hands,” Milburn said.
The disruptions are occurring as acting commissioner Leland Dudek and the DOGE team move to lay off large swaths of the workforce in a new phase of downsizing. Thousands of employees already have been pushed out — many in customer-facing roles, others with expertise in the agency’s cumbersome technology systems. At least 800 of the 3,000 employees left in the division that manages all of the Social Security databases face layoffs, a senior official said on Friday. The newly named chief information officer, Scott Coulter, a Musk-aligned private equity analyst, has demanded a cut of 50 percent, the official said.
The network outages are one in a cascade of blows to customer service that also have hobbled phone systems and field office operations as the workforce shrinks.
A surge in visitors to the website is overwhelming the computer system as customers — nervous that the rapid changes at the agency will compromise their benefits — download their benefit and earnings statements and attempt to file claims. President Donald Trump has said that his administration will not reduce Social Security benefits.
The chaos could accelerate starting April 14, when new identification measures are set to take effect that will require millions of customers applying for benefits to authenticate their identity online, part of the administration’s campaign to root out allegedly fraudulent claims.
“We’re just spiking like crazy,” said one senior official, who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about agency operations. “It’s people who are terrified that DOGE is messing with our systems. It’s the sheer massive volume of freaked-out people.”
The Social Security press office said in a statement that officials are “actively investigating the root cause” of the incidents, which they called “brief disruptions” averaging about 20 minutes each with the exception of the SSI error message. But on several occasions, including during an outage last Monday, customers were shut out of the website for hours. The system was back online last Monday after two hours, but lingering issues lasted through the afternoon while all backlogged queries were processed, current and former officials said. And a system upgrade on a Saturday in late March took several hours longer than anticipated and knocked out the network.
Three times in a recent 10-day stretch, the online systems the field office staff rely on to serve the public have crashed, said one employee in an Indiana office.
The downed programs included tools employees use to schedule visits, to see who has booked an appointment and to check who has arrived, the employee said. It is unheard-of for the system to fail this often, and each outage has led to chaos, they said.
Suddenly forced offline as they were taking claims, the staff members scribbled down clients’ information, then had to wait until later to load it into the computer, doubling or tripling the amount of time and work involved, the employee said.
In other instances, managers or security guards improvised a solution after the online scheduling system failed, the employee said. They walked out to the reception area, wrote down numbers on paper slips and started handing them out to people waiting in line.
The network crashes appear to be caused by an expansion initiated by the Trump team of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency that tracks names, addresses and other personal information to verify customers’ identities. The enhanced fraud checks are now done earlier in the claims process and have resulted in a boost to the volume of customers who must pass the checks.
But the technology staff did not test the software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, current and former officials said. Connectivity issues and bugs with the expanded system have caused the portal that manages log-ins and authentication for many Social Security applications to go down, officials said.
At a weekly operations meeting on March 28 that was made public last week, Wayne Lemon, deputy chief information officer for infrastructure and IT operations, acknowledged the network crashes and said, “While they’ve been brief, we prefer no outages.” He said the outages were under investigation and may involve “challenges we’ve experienced with a number of partners.” Part of the problem may be that the outages have occurred during “high volume use of the network.”
“Is there a spike in demand or something in the environment causing the issues?” Lemon said.
Customers, meanwhile, are growing more frustrated.………..
What readers are saying
The comments express strong concerns about the recent IT staff cuts and website outages at the Social Security Administration, suggesting these actions are deliberate attempts to undermine the system. Many commenters believe this is part of a broader strategy to privatize Social Security.
Diane Ravitch's blog 