Trump’s Social Security Head Bragged About Having to Google Own Job

It looks like Donald Trump’s streak of hiring wildly unqualified people remains undefeated.

Frank Bisignano, the new Social Security Administration commissioner, revealed Wednesday that he’d needed to google what the position actually entailed after being tapped to lead the benefits agency servicing more than 70 million Americans, according to the Federal News Network.

In a largely unscripted address Wednesday, the former chairman and CEO of banking technology company Fiserv remarked that he wasn’t totally familiar with his new presidentially appointed role.

“I don’t think the commissioner of Social Security is like a globally known title. It is to you, right? But, like, it wasn’t to me,” Bisignano said. “I’m like, ‘Well, what am I gonna do?’ So I’m googling ‘Social Security.’ That’s one of my great skills, I’m one of the great googlers on the East Coast.”

“I’m like, ‘What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?’”

The best “googler on the East Coast” said that he hoped to oversee a “digital-first” agency.

“We’re never going to be client-first if we’re not digital-first in this era,” Bisignano said. “That’s the only way we’re going to win. You’re competing with experiences that people have with Amazon. If I can get something done at Amazon, why can’t I get something done the same way with Social Security? That’s how people think.”

Bisignano has no experience working in government, serving as a staunch defender of corporate interests, and was previously one of the highest-paid CEOs in the country.

In agreeing to serve as SSA commissioner, Bisignano also agreed to sell his shares in Fiserv, which were worth roughly $484 million. But because of a loophole in the tax code for government officials that defers his capital gains tax on divestment, he won’t be forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in potential taxes on the massive windfall.

The Trump administration is in the process of a massive overhaul at the SSA, after announcing that it plans to reduce the workforce by 7,000 federal workers, offering buyouts, and reassigning many employees from regional offices to field offices, according to FNN. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have alleged “extreme levels of fraud” at the SSA but have only uncovered two likely fraudulent claims out of over 110,000.

Some other desperately unqualified Trump hires include former Fox & Friends co-host turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and surgeon general nominee Casey Means, a wellness influencer and author who has no active medical license and never completed her physician residency.

Republicans may be glad that Elon Musk is gone from the White House, but they’re not happy he’s taking his money with him.

The world’s richest man said at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday that he believes he’s “done enough” when it comes to political spending.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said.

But that news was not welcomed by Republicans, who feared that they could be losing their “whale” before the midterm elections, per Politico.

Musk was Donald Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July.

But Trump wasn’t the only beneficiary of Musk’s immense wealth: America’s top political donor also dropped north of $3 million on a key Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, which much to the party’s chagrin saw the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel lose by double digits. (Musk-backed groups, including America PAC and Rebuilding America’s Future, spent another $19 million to sponsor Schimel.)

The unpopular Tesla CEO became a central figure in the Wisconsin race, and it’s unclear if his desperate and sometimes illegal attempts to help Schimel win—including bribing voters to ideologically side with the conservative candidate—did more harm than good at the voting booth. Regardless, Schimel’s poor performance has led political observer to wonder if the entire experience left a bad taste in the billionaire’s mouth.

If it did, it would come at an especially inopportune time for Republicans, who are quietly hoping that there’s still enough favor in the tank to influence Musk to support Winsome Earle-Sears for Virginia governor, who “faces a major cash disadvantage against Democrat Abigail Spanberger,” according to Politico.

Republicans had come to rely on Musk’s seemingly endless cashflow. In the wake of the November election, Musk declared that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Trump’s agenda and go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

If Musk sticks to his word this time, Republicans can wave that cash goodbye. Still, some conservatives are crossing their fingers that the unlikable billionaire will return to party politics—along with his open faucet of cash.

“I believe he means it right now,” GOP consultant Josh Novotney told Politico. “But every election is unique. So he may be motivated to be active again in the future.”

Democrats, meanwhile, don’t expect Musk’s influence to dissipate all at once. Instead, strategists on the other side of the aisle predict that Musk’s money will begin to flow through dark channels that will make it harder to track his influence.

“I believe he will start moving his money in the background, through nonprofits,” Pat Dennis, president of major Democratic super PAC American Bridge, told Politico. “It’ll be a lot more of that now.”

Disney and ABC News are attempting to broaden the scope of The View to decenter politics, following increased scrutiny from President Donald Trump.

Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic had met with the executive producer of the daytime talk show, as well as the panel of hosts, to ask them to tone down their discussion of politics.

Hosts Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, and Ana Navarro have been steadfast critics of the Trump administration. Karamehmedovic suggested that the hosts focus less on political discussions, emphasizing the well-rated episodes that focused more on celebrity guests. While it wasn’t an order, the message was clear. But the hosts weren’t interested in caving to the pressure.

One source familiar with the meeting told the Beast that the hosts had fought back against Karamehmedovic, saying, “This is what our audience wants. Isn’t it gonna look kind of bad if we’re all of a sudden not talking about politics?”

The hosts noted that some viewers specifically sought them out for their political commentary. Griffin served as a White House aide during Trump’s first administration and has provided searing rebukes of her former boss’s current antics in the White House.

The women did not bend and decided the request was “silly” and that “they were just going to keep doing their thing,” according to one source.

Multiple sources said that Navarro, a Republican host who spoke in support of Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, also spoke to Disney’s CEO Bob Iger during the company’s Upfront presentation day last week, and the executive told her once again to tone down the political rhetoric.

Iger has become a regular target for Trump. Earlier this week Trump threatened “Fake ABC News” and called out Iger for coverage of the Qatari jet scandal. Earlier this month, the president posted on Truth Social criticizing ABC News host Martha Raddatz’s coverage of Pope Leo XIV’s selection, and specifically called out Iger to “do something about the losers and haters he’s got on his low rated shows.”

House Republicans passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget early Thursday, advancing a reconciliation package to the Senate that had been jammed through committee hearings held largely in the dead of night.

But in the process of sneaking the budget to the upper chamber, Republicans tacked on an unexpected and dangerous provision that had nothing to do with Medicaid, overtime tax, or reducing the federal deficit. Instead, they added a detail that would hamper federal courts’ ability to “hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” according to Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

The addendum follows repeat losses for the president in the court system. Since January, the judiciary has been the only branch of government standing in Trump’s way when it comes to enacting his executive orders, perhaps most notably on his attempts to end constitutional rights such as birthright citizenship and habeas corpus.

“Now is not the time to limit the ability of federal courts to enforce their judicial orders,” Chemerinsky implored in a column on JustSecurity earlier this week.

A Pew Research Center survey from April indicated that the vast majority of the American public—Republicans and Democrats—want the Trump administration to end an action if it’s deemed illegal by a federal court. But the provision in the reconciliation bill would make that goal all the more difficult by retroactively requiring a “security”—such as a bond—to be paid by a plaintiff before an order is issued.

That detail would effectively render countless court orders, across the board, unenforceable, according to Chemerinsky, since “federal courts rarely have required plaintiffs to post bonds.”

“Even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution, nothing could be done to enforce the injunctions against it,” Chemerinsky noted. “In fact, the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable. If enacted, judges will be able to set the bond at $1 so it can be easily met. But all existing judicial orders where no bond was required would become unenforceable.”

The budget passed by just a hair Thursday morning, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it and 215 Republicans voting in favor.

After two Israeli Embassy employees were shot and killed on the streets of Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, Republican Representative Randy Fine responded by suggesting Gaza should be nuked.

Fine was asked on Fox News Thursday morning how the shooting would affect the ceasefire the U.S. has proposed to Hamas and Israel to end Israel’s 19-month bombardment of Gaza, resulting in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Fine’s response was to blame “Muslim terror” and compare Palestinians to the Nazis and imperial Japan during World War II.

“The fact of the matter is the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Fine said. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.”

The bigoted answer from the freshman lawmaker is only the latest example of his prejudice toward Palestinians and Muslims. Last year, when Fine was running for a vacant Florida congressional seat, he threatened Muslim Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar by warning them on X that the “Hebrew Hammer” was coming and telling them to “consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Fine has remarked in the past that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.” At a minimum, Fine should be censured for his remarks, as Tlaib was censured for much less by House Republicans. But Fine’s GOP colleagues have engaged in similar bigotry against Palestinians, and several others have also called for nuking Gaza. Fine is unlikely to get even the slightest rebuke from any Republican leader, let alone President Trump, who endorsed him last year.

Four Supreme Court Justices wanted to make it legal for taxpayer dollars to fund religious charter schools.

The Supreme Court produced a 4–4 deadlock on Thursday on the question of whether an Oklahoma religious school could take part in the state’s publicly funded charter school programs. While the decision is unsigned, thanks to the even split, it is likely that Chief Justice Roberts sided with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan in opposition to the measure, while conservatives Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito likely voted in favor of allowing religious charter schools access to public funds. Justice Amy Comey Barret recused herself due to attorneys from her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, representing the religious schools.

The deadlock leaves in place an Oklahoma ruling that a Catholic public charter school is unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court sidestepped the question, deferring to the lower court decision.

The four judges who voted in favor of the measure seem to be ignoring that earmarking public funds for religious schools is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This clause prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion and from blurring the lines between separation of church and state.

“The fact that the Court split 4–4 in this case, with Justice Barrett recused, is not especially surprising,” said CNN Supreme Court Analyst Steve Vladeck. “The surprise is that the court had agreed to take this case up, with Justice Barrett recused, in the first place. That had led some folks to wonder if Chief Justice Roberts might be willing to join the other four Republican appointees in favor of public funding for religious charter schools. Today’s affirmance without an opinion suggests that he isn’t, at least for now.”

* This story has been updated to remove references to the Lemon test.

Elon Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla has been outsold in Europe by a rival company for the first time. 

The continent’s longtime electric favorite was overtaken by Chinese company BYD in April, which sold 7,231 fully electric cars compared to Tesla’s 1,165, according to data from Jato Dynamics.

It’s a major boon for the Chinese electric vehicle company, which only began selling cars in Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022. But Musk’s recent support for Donald Trump and the U.S. president’s far-right, government-destroying policies has influenced buyers, leading to boycotts at home and abroad that have drastically affected Tesla’s margins.

“This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market, particularly when you consider that Tesla has led the European battery electric vehicle market for years, while BYD only officially began operations beyond Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022,” Felipe Munoz, global analyst at Jato Dynamics, told the Financial Times.

Tesla historically attracted a more liberal consumer base with its electric vehicles, but since Musk went “dark MAGA,” that same base has soured on the tech billionaire and his products. That’s proven especially true in some of Europe’s stronger economies, such as Germany, which has seen Tesla sales in the country fall by more than 70 percent in the beginning of the year, reported Bloomberg. Sales in China—where Tesla has two major factories—similarly plummeted, falling by 49 percent in February.

Musk, however, has brushed off the volatility. Speaking with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, the world’s richest man pointed to Tesla’s rising stock as evidence that bullish investors were likely to ignore his political activism.

“We’ve lost some sales perhaps on the left, but we’ve gained them on the right. The sales numbers at this point are strong and we see no problem with demand,” the Tesla CEO said. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape, they’re fine, don’t worry about it.”  

Republicans narrowly passed Donald Trump’s sweeping budget reconciliation bill through the House Wednesday night, including a last-minute provision that would not require gun owners to register the purchase of silencers.

Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde had already ensured the elimination of a $200 transfer tax on gun silencers. But during negotiations Wednesday, he was able to add another provision altogether removing silencers from the regulatory purview of the National Firearms Act, which imposes taxes on the manufacture, distribution, and import of weapons, according to Politico.

The last-minute addition would strike another $200 tax on the manufacture of gun silencers. But by removing silencers from the purview of the National Firearms Act, lawmakers said that the change also had eliminated the NFA’s registration requirement with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.

“The question I have is, this was not in the bill that we were marking up. So, whose vote was bought with this provision that silencers will no longer need to be registered with the ATF or subject to background check purchasers?” asked Colorado Representative Joe Neguse on the House floor Wednesday night.

“What member was on the fence about this bill, and then went to Republican leadership and said, ‘I know you’re eliminating the tax on silencers but if you can just eliminate all regulation on silencers, I will vote for this bill?’”

Georgia Representative Austin Scott claimed that silencers’ exception from ATF registry did not mean that purchasers would not be subject to background checks. Scott, who argued in support of the provision, seemed confused about what it was actually about. He said it was about suppressors, rather than silencers—but that was incorrect.

When a person attempts to buy a firearm, they must complete an ATF form, and the seller then relays information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation website. The NICS staff then performs a check to see whether the buyer has a criminal record or is in any way ineligible to purchase the firearm.

If the purchaser is not required to fill out a form with the ATF to purchase a silencer, it’s not clear how a background check would still be completed.

“Quite frankly, what is in the reconciliation bill does more to support assassins than it does American families,” said Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern.

There was some laughter in the hall.

“Yeah, well you know what? Talk to law enforcement, talk to people who have been victims of gun violence,” McGovern continued. “I know you think it’s funny, but I don’t.”

House Republicans managed to pass their draconian budget bill, which promises to make massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and food assistance, early Thursday morning by a narrow one-vote margin that was only possible due the deaths of three Democrats in this current Congress. 

The latest Democrat to pass away was 75-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who died on Wednesday after battling esophageal cancer. In March, Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona passed away at the age of 77 due to complications from cancer treatments. Representative Sylvester Turner of Texas, 70, a House freshman, died six days earlier. (Turner replaced Sheila Lee Jackson, who also died in office in July.)  

Had any of these three Democrats, who all are from safe Democratic districts, taken their health into consideration and decided not to run in 2024, such an egregious bill would have failed to pass. Do Democrats have an age problem? The party has been reluctant to give younger rising stars more prominent leadership positions, mostly notably when Connolly, whose condition was publicly known, was chosen to be the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee over the much younger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

In 2024, Democrats failed to connect with younger people and lost many of their votes, and this year, Americans of all ages have been urging the party to put up a vigorous fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on the country’s institutions. Are older politicians in their seventies and eighties up for that battle? 

The last eight members of Congress to have died in office were Democrats, with seven of them being over the age of 70 with significant health concerns. Six Democrats died in the last year alone. Democrats in Congress should decide whether they are physically and mentally up to the task of stopping the Republican effort to tear down America’s institutions—or make way for those who are.

Over a dozen officials within the Trump administration conveniently sold off their shares just days before their president crippled the stock market with his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to ProPublica.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sold up to $5 million in her Trump Media shares on Liberation Day. One State Department official sold $50,000 in shares two days before. A White House lawyer sold off shares in nine different companies in February, the day before Trump announced tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold shares in nearly 36 companies on February 11, two days before Trump teased his Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs. In each of the more than dozen instances, someone high up within the Trump administration sold off large amounts of their stock market shares right before Trump tanked the stock market, and some even bought a similar amount of shares back at much lower prices shortly after. 

There is no direct proof that these officials had nonpublic information about policies that would impact the stock market before everyone else, but the administration has clearly created an environment in which the potential for insider trading is incredibly high. And even if this administration isn’t insider trading, it’s doing an awful job at keeping up appearances. Trump himself posted in April, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for those on China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot 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? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”