The war on Social Security

Hartmann Report -  The Trump administration is bending over backwards to accommodate Elon Musk’s Dark Enlightenment plan to tear our government down and replace as many of its functions as possible with for-profit corporate programs. Given that Social Security cuts checks totaling $1.6 trillion a year, that’s where there’s a huge opportunity for big banks (and smaller ones like the one Elon wants to create with and for X) to administer the funds, skim a few percent off the top, and get rich, rich, rich. 

A few federal judges aren’t as enthusiastic about the program, though, so Trump’s SSA guy Lee Dudek is now saying that if Elon and his teenage hackers can’t get fully into the guts of the Social Security Administration’s computers and date — giving them all of our medical, financial, and historic employment information — he’s going to simply shut the system down so nobody gets a check. “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” he said sarcastically according to Bloomberg News. 

Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander, overseeing the AFL-CIO’s lawsuit against DOGE, noted that Musk’s boys were violating both administrative and privacy laws when they let the DOGE boys have “unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.” And, she added, they never even provided a good reason to inspect all our personal records: “[D]efendants, with so-called experts on the DOGE Team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government.” 

It’s fascinating to see how hard Trump is fighting for the Dark Enlightenment guys who want to replace democracy in America with a technocratic oligarchy that they run. Will Americans wake up to what’s happening in time to stop or even slow them down? Will they figure out ways around the court cases they keep losing, or reach the point where they simply begin to deny the legitimacy of the courts and their orders? It feels like we’re at a very significant turning point in this process; stay tuned…

 Rick Weiland, Take It Back -  Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies are seizing control of the Social Security Administration (SSA), to gut it from the inside out.

Musk fired the acting commissioner in February and replaced them with a DOGE-affiliated lackey. Now, they’re purging SSA staff, planning to shut down nearly 50 field offices, and even gaining access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data.

This is an intentional effort to sabotage Social Security so that Trump and his billionaire buddies can privatize it and hand it over to Wall Street. That’s why Rep. John Larson (D-CT) is fighting back with three urgent bills:

• The Keeping Our Field Offices Open Act – blocks all Social Security office closures until the end of the Trump administration.

• The Protecting Americans’ Social Security Data Act – prevents Musk’s SSA appointees from accessing private beneficiary data.

• A Resolution of Inquiry – forces Trump to disclose what his administration and Musk’s team are planning for Social Security.

Social Security is a lifeline for millions of Americans. It lifts nearly 22 million people out of poverty, including over 15 million seniors. It provides economic stability for retirees, disabled workers, and survivors, ensuring they don’t fall into financial ruin.

That’s exactly why Trump and Musk are trying to gut the system. Their goal? Make it fail, then use the chaos to justify privatization. They want to funnel Social Security funds into the stock market, handing control over to billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street gamblers.

The immediate danger is the collapse of the SSA itself. If field offices shut down and workers are laid off, the entire system will grind to a halt. Americans will be unable to apply for benefits, fix errors, or even access their Social Security checks.