Trump Comes Up With New Plan to Gut Social Security

The Trump administration is planning to further cripple the Social Security Administration by making it easier to fire thousands of the agency’s employees.

The agency’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, told SSA staff earlier this month that many of their jobs would be converted to Schedule F positions, a new classification that would strip these workers of civil service protections. The move has prompted litigation from one of the unions representing SSA employees, the American Federation of Government Employees, who argue that the new classification is misplaced.

“We are line employees to use the phrase in the Administration’s fact sheet, and we should have been excluded from any Schedule F plan,” an AFGE representative wrote in an email to its members. “This is a massive overreach by the Agency that is inconsistent with the Administration’s own guidance.… In the meantime, employees should continue to do great work on behalf of the American people, as they have been.”

The move would make it easier for thousands of employees to be terminated, according to the AFGE representative’s email. It’s the latest blow to the SSA, which provides $1.5 trillion in benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors, and poor and disabled Americans.

In recent weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has made deep cuts to the agency, resulting in website crashes, regional office managers being forced to answer phone calls at front desks, and millions of benefit recipients being prevented from accessing their oline accounts.

Over 7,000 SSA workers were laid off in February thanks to DOGE, sending the agency into a death spiral. The gutting of Social Security has terrified Americans, with polls showing worry about the benefits program at its highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.

It’s all part of Musk and the Trump administration’s plans. The tech oligarch has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and spread lies that the program is a magnet for waste and fraud. The conservative manifesto Project 2025 also lays out plans to scale back the program and cut its benefits. With Republicans controlling Congress, can anything stop the destruction of a lifeline to millions of Americans?

Donald Trump’s administration is now attempting to smear the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

During an interview on Newsmax’s Wake Up America Thursday, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin criticized Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who’d been forced to move her family to a safe house after the DHS posted a document that included her full address.

McLaughlin tried to claim that the government hadn’t done anything wrong by posting the documents.

“These were publicly accessible documents,” she said. “It wasn’t just the Department of Homeland Security that had them, it’s any member of the American public can go out to a courthouse and get these documents. So to try to lay that at our feet is just inaccurate.”

But McLaughlin took it a step further, attempting to sow doubt about Vasquez Sura’s “sob story.”

“I think it’s important to point to her credibility, a number of times, including that in her own written testimony she said she feared her husband,” McLaughlin said. The document the government had posted containing the family’s address was a protective order that Vasquez Sura had sought against her husband but then abandoned.

“She said that he abused her, that he ripped off her shirt, that he slapped her, that he was scratching her, that she was trying to take her children away. And now she’s pushing this sob story that they had a wonderful relationship, that they never fought,” McLaughlin said. “I think most couples fight, so, I unfortunately think this woman is burning down her own credibility as well.”

In reality, it’s McLaughlin who has undermined her own credibility in her crusade to see Abrego Garcia remain in El Salvador. Last week, she claimed in a post on X that when Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019 for loitering, he was found with “rolls of cash.” But anyone who actually bothers to read the uncompelling police documents would know that the hoodie he was wearing at the time had cash printed on it.

It should come as no surprise that McLaughlin was completely mischaracterizing Vasquez Sura’s statement about the abandoned protective order against her husband.

“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution following a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order, in case things escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement to multiple outlets Wednesday. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling.

“Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. But that is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from removal. Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him,” the statement read.

Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, is currently staying in an undisclosed location with her three children as the U.S. government makes continued attempts to flout a Supreme Court order requiring that it “facilitate” the return of her husband. Vasquez Sura has found herself at the center of a political firestorm with far-reaching implications, as both the Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele insist that Abrego Garcia will not be coming back to the U.S.

Donald Trump’s memecoin rocketed in value following news that the president would meet with some of the cryptocurrency’s top investors.

Trump is scheduled to have a private dinner on May 22 at Trump National Golf Club in Washington with the 220 people who have the highest average Trumpcoin balance during a designated three-week period, Cryptoslate reported Thursday.

In order to break that top 220, buyers will need to invest more than $395,000, according to an analysis by CryptoRank.io. But the rising investment will definitely benefit some key players in Trumpworld, including the president himself, who holds roughly 80 percent of the total supply of TRUMP tokens.

The dinner announcement sparked a 54 percent jump in the value of the memecoin.

The top 25 investors in TRUMP tokens will receive VIP access to the dinner event, opening the opportunity for them to take photos alongside Trump and receive a guided tour the following day.

“If the event is canceled, the NFT will serve as compensation in lieu of attendance,” Cryptoslate reported.

Critics of Trump’s cryptocurrency have flagged the investment as a novel way to circumnavigate Federal Election Commission contribution limits, which prevent individuals from donating more than $3,500 per election to their candidate of choice.

Trump has tried to position himself as a pro-crypto president. At a Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in July, Trump promised to build out a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” if elected, according to CoinDesk.

But others have derided the memecoin as little more than another money-grabbing grift. Trump’s long list of election-year hustles included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and a limited-edition, $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood. Trump also took the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social public and stamped his name on a new cryptocurrency platform headed by his two sons, Eric and Don Jr., which even the president’s allies have criticized as a “huge mistake.”

The Trump administration is doing insider trading again.

Fox Business’s Charles Gasparino reported Thursday that the Trump administration has given Wall Street executives early notice of an impending trade deal with India.

“People inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street execs they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India, according to my sources who are senior Wall Street execs w ties to the White House,” Gasparino wrote on X before shifting his attention to the presumed deal rather than the private knowledge that Wall Street executives were graced with before the rest of the public.

“Why are Wall Street executives getting early alerts from people within the Trump White House about the status of trade negotiations?” Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal asked.

“So they are just bribing wall street firms with insider info,” author John Ganz commented.

This kind of blatant action cuts through the air of working-class, little-guy concern that the Trump administration claims to have and puts its actual corporate elitism on full display. Trump is treating the market like a board game that he’s rigged for himself and all of the rich friends who donated to his campaign. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last.

Earlier this month, Trump did some more blatant insider trading, bragging about how much money his friends made off his abrupt 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs—an announcement that caused stocks to shoot up.

“He made $2.5 million today, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad,” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and Roger Penske, a Nascar team owner. Bloomberg reported that the day of this announcement was the “best day ever” for billionaires, as the world’s elite collectively made $304 billion when the markets went back up.

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X at the time. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense?”

Trump administration officials have yet to comment on the deal.

A federal judge has ordered that a Venezuelan immigrant deported to El Salvador should be returned to the U.S.

On Wednesday night, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, appointed by President Trump, ruled that a 20-year-old Venezuelan man’s removal violated a previous court settlement, and that the government should facilitate his return. Gallagher also ruled that the government should not deport anyone else covered by the settlement.

In 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed by immigrants who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and sought asylum in order to have their applications processed while they stayed in the country. The government and the plaintiffs settled the case in 2024. But the Trump administration broke the agreement by sending one of the immigrants, known under the pseudonym “Cristian” in court records, to El Salvador last month as part of three deportation flights to the country.

“At bottom, this case, unlike other cases involving the government’s removal of individuals under the Alien Enemies Act, is a contractual dispute because of the Settlement Agreement,” the attorneys for the plaintiff said, referring to the eighteenth-century wartime authority Trump used to justify deporting noncitizens with little to no due process.

In her ruling, Gallager mentioned the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the government mistakenly deported to El Salvador, saying that “like Judge [Paula] Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

The Trump administration said that Cristian was arrested in January for possession of cocaine and that “his designation as an alien enemy pursuant to the [Alien Enemies Act] results in him ceasing to be a member” of the class in the lawsuit. This may be moot now, though, as a federal judge ruled last week that any deportations under the 1798 law require the government to provide advance notice and a court hearing.

But the White House has shown a flippant disregard for court orders that go against its wishes, and they aren’t likely to respond favorably to Gallager’s ruling. Each day, the administration’s deal with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to send immigrants to the country is looking more and more legally questionable, but nothing appears to be changing, despite rebukes from multiple judges.

Donald Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine as soon as he returned to the Oval Office—but late Wednesday, amid a collapsing peace deal, Russia dropped more bombs on Kyiv.

By early Thursday—nearly 100 days into Trump’s second term—the president had resorted to begging his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to stop the violence.

“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”

Russia barraged Ukraine’s capital with missiles and drones for 11 hours Wednesday night. The attack killed at least eight people and injured more than 70, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told Reuters.

The Kremlin claimed the attack was aimed at Ukraine’s defense industry, allegedly targeting manufacturing plants that produced “rocket fuel and gunpowder,” but the targets it hit were instead in five different Kyiv neighborhoods.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy decried the attack as “one of (Russia’s) most outrageous.”

State Secretary Marco Rubio spontaneously pulled out of Ukraine peace talks Wednesday after Zelenskiy plainly rejected a U.S.-backed deal that would permanently hand over Crimea to Russia.

“Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Zelenskiy said, at a press conference in Kyiv Tuesday. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our Constitution.”

Responding via a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump claimed that the territory was “lost years ago” and “and is not even a point of discussion.”

In a statement released later that day, Zelenskiy stressed that his country was dedicated to achieving peace—but that Ukraine “will always act in accordance with its Constitution.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas condemned Wednesday night’s attack, denoting Russia and the country’s “war aims” as the obstacle to ending the war.

“While claiming to seek peace, Russia launched a deadly airstrike on Kyiv,” Kallas wrote on X. “This isn’t a pursuit of peace, it’s a mockery of it.”

Trump expressed optimism on striking a new trade deal with China after he placed aggressive 145 percent total tariffs on the country. The Chinese government called his bluff immediately. 

“We’re dealing with a lot of countries right now and could be with China, but maybe we’ll make a special—you know, a deal—and we will see what it will be. Right now, it’s at 145 percent, that’s very high,” Trump said on Wednesday.

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong directly rejected that assertion Thursday, noting that “claims about the progress of China-U.S. trade negotiations are groundless as trying to catch the wind and have no factual basis.”

“China’s position is consistent, and we are open to consultations and dialogues, but any form of consultations and negotiations must be conducted on the basis of mutual respect and in an equal manner,” he said at a press conference. “The U.S. should respond to rational voices in the international community and within its own borders and thoroughly remove all unilateral tariffs imposed on China, if it really wants to solve the problem.” 

Trump has made China a central target in his trade war, imposing 145 percent tariffs even as he paused reciprocal tariffs on all other countries for 90 days. Beijing responded with its own 125 percent tariffs on U.S. products, with more retaliation sure to come. 

After his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump’s approval rating is officially lower than it was during his first term, according to a humiliating Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Trump’s approval rating sank to 44 percent at the 100-day mark, down five points from the previous month. That’s one point lower than Trump’s approval rating at the same point during his first term and markedly lower than the approval ratings for Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush.

Respondents—even Republicans—were feeling significantly less positive about the beginning of Trump’s second term. Thirty-eight percent of respondents, and 75 percent of Republicans, said they felt “encouraged” about the next four years, which is down from 45 percent and 84 percent, respectively, in 2017. It seems that Trump’s erratic first few months in office haven’t stoked confidence in his leadership.

The Fox News poll was also a searing indictment of Trump’s so-called mandate to Make America Great Again, as the president also received negative approval ratings on nearly every aspect of his policy agenda.

The areas where voters said Trump was failing the most were inflation and tariffs, which both received a 33 percent approval rating. Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy would likely result in higher inflation. Earlier this week, the International Monetary Fund said that the president’s sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy would likely slow both global and domestic growth.

On the economy, Trump received a record-low approval rating of 38 percent, according to Fox News, with the outlook looking poor as 71 percent of respondents said that they rated the economic conditions negatively and 55 percent said that conditions were worsening for their families.

Recent polling from Reuters/Ipsos also found that the president was underperforming on nearly every key issue.

The singular area that garnered the president a positive approval rating was his work on border security, of which a 55 percent majority approves. Trump received a record-high approval rating on immigration—which was still just 47 percent. However, three recent polls have practically spelled disaster for Trump on the issue, with Americans increasingly disapproving of the president’s immigration policies amid a flurry of rushed deportations.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should stop using the Signal messaging app at this point.

The Washington Post reports that the former Fox News host had Signal installed on his office computer at the Pentagon, a major security risk and further evidence that Hegseth used the messaging tool frequently for government business. According to the Post, the desktop app mirrored Hegseth’s phone and helped the secretary overcome the lack of cell phone service within the Pentagon.

Cell phones and other personal electronic devices are not permitted within classified spaces, and installing Signal on his desktop computer allowed Hegseth to get around that prohibition. At least one of Hegseth’s top aides, his chief of staff Joe Kasper, also expressed interest in using Signal on Department of Defense computers, but it’s not clear how widespread the app is among Pentagon employees.

Hegseth and his team are also required by law to preserve messages sent to one another, and there’s no indication that they have done so with their conversations on Signal, which allows messages to automatically disappear. A spokesperson for Hegseth, Sean Parnell, told the Post in a statement that Hegseth “has never used and does not currently use Signal on his government computer.”

According to the Post’s sources, Hegseth had Signal installed on a second computer in his Pentagon office and was interested in an app that allowed him to send conventional text messages from his computer.

Hegseth is under fire for using Signal last month to discuss attack plans against targets in Yemen with other top administration officials in a group chat with a journalist, Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, accidentally present. On Sunday, Hegseth was in hot water again when it was discovered that he discussed the attack plans in another, personal group chat with his wife, personal lawyer, and brother, among others.

Classified information is not supposed to be shared within private messaging apps such as Signal, and Hegseth has faced calls to resign, as well as reports that President Trump has begun the search for a new secretary of defense. Trump has publicly denied these reports, and says he stands by Hegseth.

But Hegseth is facing more turmoil within the DOD, with three top employees being fired last week as the result of a leaked investigation. Others within the department think he may not last much longer, especially considering he doesn’t have much support in Congress, having narrowly been confirmed by the Senate thanks to a tiebreaker vote from Vice President JD Vance.

Hegseth’s actions, if they weren’t scrutinized before, will now be under a microscope, and any other scandals, even small ones, could sink his tenure.

And just like that, the bromance is over. Elon Musk is preparing to step away from DOGE in May, and President Trump seems to be looking forward to being rid of his “special employee.” The president is already referring to the billionaire DOGE head in the past tense, even with a month left on his tenure.

“He was a tremendous help, both in the campaign and in what he’s done with DOGE,” Trump said at a press conference from the Oval Office Wednesday evening. “He was treated very unfairly by the—I guess you call it the public.… They took it out on Tesla.… He really helped the country. Saved us a lot of money.… He was always gonna ease out.”

Musk has cast himself as this sacrificial lamb, taking on both so much responsibility with DOGE and so much hate and nastiness from the public that he simply cannot go on. And while the hate has been real—Tesla stocks have plummeted as Musk’s E.V. car company took a massive reputational hit—the damage Musk has already done to our federal government may be here long after he’s gone.