Breaking Social

President Donald Trump is putting Social Security in danger, a Democratic and Republican experts agree — although they arrive at that conclusion from different vantage points.

“In the post-Cold War era, our ability to do deficit spending is used to prop up Social Security and Medicare, which are too costly to be sustained through current revenues,” wrote The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last on Tuesday. “We sell Treasury bills to a world that is hungry for them so that we can pay our Social Security and Medicare obligations every year.”

Last argued that because America can borrow money cheaply, they are able to prop up Social Security and Medicare in this way. That will not last, though, he warned.

“And that is what it means when people talk about the U.S. dollar being the world’s reserve currency,” Last wrote. “I cannot underscore this boldly enough: The status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is built on the foundation of the petrodollar system.”

Because Trump has alienated Iran and the rest of the international community with his unprovoked invasion of Iran, Last predicted that this would undermine the stability of America’s currency.

“Which is to say that most of the congressional budget fights you hear about account for the minority of what the federal government spends—only about a quarter,” Last opined. “Most federal spending—the other roughly three quarters—is nondiscretionary.” As a result, he reached a dire conclusion.

“I am oversimplifying matters a bit—but only a bit—when I say the following,” Last wrote. “If the petrodollar system were to change, then America’s ability to finance debt as cheaply as we do would be imperiled. And so our ability to sustain Social Security and Medicare would be imperiled, too.”

He added, “I don’t want to overstate things. The changes wouldn’t happen overnight. These things take time to work their way through the global financial system. And we could still borrow money in a world without petrodollars. But the interest rates would be higher. Which means that we’d have to either raise taxes or cut benefits just to stay at par.”

Martin O'Malley, who served as Social Security Commissioner under President Joe Biden, disagreed with Last’s analysis about how Social Security is financed, but at the same time agrees that Trump is jeopardizing the program.

“This isn’t true — but it is often repeated,” O’Malley told AlterNet regarding Last’s claim that “our ability to do deficit spending is used to prop up Social Security and Medicare, which are too costly to be sustained through current revenues.” He clarified the matter to AlterNet.

“Social Security is a pay as you go program,” O’Malley said. “It is not funded by deficit spending. It is more akin to an insurance company. People premiums and benefits are paid out from those premiums. Even the surplus — which because of income inequality is being depleted sooner (2032) than thought in 1983, even that was built up by payroll tax, not borrowed money. “

He added, “An utter devaluation of the dollar — which Trump is causing and risking in so many reckless and self/serving ways (bitcoin), would be really bad for everything in US including Soc Sec, it is not true that Social Security depends on deficit spending for its support or benefits. (Except a small portion of admin expenses).”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon Magazine in 2024, O’Malley characterized Republican claims that Social Security could go insolvent as blatantly untrue.

“Social Security cannot go bankrupt because it is structured to be a pay-as-you-go program,” O’Malley told Salon at the time. “In other words, last year we paid out $1.35 trillion in benefits, and most of the dollars for paying those benefits came from people working last year in the economy.”

He then clarified, “If we're not going to ask millionaires to pay into FICA again and we're not going to have people pay in through their paychecks, then there won't be benefits to pay out. It's a simple mathematical equation.”

Last month a Social Security advocacy organization noted that there has already been a significant decline in the quality of Social Security’s services since Trump took office.

“An unpublished draft of the report... showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric—called the ‘total wait time’—to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee,” the Washington Post wrote. “According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours.”

The Post added that this “information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication.”

A senior administration figure leaking that the Trump administration will ask Congress for $200 million to continue its war with Iran shows that even the inner circle worries that things are out of control.

The leak raised eyebrows after The Washington Post first reported it, and now speculation is swirling that the tip from the White House inner circle was intended as a general wake-up call to Republicans in Congress: the Iran situation isn’t getting any better, even with that level of spending.

“All this makes it absolutely clear that Congress will not just be asked to fund Trump’s war, but also that the pressure on Congress to do something about this madness will intensify,” states The New Republic.

Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told host Greg Sargent on The New Republic podcast that the $200 billion request is just the start.

“This is $200 billion — on top of, by the way, the other thing that has been leaked, which is that the president wants to ask for $1.5 trillion in the regular defense budget, which is a 50 percent increase in the defense budget from what it was before,” Smith said.

“So that’s pushing up close to $2 trillion for defense in a nation that’s $40 trillion in debt — and they just cut taxes by $4 trillion.”

Smith noted how prior cuts to USAID play a role in extending the Iran war.

“And I always remember something that Bob Gates said to our committee, 15 or 20 years ago now, when he was secretary of defense: if you cut diplomacy, if you cut development, you better give me more ammunition, because we’re going to have more conflicts in the world. And that is the path that Trump is walking us down.”

Smith also flatly declares that no Democrats should agree to fund another dime for Trump’s war, and vows that if Democrats win the majority, his handling of it will face vigorous investigations.

A huge battle looms in Congress over the $200 billion request.

“It’s going to be very tough to get it through," said Smith. "I think all Democrats should oppose it. I mean, I’ll oppose it for no other reason than I oppose this war and I want this war to stop. But look — you want to know something really funny? You know what Congress tried to pass yesterday in the House? A balanced budget amendment. The Republican House put that out — I mean, I’m not often speechless, but I’m close to speechless trying to explain that. So there will be some Republicans who will say, gosh, we can’t do this, it’s too expensive and all of that. But you know the pattern — they say it, and then at the end of the day, they do whatever Trump asks them to. So how many Republicans will actually oppose it? I don’t know.”

The Congressman was appalled at the notion of spending on the war while neglecting other issues.

“The idea that we’re going to dig into the rest of the budget — we’re cutting Medicaid, food stamps, we’re cutting all of these programs — and then we’re going to pull $200 billion aside on top of a $1.5 trillion defense budget? Hell no. No Democrat should vote for this. And I hope the Republicans who care about fiscal responsibility will stand up and say no. But it’s a tough call. And then you get into the whole 60 votes in the Senate — did they get rid of the filibuster? I think it’s going to be really difficult to pull through this amount of money.”

President Donald Trump faces a post-presidential life of investigations, depositions and hearings. So writes Matt Ford in The New Republic, who claims that “the president has deeply underestimated his legal and political peril.”

Trump faces a future that he's seen before. His first term was followed by criminal prosecutions from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, indictments from special counsel Jack Smith, and challenges over the 2020 election results. But after his second term expires, he may also face legal peril from international courts for his actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump has signaled some awareness of his precarious perch. At a gathering of House Republicans at the Kennedy Center in January, he told the assembled, “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told the lawmakers. “I’ll get impeached.”

Yet impeachment may be the least of Trump’s worries. Ford argues that the nation’s political system must use “every tool possible to achieve a measure of justice. This will involve not only impeachment, but also civil lawsuits, professional sanctions, restrictive acts of Congress, and the enforcement of international law against Trump administration officials by long-standing American allies.”

This time around, though, the legal landscape Trump faces is much less favorable for prosecutors eager for revenge.

“During Trump’s first term, Justice Department guidelines forbade prosecutions of sitting presidents, delaying any potential proceedings until after his term ended," Ford writes. "This time, prosecutors will also have to contend with Trump v. United States. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on 'presidential immunity' in 2024 fundamentally changed the executive branch and how it operates within the American constitutional order.”

Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion laid out the scope of presidential immunity in that ruling. Only if something is an unofficial act does immunity not apply. “And if a former president’s official acts are routinely subjected to scrutiny in criminal prosecutions, the independence of the Executive Branch may be significantly undermined," Ford notes.

To the court’s liberals, Ford writes, the dangers were obvious. Justice Sonia Sotomayor believed that it would now be impossible to prosecute a former president for assassinating his political rivals or taking bribes. “Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

If American institutions fail to hold the Trump administration accountable, other countries might be able to fill the gap, Ford writes. “Because of alleged international law violations, the former president and his subordinates could also face heightened difficulties — and potential criminal charges — if they travel overseas in the future.”

The administration’s unlawful military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have opened the door to criminal charges overseas, Ford notes. The wars against Iran and Venezuela could bring more such charges.

While the mechanisms of accountability are important, “the spirit that drives them is just as vital,” Ford concludes. "A jail cell may not await Trump. But after another four years of defiling the republic, there will be no post-presidential peace for him or his top associates.”

The war in Iran has shown that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has gone terribly wrong, writes Jennifer Rubin in a Substack for The Contrarian.

The result has left the U.S. in a difficult position, now and in the future, as "Trump blew up five key aspects of his foreign policy."

“War against Iran has underscored that his preference for wars of aggression for specious reasons, mistreatment of democratic allies, genuflection toward Russia, economic illiteracy and forfeiture of America’s moral standing in the world have been disastrous for the United States and for his presidency,” Rubin writes.

The five missteps:

1. Trump’s war shows the limits of hard power. Trump has “pulled us into a dangerous quagmire,” Rubin writes. “Trump, better than any critic, has proved that America’s military cannot solve all its problems and its indiscriminate use may create far more serious dangers.” Now the Iranians are emboldened and will continue to reign missiles on its neighbors and the U.S. is tied to Israel’s needs in the conflict. “Regime change is not coming,” Rubin notes.
2. Trump’s Russia fixation looks even worse now. "Russians give intelligence to Iran to kill our troops and rake in more oil money, thereby humiliating their puppet in the Oval Office.” On the other hand, Ukraine has emerged as “the foremost authority of drones and counter-drone operations, the Washington Institute of Near East policy explains.”
3. Trump’s bluster that “We don’t need anybody; we’re the strongest nation in the world” has backfired. Now, Rubin writes, “he is left to beg pathetically for help, which will not be forthcoming. If Trump thinks America can go it alone, our allies have responded: Just try it.”
4. Trump has put the economy in trouble. “Inflation is rising; U.S. consumers are still paying tariffs) also has come home to roost.“ Surging oil prices will raise costs across the economy, Rubin says, citing the New York Times.
5. Trump has made the U.S. “a pariah." Rubin writes the president has “given our enemies the perfect rationale to discredit the U.S. as a selfish, colonialist power. And he has given democratic (as well as quasi- or undemocratic) countries precisely no reason to choose the U.S. model/alliance over China’s.”

Rubin concludes, “Trump’s aggressive strikes prove that his sadistic embrace of war, contempt for allies, infatuation with Putin/antipathy for Ukraine, economic illiteracy and disdain for America’s moral standing are disastrous for him, MAGA and the country.”

It’s long been a “stock social media joke” that MAGA stands for whatever President Donald Trump says it is. The Iran war has confirmed that's no joke, writes Greg Sargent in The New Republic.

“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” Trump posted on Truth Social against his supporters who oppose the war in Iran. In Trump’s view, MAGA entails “not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

That’s problematic for a candidate who promised “no new wars,” Sargent notes. “Anyone who dissents from Trump’s war of choice ... faces potential excommunication from the MAGA movement.”

Such contempt for those who might have “legitimate worries about the Iran war is basically boundless,” Sargent writes.

The war over who is really MAGA extends to the media. On one side are Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Sullivan, who oppose the war as doing Israel’s bidding, Sargent writes. On the other side are Mark Levin of Fox News and Ben Shapiro.

“This conflict among influencers primarily involves MAGA voices turning against the America-Israel alliance. It seems less focused on the general suspicion of foreign entanglements — and anger at elites who brought us the Forever Wars in the Mideast — that supposedly drive MAGA,” Sargent writes.

The defining moment arrived when Joe Kent, the director of National Counterterrorism Center, resigned his post, stating, “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.”

Sargent notes Kent has many problematic views, being anti-Israel among them, but “we can distinguish between the likes of Kent and Carlson and their followers. Clearly some segments of their audiences genuinely oppose wars of choice.”

Trump rejects their independence and erases any debate, Sargent writes. “In suggesting that critics of the war on Iran “ARE NOT MAGA,” Trump also declared that “MAGA is about stopping them cold” before they get a nuke to “blow up” the United States and “the world.”

In Trump’s formulation, Sargent concludes, “anyone who harbors doubts about the threat Iran posed is commanded to accept it as a settled question. Because Trump said so.”

That is uncomfortable even for members of the administration.

“Just look at the gyrations of JD Vance,” Sargent writes. Vance’s position now contradicts past misgivings on foreign entanglements: He says, “Now we have a president who knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives” and won’t get sucked into “some long, drawn-out thing.’ ”

'Trumpworld’s redefinition of MAGA is a farce," Sargent concludes, adding, the ultimate issue is “the naked contempt (such a position) shows for the voters who are obviously expected to simply roll over and unthinkingly accept it."

President Donald Trump’s praise for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh might hamper any future nominees, a story in Reason opines.

Trump has been angry that two out of the three justices (Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) that he appointed to the Supreme Court voted against him in their recent tariffs ruling. He called them "an embarrassment to their families" in one particularly vehement jab.

But Reason contends “what's actually embarrassing is the kind of praise that Trump is now heaping upon the one Trump-appointed justice who did vote in his favor,” i.e. Kavanaugh.

Trump can’t seem to move on from his tariffs defeat. "The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!" Trump posted on social media. And "the Court knew where I stood" and "how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country."

He added, "The Democrats on the Court always 'stick together. But Republicans do not do this. They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land."

Kavanaugh may have cringed a little bit when he read that, Reason said, adding, “If not, he should have.”

That’s because Trump is praising Kavanaugh, Reason claims, “for exhibiting deference and fidelity to the president who gave him his job. In effect, Trump is publicly patting Kavanaugh on the back for acting grateful and toeing the line.”

What’s worse than Kavanaugh’s potential humiliation is what Trump’s praise may foreshadow. It will also likely “demean any future SCOTUS nominees that Trump may get to put forward.”

If Justice Samuel Alioto retires, as rumors suggest, the Trump nominee to replace him would face an extremely uncomfortable question at their confirmation hearing.

“That nominee will undoubtedly be asked if he or she can be trusted to rule against the president who appointed them if that's what the Constitution required in a particular case,” Reason wrote. “In the past, answering such a question would have been a total no-brainer for any nominee: "Of course I'll put the Constitution first, Senator! What kind of lickspittle do you think I am?"

But perhaps the nominee may think twice about showing such independence and drawing Trump’s wrath. Perhaps such “disrespect” would even lead to Trump pulling the plug on the nomination, Reason concludes.

Tightening mail-in voting rules could wind up backfiring for its Republican backers, say lawmakers and experts who spoke to Bloomberg News.

President Donald Trump has been pushing hard on new mail-in voting rules, even as his GOP colleagues worry that it will hurt them most. They fear the measure could eliminate legitimate registered voters who help carry elections and prefer that option.

Trump favors limiting mail-in ballots with only a few exceptions, claiming fraudulent voting led to his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden. His push is backing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act (S. 1383; BGOV Bill Analysis). That would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship to register.

About 64 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2024 presidential election and 46 percent for the 2022 midterms, according to the Pew Research Center. Of those, some 29 percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2024, while nearly one-third did so in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Right now, the legislation doesn’t specifically limit voting by mail. But attaching restrictions on mail-in voting is anticipated when the bill comes up in the Senate this week, Bloomberg reports. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is among those seeking an amendment to get “rid of this mass mail-in balloting scam,” as he terms it, with some allowances for military and elderly voters.

Bloomberg cites research that claims vote-by-mail laws don’t consistently favor one party over the other.

“Once they started mail-in voting, people just loved it,” Utah state Rep. Christine Watkins (R), who represents a rural district in the state, said to Bloomberg. “I know federal law trumps us—no pun intended—but people here wouldn’t like” getting rid of mail voting.

Several red states have also introduced bills tightening voting by mail rules. The Voting Rights Lab reports 43 restrictive bills have been proposed across 19 states this year.

Both parties are closely watching how changes to mail-voting rules could affect turnout in key districts, Bloomberg reports.

“Mail ballots can be the difference between winning and losing,” Matt Wylie, a GOP strategist based in South Carolina, said to the wire service. “If voters who normally cast ballots by mail have to show up on Election Day instead, fewer Republicans will. You risk losing seats you shouldn’t lose by going to war with something that can be a valuable tool.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said earlier this month that he plans to add “good amendments along the way” to SAVE America.

Thune claimed “ballot harvesting” is the “real threat,” referring to the practice of collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of other voters.

“As a general rule, if people are requesting ballots, and they’ve got legitimate reasons for requesting them, I think a lot of states use that process and use it pretty well,” Thune said.

President Donald Trump has grown accustomed to doing what he wants and then quickly improvising if things go south, says Axios.

But this time, some in his inner circle have what one official called "buyer's remorse" — growing fears that attacking Iran was a mistake.

Axios reports that a source close to the administration said some key officials around Trump were reluctant or wanted more time. "He ended up saying, 'I just want to do it,'" the source said. "He grossly overestimated his ability to topple the regime short of sending in ground troops."

The Axios source said Trump was "high on his own supply" after last summer's quick strikes in Iran and January's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: "He saw multiple decisive quick victories with extraordinary military competence."

Some officials close to him had hoped he'd be able to show some quick gains and declare victory, Axios states. Now, it's not apparent how he'd do that convincingly. “The Iran war, now entering Week 3, is the first time Trump’s style has made it impossible for him to easily talk or improvise his way out.”

What’s happening now is that Trump risks getting caught in an “escalation trap” as he works to free the oil jam in the Persian Gulf. The escalation trap is “where a stronger force is incentivized to keep attacking to demonstrate dominance amid diminishing returns.”

An anonymous Trump administration official laid it out for Axios reporter Marc Caputo: “The Iranians f——ing around with the Strait [of Hormuz] makes (Trump) more dug in.”

Pressure from Israel is also a factor in the escalation trap. Axios contends Trump has a history of being convinced by Benjamin Netanyahu to take his side. For the Iranians' part, survival is the key, and its retaliation proves “it can impose pain, militarily and economically, to scare off future attacks.”

Unlike tariffs that are easily yanked, the Iran war’s outcome “is beyond unilateral control and quick fixes. And Iran gets a say,” Axios states.

Axios notes that it’s fair to assume the Trump administration expected the conflict to run about 4 to 6 weeks. That timeline would make April 1 (day 33 of the war) “a real gut-check moment.”

There is no easy path out for Trump, Axios claims. “The Iranians have made it clear in private and in public that even if Trump decides to end the war, they could continue shooting missiles and rockets until they get guarantees that this is the end of the war, not just a temporary ceasefire.”

Trump faces new territory now, Axios says. He has to make a decision on a significant military escalation. He had hoped for some gains that would allow him to declare victory. But that’s not happening.

President Donald Trump has learned that creating “fake emergencies” is the best way to get things done with his various agendas while invoking obscure laws as justification.

That’s the opinion of Lisa Needham, writing in Public Notice, who says Trump, backed by the Department of Justice's favorable interpretations, basically declares something an emergency, then acts. That’s pushing the U.S. toward autocracy, she argues.

“It does things with no legal justification at all. It does things based on legal justifications that are obviously false. It does things based on legal justifications that have never been used before. It does things based on legal justifications that stretch far beyond reason," she observes.

“And it does so, always, by saying there is some emergency that allows — even requires — such action,” Needham writes.

Trump and his Department of Justice have invoked “little-known, sometimes even never-before-used laws” to justify their “emergency” actions. “That confounds the courts a bit as they are forced to grapple with scenarios where there isn’t a well-developed body of law,” Needham writes.

Add in the judiciary’s traditional defense of the executive branch, and it basically gives Trump a green light on almost anything, particularly if national security is invoked.

Needham cites four ways Trump has manipulated the law to his advantage:

1. The administration has invoked “a mishmash of domestic law” to justify Caribbean boat bombings and Iran.
2. Existing immigration laws were “cobbled together” to allow the administration to pretend there’s some legal authority for their actions.
3. Trump also relied on “never- or seldom-used laws about presidential authority” to deploy active-duty troops domestically.
4. Finally, he used emergency powers to justify his “sweeping, random, and retaliatory tariffs.”

Needham dismissed the few limitations the Supreme Court imposed on Trump’s powers “related far more to ensuring the safety of some justices’ pocketbooks rather than the safety of immigrants, Americans living in blue cities and unarmed fishermen and fishing boats in the Caribbean.”

Needham feels the judiciary is not blameless. “Courts are tangled up in this mess, playing whack-a-mole with each new development, while the rest of us try to survive a lawless, dangerous presidency.”

But courts are typically conservative and cautious entities, Needham concedes, writing, "their work is built on precedent, on looking at what has come before.”

That deliberation takes time. “And that’s a weakness in the judicial system that Trump exploits over and over again," she adds.

FEMA insiders have been warning that outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Noem’s policies are hampering operations and their ability to respond to disasters.

The consequence of that may be lives lost. Delayed contract approvals has “slowed FEMA’s ability to pre-position crucial search-and-rescue teams, left call centers understaffed, and delayed the sharing of data with state partners,” CNN reports.

When tornadoes hit the Midwest and Plains last weekend, state and local search-and-rescue crews had to work without a critical tornado-tracking tool typically provided by FEMA. The tool follows a storm’s destructive path and allows rescuers to quickly reach those most affected.

The $200,000 contract for that crucial tool was sitting on a desk awaiting approval, leaving rescue teams literally guessing on where storms had the worst impact.

CNN reports “thousands of FEMA spending requests” have stalled between Noem and FEMA acting chief Karen Evans. “Many have been slashed, others have sat for months,” sources claim and documents show.

Noem is scheduled to leave her position atop DHS at the end of March. For now, her team continues to oversee FEMA’s operations.

Beyond Noem's tight spending policies, the government shutdown has stalled activity at the DHS, which oversees FEMA. Noem directed FEMA to scale back to “bare-minimum, live-saving operations only.”

In a follow-up email to the agency’s regional leaders, FEMA’s Karen Evans wrote that “all activities at FEMA need to cease.”

Much of FEMA’s work usually continues during government shutdowns. That’s because it’s tied to the Disaster Relief Fund, a pot of money Congress provides for disasters and emergencies.

This time, staffers were told there were only four exceptions to the no-work edict: things tied to President Trump’s State of the Union address, response to winter storms, meetings on the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, and “Nuclear activities.”

“People are being told not to even open their computers,” a high-ranking FEMA official said to CNN about their regional office. “It’s the most appalling experience of my professional life.”

“It’s a huge waste of time and taxpayer money for no reason, just to make the impact of the shutdown more significant,” another FEMA official said to CNN.

Meanwhile, Noem and the Trump administration blame Democrats for the DHS shutdown. Democrats support standalone funding for several agencies, including FEMA, but face Republican opposition.

A task force to help reform FEMA is set to present its final list of recommendations in the coming weeks.

President Donald Trump’s “delusions of grandeur” inevitably overwhelm the Constitution, decency, political good sense and Americans’ distress.

That’s the opinion of Jennifer Rubin, who writes in The Contrarian that beyond the misery wrought by the Iran war, Trump and his administration almost seem to delight in inflicting suffering on the most vulnerable.

Her list of examples is extensive. Leading off are the more than 150 direct murders at sea, a violation of international law. The video game-like bombings were done “without effort to interdict the boats or seek definitive proof that the victims are ‘narco-terrorists.’”

Then there is the general cutback in Medicaid and the refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Add to that the suspension of SNAP benefits during last year's government shutdown, “depriving kids, seniors, the disabled, and the working poor of food,” Rubin writes. That's a choice prior administrations chose not to take.

DOGE actions also caused pain.

“The MAGA crowd was delighted when DOGE minions cut vital government services, slashed jobs, and consigned children and adults overseas to death," Rubin writes. "Trump applauds when government workers lose their jobs.”

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has been underway since mid-February is also punching down, Rubin contends. “He and his MAGA toadies refused to separately fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.”

Meanwhile, Trump continually “tries to cut vital social services in blue states, holding their residents hostage to his partisan power plays.”

The hidden tax on purchases imposed via tariffs is “forcing already strapped families and small businesses to pay more. The Trump regime tells Americans either they won’t pay for it, or if they do, it’s worth a recession.”

Why is this happening? Rubin claims Trump shows all the classic symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. But it’s clear, even without an official diagnosis, “he inarguably cares nothing about (if not outright celebrates) deaths, illnesses, suffering, economic distress and any other harm he inflicts on those who refuse to worship him.”

The solution is simple, Rubin concludes. In eight months, “The voters still have the power to stop the MAGA runaway train of death and destruction.”

Democrat critics have long been accusing the party of being “tax and spend” advocates.

So it’s got to be a shock to some that two Democrat legislators appear to be devising a massive tax break for a huge number of Americans. A headline in The Bulwark refers to the ideas as “Reaganmaxxing,” a play on our 40th president’s tax slashing agenda and the protein-heavy diet that bodybuilders advocate.

Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) both have a tax reform plan, albeit with differing points. They both advocate increasing taxes on the ultra-rich in order to help the little guys.

Booker has put his goal at a $75,000 standard deduction, more than double the current allocation of $31,500 for married couples filing jointly and far above the deduction of $15,750 for singles and married people filing separately.

Not everyone in the Democratic party is pleased. Some pols are looking to make up the spending ground lost to the current Republican administration if they triumph in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

One policy analyst summed up the Dem worries.

“I think just taking the proposals at face value is important at this point,” Will Raderman, a senior policy advisor at the Searchlight Institute, told The Bulwark. “And knowing that there’s only so much spending that you can do on new kinds of reforms, I think the attention and effort would be much better suited on other proposals.”

Raderman said Booker’s plan to significantly expand the child tax credit is fine. But he claimed there’s room for more if the proposed weighty standard deduction is trimmed

“Could you expand health care and improve health care in a lot of key ways? Could you fix the unemployment system? Could you improve job training pathways?” Raderman asked. “I think what’s important to keep in mind is, if part of the proposal costs trillions and trillions of dollars, the ability to actually focus on and do a whole bunch of really important agenda items gets that much harder, and probably means we can’t do those.”

Booker pushed back in a later conversation with the website about his proposal. He claimed his plan means “the median earner is gonna see an 85% cut on their taxes, which is significant.”

He chided those who don’t dream as big as he does.

“The Democratic party has got to get its act together and stop thinking that when a bold idea comes forward, it means that all the other important things don’t get done,” Booker said. “This is the biggest unrigging of our tax system that there is.”

The Booker and Van Hollen proposals are not expected to go anywhere while Republicans control the House and Senate.

But the story points out that prior tax slashing movements on the Republican side also seemed preposterous at one time.

In 2016, Republican presidential hopeful and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed the elimination of the standard deduction and a two percent tax rate for the lowest earners.

Then-candidate Donald Trump wanted to cut the Head of Household filing status. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) went theatrical, slashing copies of the U.S. tax code with a chainsaw and woodchipper.

But eventually, the Republican proposals were merged into a single plan. That became the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which changed the IRS standard deductions and cut corporate tax rates.

That gives hope to the Booker and Van Hollen camps that today’s “impossible” becomes tomorrow’s law.

President Donald Trump has put together the worst cabinet in U.S. history, according to an opinion piece by Paul Waldman, a former associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and author.

Writing for Public Notice, Waldman took an unsparing look at the administration. “Peruse the headlines on a given day and you’ll see them in action, proudly bringing catastrophe wherever they go,” he wrote.

In Waldman’s opinion, the pre-Trump Cabinet that won the “worst” honors was that of Warren G. Harding. That administration was grappling with the Teapot Dome scandal over oil rights, and a couple of Cabinet members went to prison for accepting bribes.

But “even when no one winds up behind bars, every Cabinet has a dud or two,” Waldman concedes. He even allows that Trump’s first Cabinet seems like a model of wisdom and competence compared to the second group.

Trump, Waldman contends, “knew exactly what he wanted and who could give it to him,” when selecting his second Cabinet lineup. That resulted in a series of bad choices.

“The person guaranteed to do maximal harm to the interests of the country and the purposes for which their department exists," according to Waldman. "In short, we have never seen quite the collection of clowns, cranks, and crooks that Trump has assembled.”

The 15 departments of the Cabinet are led by Senate-confirmed secretaries. But the selections to lead these silos should minimally “require considerable administrative experience and deep knowledge of the issues the department confronts," Walden argues. Not so in Trump's second administration.

A few of his observations:

1. New Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is “comically unqualified, intensely partisan and unflaggingly devoted to whatever ridiculous thing bubbled out of Donald Trump’s mouth five minutes ago."
2. Pete Hegseth, the former weekend cohost of “Fox & Friends” has “proven himself to be a model of incompetence; the word insiders use again and again to describe DOD under his leadership is 'chaos.'"
3. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “so far outside the norm that he can’t be compared to any previous secretary of Health and Human Services, or any Cabinet member at all."
4. Pam Bondi, the second choice for the position after Matt Gaetz, “has managed in one short year to utterly corrupt and degrade the Department of Justice,” Waldman writes. Under her watch, Waldman claims, thousands of experienced lawyers have quit.

“But if you tried to point to a single exemplary member of the cabinet, could you find one?” Waldman asks.

The high hopes for Secretary of State Marco Rubio have vanished, Waldman claims. He’s now “an enthusiastic implementer of Trump’s vision to turn America into a plundering far-right rogue state.”

There is also an “incredible collection of hacks and barbarians outside and below the Cabinet,” Waldman says. Advisor Stephen Miller, FCC chair Brendan Carr, DHS head Tom Holman and FBI head Kash Patel are among them, he writes.

The lone bright spot appears to be Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, “a rarity in Trump’s Cabinet in that he understands the government quite well and performs his job with skill.” But his mission is to “destroy the federal government’s capacity to solve problems or serve the public.”

When the Trump presidency finally ends, most will find a cozy off-ramp in corporate or political consultancies.

“A few of them will probably even run for president,” Waldman concludes. “As though what they’ve already done to the country isn’t enough.”

A Republican congressman who has made stock trading a key issue in his campaign and legislation has seemingly been caught in a contradiction on how he handles his finances, according to Politico.

Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) has consistently insisted that he doesn’t talk about stock trading with his financial advisor and has no input on his portfolio’s trading activity.

But a local radio station interview with him from April 2025 has surfaced in which he admitted he meets with his broker to “talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”

In the interview with host Bob Cordaro, Bresnahan was asked a pointed question: “Sum and substance, you’re saying, ‘Look, I did not buy and sell on information I’ve gleaned here in Congress. My adviser’s doing my trading for me, and I am duly reporting it.’ Is that fair?”

Bresnahan responded by saying, “Absolutely. Absolutely. Right hand to God on my mother’s life. Without a question.”

He added, “I’m not on a day by day, minute by minute. I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”

Bresnahan has made stock trading issue a key, campaigning on it in 2024, then introducing a bill last year after his election that would ban congressional stock trading starting in 2027.

He did this while engaging in more more than 600 stock trades in 2025 before stopping the activity toward the end of the year.

His Periodic Transaction Reports, issued in summer of 2025, denied his input into trading activity. “All investment decisions related to my personal financial portfolio are delegated to professional financial advisors. I have no role in, nor am informed of, specific investment decisions prior to their execution.”

Members of Congress are required to file the reports to disclose Wall Street transactions.

Bresnahan campaign spokesman Chris Pack said Bresnahan’s comments were “referring to 30,000 foot investment strategy and not about stock trades, and that is clear in the surrounding context of the interview.” The interview is no longer available on the host’s website, Politico reports.

Bresnahan’s congressional spokesperson, Hannah Pope, told the New York Times last year that Bresnahan trades are done by a financial adviser without his input. He learns about them when the public does through reports that members of Congress have to file on their trading, she said.

The Bresnahan trading is a key issue in what’s anticipated to be a tight race for his seat in the November midterms. He will face off with Democrat and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who has made banning congressional trading as her first issue on her campaign website. A TV campaign is also underway on Bresnahan's trading.