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'Universal Revulsion': Top American CEOs 'Privately' Disgusted With Trump

Several top corporate CEOs recently confided that despite their public shows of fealty to President Donald Trump, they are less than flattering of him behind closed doors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was the main topic of conversation a gathering of corporate executives at the Yale CEO Caucus earlier this week. The economy has been on a roller coaster ride since Trump announced — and then almost immediately withdrew — punishing new tariffs on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico. Twenty-five percent tariffs on Canadian imported steel and aluminum products went into effect Wednesday, however.

When Trump suggested doubling his steel and aluminum tariffs, the roomful of CEOs — which included JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Pfizer CEO Albert Boula and Dell CEO Michael Dell — the room "responded with a mix of groans and shocked laughter, according to the Journal.

"There was universal revulsion against the Trump economic policies," Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who organized the event, told the paper. "They’re also especially horrified about Canada."

Bill George, who is the former CEO of Medtronic, remarked that the corporate world has since learned to keep its criticisms of the 47th president of the United States under wraps out of fear of retribution. He said he was "struck by how fearful people are and how unwilling they are to speak out," adding that executives "don’t want to get on the wrong side of the president and his constituents."

He went on to lament the new uncertain economic climate that has taken hold in Trump's second term, which has lately seen financial markets dip precipitously this week as investors fear a trade war. He said companies are worried that outbursts from Trump could end up hurting their bottom line, leading some to consider moves to curry favor with the regime in order to be spared from his wrath.

“The mood has totally changed,” George said. “What you’re hearing publicly is not what you’re going to hear privately.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Busted! Trump Official Posted Fashion Videos While Defending Federal Layoffs

The communications director for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was recently caught doubling as a fashion influencer on social media — while using her government office as a backdrop in an apparent violation of federal rules.

That's according to a Tuesday article in CNN, which reported that McLaurine Pinover posted videos of herself modeling clothing to her Instagram account from her OPM office. Some of those videos included affiliate links to sites where the clothing she was wearing was being sold. Pinover was eligible to be paid commission based on site visitors who bought those clothing items after clicking the links from Pinover's videos.

CNN further reported that Pinover was working as an influencer while simultaneously "defending mass layoffs of federal workers" as an employee of OPM's communications office. The network's Audrey Ash, Curt Devine and Casey Tolan observed that Pinover "posted a video blowing a kiss to the camera with the caption 'work look' and the hashtag #dcinfluencer" on the same day her employer "sent a government-wide memo pressing federal officials to identify barriers they faced in their work to 'swiftly terminate poor performing employees.'"

On February 13 — the same day OPM held a call with multiple federal agencies instructing them to fire thousands of probationary employees — Pinover posted another fashion-related video to her Instagram account. Several former OPM staffers said that was also the same day that roughly 20 of Pinover's coworkers in the agency's communications office were laid off.

"While her team is getting axed, she’s twirling around in her office," a former OPM employee told CNN.

The Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (ECFR) has explicit rules for federal employees mandating that only official work be performed during official work hours, especially while using agency office space. ECFR § 2635.705 instructs employees to "use official time in an honest effort to perform official duties."

"Employees not under a leave system, including Presidential appointees exempted under 5 U.S.C. 6301(2), have an obligation to expend an honest effort and a reasonable proportion of their time in the performance of official duties," ECFR guidelines read.

CNN reported that many of Pinover's videos were posted during the daytime, and during work hours. However, Pinover's Instagram handle, @getdressedwithmc, was apparently deleted several minutes after the network contacted her.

Pinover added content to her Instagram account regularly, where she had approximately 800 followers, and her most recent video was posted Tuesday. One former OPM communications staffer recognized the background as the office of the agency's communications director, who said: “I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office.'"

“She’s the spokesperson for the agency that is advocating for the firing based on performance and efficiency of the rest of the government workforce, and she’s using government property as a backdrop for her videos," the staffer said.

South African centibillionaire Elon Musk, who unofficially leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has asserted on multiple occasions that federal agencies are rife with unproductive employees. In January, he posted to his X social media platform: "Pretending to work while taking money from taxpayers is no longer acceptable."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Musk Vows Again To Slash Social Security By '$500 Billion' Per Year

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now openly declaring his plan to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from earned benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare.

During a recent appearance on Fox Business, Musk told host Larry Kudlow that he remains committed to his goal of enacting steep cuts to Americans' retirement income and health insurance. He noted that "most federal spending is entitlements," which is a catch-all used to describe mandatory spending obligations like Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits.

"That's the big one to eliminate," Musk said. "That's, sort of, half trillion, six or seven hundred billion a year."

He also asserted without evidence that Democrats were enticing "illegal immigrants" to come across the border "by essentially paying them" Social Security money in exchange for their votes. This claim has been debunked, with Portland, Oregon NBC affiliate KGW reporting that "undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits." The Social Security Administration (SSA) has stated that while some immigrants can receive benefits, they must prove a "lawful presence."

"This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation," Musk said. "If we turn off this giant money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave. And they will lose voters."

In response to Musk's comments, Alex Lawson — who is executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works — slammed the South African centibillionaire's efforts to "destroy" Social Security. He added that if the tech magnate followed through on his promise, he would experience the "ferocity" of the American public.

"Our Social Security system is the opposite of everything Elon Musk is. It embodies the best of American values. It rewards hard work, playing by the rules, and delaying gratification," Lawson told AlterNet. "At its core, it is an intergenerational promise of empathy and understanding that we all do better when we all do better."

Musk's comments to Kudlow come just weeks after the CEO's address to the Conservative Political Action Conference. In February, Musk argued to NewsMax host Rob Schmitt, who interviewed him onstage, that Social Security was rife with hundreds of billions of dollars in "waste." He suggested that he may cut Social Security by roughly $500 billion per year.

"People ask how can you find waste in D.C., it's like being in a room and the wall, the roof and the floors are all targets," Musk said. "You can shoot in any direction. You can't miss."

President Donald Trump has empowered the world's richest man to cut spending across the board at multiple federal agencies as part of his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. When DOGE representatives went to the SSA, however, Michelle King —the Trump-appointed acting commissioner of the agency — was effectively forced out of her role when she refused to hand over sensitive data to DOGE employees. King was replaced by Leland Dudek, who the Washington Post reported had heaped praise on DOGE on his social media channels.

Elon Musk reiterated his intention to destroy programs like Social Security, which he has called a Ponzi scheme: "Most of the federal spending is entitlements... that’s the big one to eliminate."

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— More Perfect Union (@moreperfectunion.bsky.social) March 10, 2025 at 9:05 PM

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

As Markets Plunge, CNN Supercut Shows Trump Warning Of Crash (Unless He Won)

President Donald Trump notably stayed away from cameras on Monday, as Wall Street experienced its worst day in years as investors react to a climate of economic uncertainty.

On Monday evening, CNN host Anderson Cooper reminded viewers that despite normally being willing to take questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was "nowhere to be seen" following a "massive stock sell off that began the moment the bell rang." Cooper noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was "down almost 900 points," while the Nasdaq Composite "took the worst beating" of the day, down by four percent after the conclusion of trading on Monday. He also remarked that today marked the biggest single-day decline since September of 2022.

"More than an hour after markets closed, the White House did finally put out a statement touting the president's economic agenda and first term record on the economy. It didn't mention the massive drops today, nor what sparked it," Cooper said. "The culprit wasn't a poorly received report of jobs, GDP or consumer spending. as is often the case. It was what the president himself said."

Cooper then aired an excerpt of an interview the president gave to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, in which he waffled when she asked him if he was "expecting a recession this year."

"I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. we're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing," Trump said. "And there are always periods of, it takes a little time."

Cooper then noted that Trump was similarly cagey with reporters on Air Force One when they asked for clarity on what he told Bartiromo, with one reporter pointing out that he "hesitated" at the recession question.

"I tell you what, of course you hesitate. Who knows?" Trump responded. "All I know is this: We're going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs."

Cooper contrasted Trump's tone with that of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who proclaimed in a recent interview that there was "no chance" of a recession. He observed that Trump has "no such confidence," which he said was "notable" given his recent bullish attitude after the February jobs report showed the U.S. economy adding more than 100,000 new jobs.

"Perhaps it's not surprising he didn't want to be on camera today as the markets crashed. After all, he has often tied a president's performance as a leader to the stock market," Cooper said. "During a brief dip in the markets in late October and early November, Trump blamed it on Democrats."

According to Cooper, "one line [Trump] used repeatedly throughout much of 2024" was that a Democratic victory would result in a poor economy.

"If Harris wins this election, you will quickly have a Kamala Harris economic crash," Trump said. "You're going to have a crash."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Amid Spreading Measles Outbreak, Kennedy Renews His Anti-Vax Obsession

As a measles case hits the Washington, D.C., area, public health agencies led by anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr. are ignoring it and instead wasting resources on testing vaccines for a false and long-debunked association with autism.

A measles outbreak in West Texas began in January, but on Sunday, a case was confirmed in Maryland, with the possibility of further exposure to people at Dulles International Airport and the Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center. (The two outbreaks are not believed to be connected.) And officials are still trying to identify who has been exposed, according to The Washington Post.

However, it’s clear we’re not in the safest of hands, at least federally. During President Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting on Feb. 26, Kennedy claimed the outbreak in Texas and New Mexico was “not unusual”—despite that it has led to the first two deaths from the preventable disease in a decade. Additionally, there have been more than 200 reported cases and 23 hospitalizations due to largely unvaccinated populations, as of March 7.

“There’ve been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year, there were 16,” Kennedy said, pushing a false narrative of public health normalcy. “So it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

Instead of focusing on the growing outbreak, Kennedy, a rabid anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, is using taxpayer dollars to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct needless trials on a disproven link between vaccines and autism. To the chagrin of “crunchy” pseudoscience advocates, numerous studies found no link between vaccines leading to autism.

That hasn’t stopped Trump’s public health goons from continuing to parrot junk-science talking points.

“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement to ABC News.

It’s unclear how the study would be conducted, who would take part in it, and how it would be different from numerous previous studies of the same topic.

Public health experts are denouncing the decision. Others are afraid of the impact Kennedy is already having on waning public health trust.

The announcement that CDC will look at potential links between vaccines and autism means that significant federal resources will be diverted from crucial areas of study, including research into the unknown causes of autism, at a time when research funding is already facing deep cuts,” said Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America.

“[Kennedy’s] misleading and often conspiratorial claims have already weakened confidence in public health, a legacy that could have far-reaching and deadly consequences both domestically and globally,” Y. Tony Yang, an associate dean of health policy at George Washington University School of Nursing, wrote in The Lancet. “It is not just the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer; unvaccinated infants, immunocompromised individuals, and entire communities are at risk.”

Kennedy has already axed the multimillion-dollar effort to study an oral COVID-19 vaccine, and had the Food and Drug Administration cancel a meeting to plan for next season's flu shot. When he isn’t gutting public health agencies or offering workers $25,000 to resign, he’s having the department whiplash his employees by begging them to come back.

As measles spreads, the Trump administration is wasting resources on debunked conspiracies instead of protecting public health—a dangerous gamble with real consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

'We Have Lost Contact': Musk Spacex Rocket Blows Up Again

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may have an additional work-related headache outside of the public outcry to his ongoing efforts to slash public budgets.

TechCrunch reported Thursday evening that the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 launch ended in failure after less than nine minutes. The unmanned rocket managed to leave its Texas launch pad intact, and the SpaceX launch tower caught the rocket's booster after it successfully separated once reaching space. However, eight minutes and nine seconds into the flight, the ship began spiraling out of control.

"We just saw some engines go out, it looks like we are losing attitude control of the ship," SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said during the company's broadcast of the launch. "At this point we have lost contact with the ship."

This is roughly the same amount of time it took for the Flight 7 launch to fail in January. Pro-Elon Musk site Teslarati noted that the previous Starship rocket failed approximately eight minutes and 20 seconds after launch. An investigation attributed Flight 7's failure to a propellant leak in one of the ship's Raptor engines that caused "flashes" roughly two minutes into the flight.

After Flight 8's failure, SpaceX's official X account posted a statement describing the failed launch as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" during its ascent burn.

"Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses. We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," SpaceX tweeted. "As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability."

SpaceX remains one of the biggest government contractors even as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is cancelling millions of dollars in federal contracts across multiple agencies. ABC News reported in February that the South African centibillionaire's space exploration company had $3.7 billion in federal contracts as of fiscal year 2024.

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Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Will Trump Backpedal As Tariffs Tank Our Economy?

Ever since President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on the United States' neighbors, financial markets have been reeling. His administration is now signaling that Trump may be willing to somewhat back off from the new duty fees soon if he can work out a deal.

NBC News reported Tuesday that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is now indicating that Trump may be willing to meet the leaders of Canada and Mexico "in the middle" following two consecutive disastrous days of trading. Lutnick's announcement that Trump would "probably" consider a compromise came after Trump re-introduced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico after previously walking them back.

"Both the Mexicans and the Canadians are on the phone with me all day today, trying to show that they’ll do better," the commerce secretary told Fox Business. "And the president is listening because, you know, he’s very, very fair and very reasonable. So I think he’s going to work something out with them."

Trump's desire to bring Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to the negotiating table comes on the heels of the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by more than 1,300 points over the past 48 hours. CNBC reported that the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also posted losses, with the former seeing its biggest one-day drop since December this week.

It initially appeared as if the U.S. was poised for a crippling trade war with Canada, as Trudeau said he intended to add a retaliatory 25 percent tariff to imported American goods. Trump responded that if Trudeau imposed new tariffs, he would hit Canada again with subsequent duty fees. Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary told Fox News this week that the threat of a trade war spooked investors, as the higher prices that the tariffs would bring would result in consumer spending trending downward.

The threat of new tariffs could also result in Americans delaying expensive purchases, like buying new vehicles. Flavio Volpe, who is the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, recently said that the tariffs would not only raise prices, but also endanger jobs both in the U.S. and in Canada.

"[Manufacturers] can't go buy a crank shaft or car seats at a Walmart," Volpe told Canada's CTV News. "So, the industry, like it did in those first two incidents, will close within a week and that includes Ontario and Michigan all the way down to Kentucky, Alabama and Texas."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Federal Judge Rules Trump Has No Authority To Enforce Mass Firings

A federal judge on Thursday handed down an order immediately halting President Donald Trump's administration from laying off thousands of workers across multiple federal agencies.

The Washington Post reported that senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, ordered the Trump administration's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rescind its orders to agencies to fire probationary-level employees. This includes the U.S. Department of Defense, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the National Science Foundation, among others.

“Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves. The Department of Defense, for example, has statutory authority to hire and fire,” Alsup said. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.”

This means that the probationary employees (who have been in their roles for less than a year and have fewer protections than career civil servants) who have been fired could be reinstated soon. Of the roughly 200,000 probationary workers in the federal workforce, tens of thousands had already been fired as a result of OPM's directives, which were sent after South African centibillionaire Elon Musk's employees effectively took over the agency in January.

According to the Post, employees were terminated via a template email sent from OPM, which wrongly suggested that they were being fired for performance-related reasons. National Weather Service meteorologist Cole Hood, who was fired Thursday, posted the OPM termination email to Bluesky which read: "[T]he Agency finds that you re not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency's current needs."

Several labor unions representing fired federal employees challenged the mass firings in court, arguing that OPM "in one fell swoop has perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not."

Acting OPM head Charles Ezell countered that the unions lacked standing to sue and that they should instead take their concerns to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which is controlled by a small handful of presidential appointees. He also asserted that Trump has the “inherent constitutional authority” to decide “how best to manage the Executive Branch, including whom to hire and remove, what conditions to place on continued employment, and what processes to employ in making these determinations.” But Judge Alsup disagreed.

“How could so much of the workforce be amputated, suddenly, overnight? It’s so irregular and so widespread and so aberrant in the history of our country. How could this all happen with each agency deciding on its own to do something so aberrational?” Alsup said. “I don’t believe it.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Acting Social Security Chief Prepares To Fire Half Of Agency Workforce

The new acting administrator of the Social Security Administration (SSA) is now announcing that he's carrying out "significant workforce reductions" at the critical agency that oversees trillions of dollars in payments to tens of millions of beneficiaries.

According to a Thursday article in The American Prospect, Leland Dudek, who took over as acting administrator after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) forced out the initial acting administrator earlier this month, has ordered all SSA managers present him with plans to reduce their respective headcounts by up to 50 percent. The email Dudek sent Thursday evening announcing "agency-wide organizational restructuring" does not indicate any plans to deviate from that goal. The SSA currently employs roughly 60,000 people, who process benefits for more than 71 million Americans as of 2023.

Dudek's email gives all SSA employees a deadline of March 14 to decide whether to retire early, resign or seek what Propsect executive editor David Dayen referred to as "voluntary reassignments." Workers aged 50 and up who have been with the agency for at least 20 years are reportedly being offered an "early out" voluntary retirement, which is a quicker timeline than that generally offered to employees of other federal agencies.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes responded to the news of Dudek's email by tweeting: "Just to be clear, these count as 'cuts to Social Security!' If you cut the way the program is administered, you're cutting it!" And Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told the Prospect that the mass firings of Social Security workers amount to "Wall Street and the billionaires destroying Social Security so they can give themselves trillions in tax handouts."

"The ongoing bloodbath at the Social Security Administration has only one goal: the total annihilation of Social Security," Lawson said.

The Prospect reported that if the mass layoffs are carried out, it could result in "large delays in benefit adjudication and claims processing" for beneficiaries. The Social Security Fairness Act — which former President Joe Biden signed into law just weeks before he left office — could increase benefits for more than three million Americans. However, some of its provisions may require manual processing of benefits, which could take significantly longer if the SSA doesn't have enough staff.

Dudek replaced Michelle King as acting administrator in February after she refused to hand over sensitive Social Security information to DOGE representatives. The Washington Post reported that Dudek, who previously worked in SSA's fraud prevention office, leapfrogged several senior SSA officials to helm the agency. Dudek had previously praised DOGE's efforts on social media, according to the Post's sources.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'This Will Kill People': House GOP Guts Medicaid For Billionaire Tax Cut

By a slim 217-213 margin, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill Tuesday night that makes deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while simultaneously extending President Donald Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. Wall Street Journal congressional reporter Olivia Beavers tweeted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had a group of Republicans "shaking his hand, back slapping and congratulating him" after the vote was confirmed.

As Politico reported, the vote was initially slated to fail with multiple Republican holdouts expressing reservations about the scope of cuts in the bill. While the legislation makes $2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts, Forbes reported that roughly $800 billion of those cuts came from federal support for state Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance for low-income families. But some Republicans, like Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Warren Davidson (R-OH, Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) wanted deeper cuts.

After Johnson and Trump both leaned on the four holdouts, three of them ended up flipping to support the bill, while Massie voted with the Democratic opposition. The Kentucky Republican explained that his primary hangup with the budget bill was that it added $20 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

The bulk of that debt comes from extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for the next decade, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) said was "skewed to the rich, expensive and failed to deliver on its promises."

"As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent," the CBPP wrote.

Democrats were united in their opposition to the bill, and made sure to travel to the House of Representatives chamber to cast their vote after Johnson made it impossible for them to vote remotely or by proxy. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) tweeted that she traveled to Washington to vote on the bill despite giving birth to her son earlier that day.

"They want to rip away health care from 400,000 CO kids, take food off the plates of seniors & veterans, and make life more expensive for hardworking Coloradans – all so they can give tax breaks to corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk," she wrote.

Political scientist and New York Times contributor Miranda Yaver condemned the bill in a post to Bluesky, pointing out that Medicaid "covers 1 in 5 Americans overall, including 41% of births and 63% of nursing home care." She added that the bill cuts the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps), which 41 million Americans depend on to afford groceries.

"This won’t just harm people. This will kill people," Yaver wrote. "They own this."

According to Bobby Kogan, who is the senior director of federal budget policy for the Center for American Progress, the bill would "cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on [average] while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k." He pointed out that the bill still has a major obstacle in the Senate, where Republicans are more reticent to green-light the tax cut extension and cut Medicaid. Kogan also reminded his followers that Trump's attempted 2017 repeal of the Affordable Care Act was finally halted in the Senate during the "vote-o-rama" amendments process.

Democratic activist Joe Katz opined that "all purple district Republicans" will have immense difficulty "trying to convince people this wasn't TECHNICALLY a vote for cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for billionaire tax cuts." Journalist and editor Jonathan Cohn asserted that Tuesday night's vote proves that "there are no moderate Republicans in Congress."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'Elon Emails' Pulled Operators Away From Social Security Hotline

Over the weekend, South African centibillionaire Elon Musk gave federal workers an ultimatum: Respond to an email asking what they accomplished at work this week, or risk losing their jobs. This has reportedly caused an interruption in services for at least one critical federal agency.

Talking Points Memo reported Monday that the 1-800 number for the Social Security Administration (SSA) was interrupted, as workers were expressly told they had to "write their Elon emails" even if they answered calls to the hotline. TPM founder Josh Marshall reported that Jill Hornick — a union representative for the American Federation of Government Workers (AFGE) Local 1395 chapter — confirmed that agency higher-ups expected hotline workers to take time way from their duties to respond to Musk's email.

Hornick specified to Marshall that hotline workers' schedules were being managed to ensure that desks would be manned throughout the day on Monday even as some workers stepped away from the phones to write their weekly work summaries. However, he noted that workers were somewhat caught off-guard by the response deadline, and that most calls to the hotline are from elderly people on fixed incomes having difficulty accessing the money they depend on to live.

"Needless to say, what’s created this crisis posture is the fact that all of this is being demanded on one day’s notice," Mrshall wrote. "According to the email, all the replies must be submitted no later than 11:59 PM tonight."

Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) sent the email on Saturday to the roughly two million federal workers over the weekend through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which effectively functions as the federal government's human resources department. TPM reporter Josh Kovensky posted to Bluesky that one unnamed "hill source" said that at least one federal judge also got the OPM email.

Some agencies have taken a different approach to the Musk email, with workers elsewhere being told they didn't have to respond to Musk's demands. And federal workers' unions have made it clear that they will have workers' backs if DOGE attempts to remove them for not complying with the ultimatum.

In an all-caps post to his Truth Social platform on Saturday, President Donald Trump made it clear he not only approves of what Musk is doing, but that he should "GET MORE AGGRESSIVE." He added that "WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE," though he didn't specify what he was attempted to save the country from.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'Tax Elon!': Irate Crowd In Deep Red County Shouts Down GOP Congressman

Even residents of a county President Donald Trump won by a significant margin are outraged by the Trump administration's slashing of public services — and their Republican congressman's support of the cuts.

The La Grande, Oregon-based Observer reported Friday that Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-OR) was recently met by an angry crowd of constituents during a town hall at Eastern Oregon University. The outlet noted that the audience of several hundred people filled nearly all 435 seats in the McKenzie Theater, and more people filled the aisles and stood along the walls to hear their congressman.

Attendees reportedly grew impatient with Bentz's presentation, yelled "we can read" while he went over PowerPoint slides and urged him to move to the question-and-answer portion of the meeting. At that point, the crowd indicated it was furious with Bentz's support of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not an official federal agency authorized by Congress). Bentz has recently said he would even support firing some of his own staff in order to help DOGE.

In addition to cutting budgets for federal agencies, Bentz talked about his hopes to extend Trump's 2017 tax cut package — which could cost anywhere from $4.6 trillion to $5.5 trillion over a ten-year period. He also said he plans to vote for additional funding for border security and to increase oil and gas production.

While Bentz got back to his desire to reduce federal spending, members of the crowd reportedly shouted over him yelling, "tax Elon," "tax the wealthy," "tax the rich" and "tax the billionaires." Bentz countered that some of his colleagues weren't even holding town halls during this week's Congressional recess, saying: "You should be here to speak with me." The Observer reported that Union County, where Bentz held his town hall, went for Trump by 68 percent. Bentz won reelection with 64 percent of the vote in the ruby-red district.

"If you just came to yell, I can leave," Bentz said.

The Observer reported that members of the audience kept coming back to the "power of the purse," which is a power that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically delegates to Congress. Bentz pushed back, saying he supports Trump "doing his best to exercise his legal power" to reduce federal spending, and that the president wants to make sure the nation doesn't "go broke." Bentz — who is the lone Republican in the Oregon congressional delegation, confronted his own constituents just as Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) had a tense town hall in his own deep-red Georgia district.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Musk Says He'll Cut $500M In Medicare And Social Security 'Entitlements'

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — whose net worth is just shy of $400 billion — just dropped a hint that he may be eyeing significant cuts to earned benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare in the future.

During his Thursday appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Musk was asked about his "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) project, and about the scope of spending cuts he aimed to implement. The South African centibillionaire asserted to NewsMax anchor Rob Schmitt — who interviewed him on stage — that "waste" was "pretty much everywhere."

"People ask how can you find waste in D.C., it's like being in a room and the wall, the roof and the floors are all targets," he said. "You can shoot in any direction. You can't miss."

Schmitt then asked Musk specifically about his plans for the Social Security Administration, which DOGE representatives have already reportedly accessed. Schmitt referenced "$72 billion in waste in seven years," while Musk seemingly alluded to hundreds of billions of dollars in supposedly wasteful spending.

"I think that the rough estimate from the Government Accountability Office is over $500 billion a year. $500 billion. With a B. Per year," Musk said.

"On Social Security?" Schmitt asked.

"On all entitlements. All entitlements, yeah," Musk responded, using a catch-all term to describe mandatory spending like Medicare and veterans' benefits.

Musk insisted during the interview that millions of dead Americans are still getting Social Security payments, including Americans who are allegedly hundreds of years old. ABC 7 New York debunked that claim, and pointed out that Musk was misreading Social Security Administration data. One of the agency's databases includes every American who has ever been issued a Social Security number, and no date of death has been listed for many of those Americans as they died before electronic records were established.

ABC 7 reported that of the roughly 67 million Americans currently receiving Social Security benefits, only 0.1% of them are over 100 years old. And while there are occasional fraudulent payments, that accounts for less than 1% of total spending and is usually in the form of overpayments to living beneficiaries.

"When Donald Trump ran for president, he blanketed swing states in flyers pledging to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Now, Trump has empowered Elon Musk to slash $500 billion a year from these vital benefits," Social Security Works communications director Linda Benesch told AlterNet. "But Congress has the power to stop him. We urge everyone to call their members of Congress and demand that they pledge one penny in cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid."

According to figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government had approximately $3.8 trillion in mandatory spending obligations in Fiscal Year 2023, which included $1.3 trillion for Social Security and $839 billion for Medicare. Beneficiaries of those programs have their eligibility and benefit formulas set by federal statute, meaning it would take an act of Congress to change it.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

With Social Post Crowning Himself 'King,' Trump Provokes Internet Fury

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump called himself a "king" on his social media platforms. Now, journalists, commentators and academics are sounding the alarm about the second-term president's apparent embrace of monarchy.

Trump initially used the term "king" on his Truth Social platform, in a post about New York City's "congestion pricing" tolls. That policy imposes a toll on drivers entering Manhattan during peak commuting hours as a means of decreasing traffic jams in the United States' largest city. The New York Times reported that Trump intends to revoke federal approval of congestion pricing, though the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York (MTA) has already announced litigation to keep the policy in place.

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD," Trump wrote. "Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"

"We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king," New York Governor Kathy Hochul wrote when announcing the MTA's intent to sue. "We'll see you in court."

A few minutes later, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted an AI-generated image of Trump wearing a crown and a cloak with the New York City skyline in the background, with Trump's "LONG LIVE THE KING" Truth Social post underneath. And shortly after, the official White House X account reposted the text of Trump's Truth Social post, and added an image of Trump wearing a gold crown and the text "LONG LIVE THE KING" at the bottom. Numerous commenters on social media condemned the president's posts.

"This is revoltingly un-American," Bulwark executive editor Adam Keiper wrote on Bluesky.

Keiper followed up his post by quoting President George Washington, who admonished a Revolutionary War colonel who suggested Washington coronate himself. The first president of the United States wrote: "I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with severity [the idea]." Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo reminded her followers that the United States was literally founded by "violently rebelling against a king." Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen lamented the Trump administration's pro-monarchy stance, writing: "They're not even hiding it." And Gizmodo reporter Matt Novak wryly commented that Trump was "not talking about Elvis."

"Donald Trump is openly calling himself a king," wrote YouTube host Keith Edwards. "Any Republican who pretends they don't know where this is going is lying to you."

University of Michigan policy professor Don Moynihan observed that the post came on the same day that Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator" and falsely accused him of starting the war with Russia despite Russia invading Ukraine in 2022 (eight years after its illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula).

"Every member of the news media needs to ask every Republican, elected or not, if they believe Donald Trump is their king," podcaster Bob Cesca wrote on Bluesky.

Trump's "king" post also comes just a few days after he quoted Napoleon Bonaparte when he wrote: "He who saves his country does not violate any law." Former FBI counterterrorism official Frank Figliuzzi noted that the Napoleon quote was more recently used by far-right neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik, who massacred 78 people in Norway in 2011 after writing a 1,500-page manifesto blaming feminism and diversity for the decline of Europe.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Acting Social Security Chief Sacked After Clash With Musk Aides

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's representatives have reportedly clashed with the acting head of the Social Security Agency (SSA) over sensitive data she apparently refused to give over to the centabillionaire's team.

That's according to a Washington Post article published Monday night, which reported that acting Social Security commissioner Michelle King resigned after Musk — who leads the "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet a Congressionally authorized federal agency) —sought access to "sensitive government records." Leland Dudek, from the agency's anti-fraud office, has been named acting commissioner in King's place while commissioner-designate Frank Bisigano awaits his confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate.

"There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is," said Nancy Altman, who is president of the advocacy group Social Security Works. Altman said that while details remain murky, she cited officials within the agency who told her that Musk's team "wanted access to SSA’s sensitive files — the same way they’re trying to do at Labor and Treasury — and the acting commissioner wouldn’t give it, and she was replaced."

"At this rate, they will break it. And they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits," former SSA Commissioner Martin O'Malley told the Post. He also grimly noted that Dudek — who had praised DOGE's efforts in the past – was elevated to the acting role over other more senior officials within the agency.

“It’s a shame the chilling effect it has to disregard 120 senior executive service people,” O’Malley continued. “To pick an acting commissioner that is not in the senior executive service sends a message that professional people should leave that beleaguered public agency.”

On Bluesky, Tufts University political science professor Daniel Drezner warned: "This will end badly for everyone." University of Michigan policy professor Don Moynihan also sounded the alarm, pointing out that Musk "has your social security and your banking information." Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall told his followers that "Elon's boys are in the house" and that "it might be time to think of Plan B if you're on Social Security."

"Good God. It's a coup," former journalist Ali Adair wrote.

While DOGE's mission is ostensibly to cut down on fraudulent spending within federal agencies, conservative columnist Bill Kristol wasn't buying it. He wrote on Bluesky that if anyone believes the South African billionaire "wants all this data in order to root out fraud and marginally improve government efficiency, I have several bridges to sell you." Democratic strategist David Goodman lamented Michelle King's resignation, and opined other government employees should instead seek to resist within the capacity of their official positions.

"Leaving and refusing to fight is just as bad as handing over the data," he wrote. "You don't beat the Nazis by leaving. You beat them by fighting."

The news of DOGE accessing Social Security information comes as the billionaire's employees are aiming to obtain similar access to the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) systems. Some IRS agents expressed concern to the Post's Jacob Bogage that Musk and President Donald Trump could use taxpayers' sensitive personal data to carry out retribution against Trump's political opponents.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Scott Galloway: Democrats Must 'Go To The Dark Side' In Fighting Back

Democrats are not reacting appropriately to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's rapid accumulation of power, according to one well-known entrepreneur.

During a Thursday segment on CNN, Scott Galloway — a tech industry investor who is now a professor at New York University — clarified an earlier position he took in which he called on Democrats to storm the buildings where Musk's employees were accessing sensitive systems and making sweeping changes. When CNN host Dana Bash pointed out that Democrats had done as Galloway suggested, he condemned the optics of Democrats' public demonstrations and called on them to do more.

"Yeah, Dana, I was wrong because it looked more like a seniors' home and they canceled Jell-O night. It just wasn't optically a good moment for us," Galloway said.

He went on to say that Democrats should be "optimistic" and push for bold new ideas, like a "tax holiday for 20 to 30 year olds [and] 10 million new homes built in the next 10 years." He also suggested Democrats should embrace universal basic income "for industries or people affected by [artificial intelligence]" and to "lower medicare coverage two years a year for the next 20 years and move to nationalized health care that provides more access and lower costs."

"And also, go a bit to the dark side. Draw up legislation that, once we get control of the branches of government at some point —which we will — that removes the security detail of former advisers to the president. It decides we're renaming space as American space and potentially seizing all invaders in space, including the 51 percent of satellites owned by SpaceX," Galloway continued. "Encourage consumers to not engage with T-Mobile or United [Airlines], who are doing deals with with SpaceX. When I get an Uber alert saying your Tesla Model S is on the way, I cancel and say I don't ride in Teslas."

"The Democratic Party needs to be moved to moved away from being the party of waving their cane at a building outside of it, to the party of big ideas and not f---ing around," he added.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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