SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
world health organization
Trump's Social Security Lies Seen as 'Prelude to Vicious Cuts'
"Social Security has survived wars, pandemics, and recessions," said one advocate. "But unless there is a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk."
Mar 05, 2025
After boasting about gutting climate initiatives, terminating thousands of federal workers, and withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization at the start of his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Donald Trump rattled off a series of now-familiar falsehoods about Social Security that advocates say are aimed at justifying deep cuts to the program.
"Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them," Trump said, regurgitating the lie—also peddled by Elon Musk—that Social Security benefits are being paid out on a large scale to people who have been dead for years.
"I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly," said Trump as he continued to list numbers, at one point declaring that a person in Social Security Administration (SSA) databases is "listed at 360 years of age."
SSA, which Trump and Musk are in the process of eviscerating and possibly privatizing, automatically halts payments by age 115. Even Trump's handpicked acting SSA commissioner has refuted the claim that Social Security benefits are being paid out to tens of millions of dead people.
The president's remarks were seen as part of a broader effort, spearheaded by Musk, to create the appearance of rampant waste and fraud to make the case for cutting Social Security, which lifts more people above the poverty line in the U.S. than any other program.
"Tonight's speech by President Trump should be highly alarming to the 70 million Americans on Social Security and to anyone who is earning benefits by paying into the program. His speech was full of lies," said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
"Just because someone may be in SSA's database, doesn't mean that they are receiving benefits unless they are alive and eligible—something Elon Musk and his DOGE minions should have learned before propagating these claims," Richtman added. "Trump and Musk's claims of 'fraud' in the Social Security program would be laughable if they weren't so harmful, and have already been widely discredited."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, also weighed in, calling Trump's Social Security lies "the prelude to vicious cuts."
"They want to cut Social Security and Medicaid. This is their core agenda. Reverse Roosevelt. They are no longer even hiding it."
SSA data shows that just 0.1% of Social Security recipients are over the age of 100. A report published last year by SSA's inspector general, whom Trump recently fired, found that of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022, just 0.84% of the payments were deemed improper.
"Social Security has vanishingly low rates of fraud, far less than private-sector retirement programs," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement late Tuesday. "Lying about it is a convenient way to justify cutting off benefits to people deemed enemies or undeserving under the guise of 'fraud.'"
"Social Security has survived wars, pandemics, and recessions," said Lawson. "But unless there is a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk."
Democratic lawmakers also sharply condemned Trump's comments on Social Security, which came days after Musk falsely characterized the program as a Ponzi scheme.
"Trump is making up stats about Social Security so he has an excuse to cut your benefits," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) noted that "all you hear is Republican laughter" as Trump spouted lies about Social Security.
"They want to cut Social Security and Medicaid," Khanna wrote on social media. "This is their core agenda. Reverse Roosevelt. They are no longer even hiding it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Trump Admin Is Engaging in Corruption on a Massive Scale to Benefit Big Oil
By censoring and defunding climate science, Trump and his cronies are trying to erase the link between extreme weather impacts and fossil fuel pollution.
Feb 21, 2025
Among the flurry of actions by the Trump administration, it could be easy to miss one that poses a grave danger to public health and our planet: a no-holds-barred attack on science.
In a series of disturbing moves, the administration has censored scientific research, slashed resources for public health and the environment, and advanced fossil fuel industry propaganda. These moves only serve corporate interests—at the expense of ordinary people and the planet.
Already, the administration has scrubbed government websites providing information on climate change and environmental justice. And it’s attempted to slash funding for research on climate and medical science (though a federal judge has temporarily blocked the defunding of medical research).
An administration claiming to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse” in government is doing the opposite.
Meanwhile, in a pair of astonishingly irresponsible moves, the administration has fired a large number of staff of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, which identifies and tracks emerging epidemics, and pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization— even as we face the serious risk of a worldwide bird flu pandemic.
On the climate front, President Donald Trump has launched an ideological attack against the very idea of environmental justice. That’s the idea that marginalized communities—including people of color and poor people of all races—suffer the worst from pollution. There’s a large body of peer-reviewed scientific literature confirming this pattern, but Trump and his ideologues don’t care.
Elsewhere, Trump’s Energy Secretary—former fossil fuel executive Chris Wright—has made the outlandish claim that electricity in the U.S. is more expensive today, and the electric grid is less reliable, because of closure of coal-fired power plants.
Every part of this industry propaganda is verifiably false. The U.S. electricity grid is highly reliable. While electricity rates are rising, the increase over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023 was only about 1% in inflation-adjusted terms.
If anything, coal plant retirements were a factor in keeping rates lower, since the plants being retired are older plants with higher operating costs. And this year, solar energy is expected to be a major contributor to keeping rates almost unchanged.
Significantly, every one of these facts comes from the Energy Department’s own research and data. That’s why we shouldn’t let them scrub it.
The administration’s erasure of data has profound human consequences.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the foremost international climate science institution, “Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people,” including “reduced food and water security.”
These statements are in the present tense. Severe climate change impacts are already occurring, and will get much worse if we don’t slash our greenhouse gas emissions rapidly. Disasters like this year’s Los Angeles wildfires and last year’s floods in Appalachia and the Southeast will become more frequent and damaging.
By censoring and defunding climate science, Trump and his cronies are trying to erase the link between these impacts and fossil fuel pollution. Trump has been effectively bribed by fossil fuel oligarchs—and he’s returning the favor by making it official U.S. government policy to remove all restraints on the growth of their industry.
Under Biden, fossil fuel companies reported record profits as drilling reached record highs in the United States. Yet consumers still battled high gas prices and other costs. Under Trump, doing favors for this polluting industry is no likelier to benefit regular people.
An administration claiming to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse” in government is doing the opposite. It’s engaging in corruption on a massive scale to benefit wealthy, politically connected oligarchs—at the expense of the rest of us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Uganda Reports Ebola Death, Experts Sound Alarm on Trump's Order to Quit WHO
"This is pure stupidity that will only hurt us," warned one U.S. doctor and Ebola expert.
Jan 31, 2025
Public health experts pointed to the announcement of highly contagious hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in at least three central and eastern African nations this week to underscore what they say are the dangers of President Donald Trump's ideologically driven decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization during a time of mounting pandemic threats.
Uganda Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Diana Atwine said Thursday that a 32-year-old nurse died of Sudan Ebola virus the previous day in the capital Kampala amid the first new outbreak in two years. Atwine assured the public "that we are in full control" of the situation.
Uganda's alert followed reports of another potential Ebola outbreak, this one in the Western Democratic Republic of Congo. Additionally, health officials earlier this month announced an outbreak of suspected Marburg Virus Disease—a severe, often fatal illness similar to Ebola—in neighboring Tanzania. At least nine people have reportedly died.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media Thursday that "a full-scale response is being initiated" by the Ugandan government and its international partners. In a statement, the WHO said it is "deploying senior public health experts and mobilizing staff from the country office to support all the key outbreak response measures."
During past outbreaks of Ebola—a severe viral disease spread via contact with infected bodily fluids, with a fatality rate of 50-90%—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with the WHO to help stem the spread of the illness.
However, following Trump's January 20 executive order initiating a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO over its alleged "mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic," CDC and other public health officials have been ordered to stop working with the United Nations body, effective immediately.
"The agencies that are statutorily responsible for protecting our health are unable to do that job because they are not able to pick up the phone and talk to people who might have information that could protect U.S. health and security," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, toldStat this week.
"This is just one of the examples about how the United States loses access, loses the ability to protect American lives," Nuzzo explained. "We can't be everywhere, we can't have eyes and ears on the ground in every possible location [where] harm could be emerging. And this is what happens when we don't engage with institutions that can provide these lifesaving insights."
Experts said other existing or emerging epidemiological threats including bird flu underscore the lifesaving imperative of more, not less, international cooperation.
"Local health officials and doctors depend on the CDC to get disease updates, timely prevention, testing and treatment guidelines, and information about outbreaks," University of Southern California public health expert Dr. Jeffrey Klausner toldThe Associated Press in a recent interview.
"Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health," he added. "Imagine if the government turned off fire sirens or other warning systems."
Dr. Ashish Jha, the former White House Covid-19 coordinator during the Biden administration, noted Thursday on social media that during Ebola outbreaks, the CDC "usually sends a team right away to help bolster staff that might already be there and support the ministry of health."
"There'd be clear communication from CDC and White House about what exactly is being done, what help we are sending, what American hospitals and others can do to be prepared should Ebola land here," Jha continued. "So what of this is happening? My sense is, not much—but we don't know."
"The communication freeze means CDC not sharing what if anything it is doing," he added. "Travel freeze means CDC staff likely not going. Directive to stop working with WHO means we're flying blind and don't have information about what is happening on the ground. None of this is good."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular