DOGE’s Hunt for Social Security Fraud Ends in Total Bust

After months of baseless claims about “extreme levels of fraud” within the Social Security Administration—even going so far as calling it the “biggest ponzi scheme of all time”—Elon Musk and DOGE have only found two likely fraudulent claims out of over 110,000 at the Social Security Administrations, according to Nextgov.

Musk and other DOGE workers were claiming that 40 percent of calls to the agency were fraudulent.

DOGE instructed the agency to install anti-fraud checks for benefit claims made over the phone. That policy impeded the agency’s retirement claim processing, while finding less than 1 percent rate of calls were potentially fraudulent. The two likely fraudulent cases make it a rate of .0018 percent. So DOGE found virtually no fraud and made a system integral to our country’s inner workings less efficient in the process.

“No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases,” an internal agency document read. The SSA is now weighing changing the policy entirely.

“The Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans,” Senator Elizabeth Warren told Nextgov. ““Every one of DOGE’s so-called ‘mistakes’ is a backdoor cut to people’s benefits.... There’s nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed.”

“It seemed like a solution in search of a problem,” said Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “So many of these policy changes—the proposals, the reversals, the things that SSA has done over these past several months—seem to have been fueled by misinformation from people like Elon Musk.”

Donald Trump has the presidency, but now he seems to want Paris Hilton’s crown.

The president did very presidential things on social media Friday morning, including roasting Taylor Swift by deeming the notoriously litigious pop singer as not “hot.”

“Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump likes to dredge up his obsession with Swift every so often, especially during critical policy moments. During a closed-door meeting between Trump and House Republicans in June—his first visit to Capitol Hill since before the January 6 insurrection—Trump insisted on discussing the pop phenom, lamenting that she might endorse President Joe Biden while he was still in the race. Days before the meeting, Variety reported that Trump had spoken at length about Swift in a one-on-one interview, describing her as “unusually beautiful.”

Swift has already found herself at the epicenter of A-list drama this week, after she was subpoenaed into her reportedly ex-BFF Blake Lively’s harassment lawsuit against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni. Another scandalous, Swift-related detail emerged from the case this week when Baldoni’s attorneys submitted a letter accusing Lively’s team of extorting Swift by threatening to release “ten years” of private texts with the popstar unless she expressed public support for Lively. A federal judge struck the letter from the docket Thursday, warning Baldoni’s team not to “promote scandal arising out of unproven potentially libelous statements.”

But the 35-year-old chantress isn’t the only singer beefing with Trump. Shortly after calling out Swift, the president took a stab at Bruce Springsteen, snubbing the singer of “Born in the USA”, one of his favorite rally tracks, as “highly overrated.”

“Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy—Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country,” Trump posted. “If I wasn’t elected, it would have been GONE by now!”

“This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” Trump added.

The jab followed remarks Springsteen made at a concert in Manchester, England Wednesday. The rock star said that the Trump administration was “taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers,” and that the richest men were “taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death.”

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll, in dangerous times,” Springsteen said. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

“They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society,” he continued. “They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.”

This story has been updated.

An Instagram post from former FBI Director James Comey has drawn a massive backlash from the right, which is accusing him of calling for Donald Trump’s assassination.

Comey on Thursday posted a picture of seashells arranged on beach sand reading “8647.” He claimed that he came across the shells, already arranged, while taking a walk, and assumed that it was a political message. Conservatives immediately started attacking Comey, a critic of Trump who was fired by the president during his first term.

“Just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered. This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!!” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, wrote on X Thursday, pinning it to the top of his profile.

Far-right influencer Laura Loomer also freaked out in multiple X posts, claiming, “This is a call for the assassination of President Trump by the former FBI Director!” And on Fox News Thursday night, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for Comey to be jailed, calling the post concerning in light of Trump surviving “two assassination attempts on his life.”

But how dangerous was Comey’s post? According to Merriam-Webster, the verb “86” can mean “to eject, remove, or dismiss” a person. The “47” in the picture presumably means Trump, the 47th president of the United States. Though some use the term 86 to mean “to kill,” many also use it to simply mean to get rid of something.

Regardless of what Comey meant, conservatives are acting in bad faith when they call for his prosecution. The phrase was also used against Joe Biden, with conservatives selling “8646” merchandise. Trump’s own social media posts have far exceeded Comey’s post, such as his 2024 post of a video showing Biden hog-tied in the back of a pickup truck. All of this is just another case of the right crying wolf.

Once again, new polling has President Trump’s approval rating underwater on nearly every single issue.

Just weeks after multiple polls showed him tanking with Americans everywhere—and young people in particular—data from Verasight U.S. for Strength In Numbers makes it clear that those numbers didn’t lie.

The poll, conducted between May 1 and May 6 with 1,000 adults, showed that 56 percent disapprove of the overall job that Trump is doing as president. Trump is also sitting on multiple net negatives. He is -32 on inflation and -17 on jobs and the economy, policies that were central to the promises he made in his reelection campaign. He is -16 on foreign policy and -15 on education.

The only exception was border security, where 52 percent approved of his signature policy. But on immigration more broadly, 49 percent still disapprove of the president compared to 47 percent who approve.

While each poll has its own level of bias and margin of error, multiple polls have shown the president to be in dire straits, especially with young people, independents, and Latino people—groups that were absolutely crucial to his victory last November. Even as Trump’s numbers remain robust among conservative voters (around 72 percent according to Verasight) these early patterns certainly raise questions regarding how his reputation will impact critical downballot races in the 2026 midterm elections.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wants everyone to know that the president absolutely did not, under any circumstances, tell her not to run in Georgia’s Senate race.

The MAGA acolyte was rumored to be one of a dozen conservatives considering a bid for the seat when it became clear that Republican Governor Brian Kemp would not enter the race. But that changed last week when Greene announced that she would not be running against Senator Jon Ossoff come the midterms.

But the decision wasn’t entirely Greene’s own, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported Thursday that Donald Trump had advised the Jewish space lasers conspiracy theorist not to run.

Trump’s political team had commissioned a poll by Tony Fabrizio, the president’s longtime pollster, that indicated Greene would lose the race by double digits, potentially as much as 18 points, sources familiar with the situation told the Journal.

In a statement to the Journal, Greene claimed that the poll’s details were a “private conversation” that was “apparently being leaked.” She confirmed that the poll was done by Fabrizio, though she added that the pollster has refused to work for her on the basis of having a “conflict,” “which means he’s working for someone against me,” Greene said.

But after the story was published, Greene had more to say, insisting that the idea she wouldn’t win the race was little more than a narrative cooked up by her opponents.

“I have never spoken with President Trump about running for Senate or any other race,” Greene posted on X Thursday evening. “But for some reason, some consultants and aids are leaking to the usual tools in the media in order to promote the narrative they want to tell about me.”

“I have always supported President Trump for FREE and actually spent hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigning with him all across the country!!” she said. “You would think these people would be embracing me because I’ve fought the hardest for him, but the problem is they are not on my payroll.”

The Department of Homeland Security is considering a barbaric pitch for a television show where immigrants compete for U.S. citizenship.

The Daily Mail reported Thursday that it had obtained a 35-page program pitch for a show called The American, created by writer and producer Rob Worsoff of Duck Dynasty.

The structure of the show reportedly involves immigrants arriving at Ellis Island aboard “The Citizen Ship” before travelling from state to state aboard a train called “The American,” learning about the United States and participating in competitions themed around the different regions of the U.S. Scores would be rendered by U.S. immigration officials, and losers would be sent home with patently American prizes, such as a Starbucks gift card.

“We’ll join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy—hearing their backstories—as we are reminded how amazing it is to be American,” the pitch stated. Nothing could possibly devalue U.S. citizenship more.

Although the Daily Mail reported sources had indicated that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem supported the project, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied Noem’s involvement in the show.

In a post on X Thursday, McLaughlin wrote that the reporting was “completely false” and an “affront to journalism.”

“Secretary Noem has not ‘backed’ or even aware of the pitch of any scripted or reality show,” she said.

McLaughlin said that DHS received hundreds of pitches for television shows a year. “This pitch has not received approval or denial by staff,” she wrote.

Noem’s no stranger to made-for-television propaganda stunts. The former governor of South Dakota was excoriated earlier this week for playing “dress-up” while deporting U.S. citizens and documented immigrants. In March, she posed with a fresh blow out in front of massive cells of prisoners at CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador where Donald Trump had exiled 238 Venezuelan immigrants the government alleged were gang members. On Wednesday, Noem refused to even look at a photo of one of the men remanded there.

Supreme Court justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum dismantled the Trump administration’s birthright citizenship arguments, so the president, in turn, accused the nation’s highest judiciary of being gamed by his political opponents.

“The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regard to the United States Supreme Court,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social around midnight Thursday. “They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY! I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play. The people are with us in bigger numbers than ever before. They want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Birthright citizenship is baked into the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to everyone born or naturalized on U.S. soil. But Trump attempted to end the constitutionally enshrined right mere hours after he was sworn in by signing an executive order stating that children born to immigrants on temporary visas or who are in the country illegally should not be entitled to birthright status. Trump’s order has since been blocked by multiple judges in multiple court circuits.

The Justice Department’s case was an effort by the administration to curb their lower court rulings, hoping to stymy their losses on birthright cases by winning a ruling that judges can only block orders related specifically to the people or areas involved.

The president was apparently still ruminating on it by Friday morning, when he posted on Truth Social that the “SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS, WHO HAVE NO SUPPORT, THE PUBLIC HATES THEM, AND THEIR ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF. WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY!”

But both conservative and liberal justices torched the Trump administration’s arguments for ending the program during a Supreme Court hearing Thursday. Justice Elena Kagan questioned why the White House was blatantly ignoring several lower court rulings that the executive order was unconstitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh—a Trump appointee—pressed the Justice Department’s lead lawyer into a corner, forcing U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer to admit that the Trump administration didn’t even know how it would actually enforce its birthright citizenship order.

The solicitor general also bewildered Justice Amy Coney Barrett—another Trump appointee—by arguing that Trump has the “right” to disregard legal opinions that he doesn’t personally agree with.

This story has been updated.

It’s time to add yet another instance of blatant insider trading to the Trump administration’s record.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 and $5 million of her share in Trump Media on April 2, the same day the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff war announcement broke the stock market, according to reporting from ProPublica. Trump Media stocks specifically fell 13 percent that day.

While it’s hard to confirm exactly what time Bondi sold the stocks, or what she knew beforehand, this type of behavior is par for the course for a president who has been fairly careless about conflict of interest when it comes to his relentless stock market manipulation. Remember that Trump later posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” on Truth Social, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, an announcement that caused the market to shoot up into the green.

Insider trading is a blatantly illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself or your friends a market advantage. Someone with knowledge of a major economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would sell their stocks if they knew a huge drop was coming, which is likely exactly what Bondi did in this situation—a classic pump and dump.

Bondi’s Justice Department has yet to comment.

The “big beautiful bill” that Donald Trump demanded from Republicans in Congress is facing opposition from Republicans in the House. 

Since the GOP released a draft budget bill earlier this week with devastating cuts to Medicaid and several other government programs, House Speaker Mike Johnson has had a difficult time selling the bill to the rest of his caucus. The bill is going through the reconciliation process to ensure that it can pass with only a simple majority in both the House and Senate, but even that may be a tall order. 

One House Republican left a party meeting about reconciliation Thursday and was not confident about the bill’s chances. 

“We’re cooked. Speaker let this get out of control,” the representative reportedly texted journalist Jake Sherman. 

Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, a member of the budget committee, criticized the bill Thursday for not being “sincere” and hasn’t disclosed how he will vote when the committee meets tomorrow, saying that he plans to tell the committee chair first. Other Republicans on the committee, including Representatives Ralph Norman and Chip Roy, are reportedly voting “no,” and Representative Andrew Clyde is possibly voting “no” as well. 

The bill also has drawn criticism from Representative Mike Lawler and four other Republicans over its $30,000 cap on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. Lawler narrowly won reelection in 2024 in a battleground New York district that Vice President Kamala Harris carried, and supports higher deductions due to tax rates in New York.  

Other Republicans, such as Roy and Senator Mike Lee, don’t like the bill’s proposed Medicaid cuts because they feel they don’t go far enough, while 12 GOP representatives wrote a letter to Johnson earlier this month warning that they would “not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” 

None of this includes Democratic lawmakers’ opposition to the bill, which would necessitate near-unanimous support from the GOP. But with so many Republicans publicly expressing their problems, this budget bill may soon be a big beautiful corpse.

The largest organization devoted to survivors of sexual abuse is caving to Donald Trump and dropping support for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups, out of fear of losing federal funding. 

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN, has directed staff at its crisis hotline not to direct callers to resources that would violate the White House’s executive orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion, The New York Times reports. 

A list of organizations that staffers are authorized to refer callers to has been stripped of specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a group that educates students about sex-based discrimination; and books about male-on-male or female-on-female sexual violence. The changes went into effect three months ago, a RAINN spokesperson told the Times.  

RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, one of the country’s largest crisis hotlines for survivors of sexual violence, which served 460,000 people in 2024. It also operates a federally funded hotline for military service members. The move to drop support for resources to help immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, groups that are at particular risk of facing sexual violence, has not gone over well with RAINN’s volunteers. 

In February, a group of those volunteers signed a letter urging the organization’s leaders to restore the prohibited resources, and sent another letter to RAINN’s board of directors sharing their concerns. In the second letter, the volunteers wrote, “When trans, queer, Black, brown, Asian and undocumented survivors come to the hotline in crisis, we are not allowed to provide them with the same level of supportive care as other survivors.”

“RAINN may face uncertain risks in the future if we stand by marginalized survivors, but we are certain to lose our values now if we do not stand with them today,” the letter stated. 

RAINN’s actions show how easily one of the largest resources can be intimidated by the Trump administration. Trump in his second term has sought to punish organizations and institutions that defy his executive orders, by withdrawing federal funding, and now RAINN has joined the ranks of Columbia University and others who have complied. In the process, the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans have lost support in combating sexual abuse.